(c) Copyright May 15, 2010
Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.
All rights reserved
CONTENTS (Scroll down to the section that interests you)
SUMMARY
CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND RECUSAL IN GENERAL, AND REGARDING ETHNIC HAWAIIANS SPECIFICALLY
RECENT EXAMPLES OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST INVOLVING ETHNIC HAWAIIANS (AB)USING GOVERNMENTAL POWER TO BENEFIT THEIR BLOOD BROTHERHOOD: WALTER HEEN; BOYD MOSSMAN; DANTE CARPENTER; ROBERT KLEIN; MELE CARROLL; CLAYTON HEE; NATIVE HAWAIIAN CAUCUS IN THE LEGISLATURE; HONOLULU CITY COUNCIL PURCHASE OF WAIMEA VALLEY AND TRANSFER TO OHA.
ANALOGIES BETWEEN CARVING UP HAWAII ALONG ETHNIC LINES TO CREATE A RACE-BASED AKAKA TRIBE, AND THE FOLLOWING: CARVING UP INDIA TO CREATE PAKISTAN; TAPEWORMS IN HUMAN INTESTINES; PARASITIC WASP EGGS DEPOSITED INTO CATERPILLARS AND EATING THEIR INSIDES UNTIL EMERGING AT MATURITY; FRENCH CITIZEN FIFTH COLUMNISTS WORKING INSIDE FRANCE; AMERICAN CITIZEN SPIES TURNING OVER ATOMIC WEAPONS SECRETS TO AMERICA'S ENEMIES; NEIL ABERCROMBIE SPENDING 10 YEARS IN CONGRESS CREATING THE AKAKA TRIBE AND THEN BECOMING GOVERNOR TO PRESIDE OVER THE TRANSFER OF HAWAII'S ASSETS TO THE TRIBE
TRIBE VS. STATE: WHY HAWAIIAN TRIBAL LOYALTY IS LIKELY TO DAMAGE STATE GOVERNMENT FAR MORE SERIOUSLY THAN ANY DAMAGE SOME PEOPLE MIGHT IMAGINE COULD HAPPEN TO AMERICA BECAUSE OF RELIGIOUS OR ETHNIC LOYALTY BY CATHOLICS OR JEWS ON ISSUES SUCH AS ABORTION OR AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD ISRAEL OR IRAN.
ON APRIL 21, 2010 THE ISSUE OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND AN ACCOMPANYING DEMAND FOR RECUSAL WERE RAISED FOR THE FIRST TIME REGARDING THE TOPIC OF HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY, DURING TESTIMONY BY KEN CONKLIN BEFORE THE HONOLULU CITY COUNCIL.
CONCLUSION
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SUMMARY
Ethnic Hawaiians who are state government executives, legislators, or judges have an obvious and very severe conflict of interest when it comes to supporting the Akaka bill and especially when it comes time to divide up the lands, resources, and jurisdictional authority of Hawaii between the Akaka tribe and the State of Hawaii. Ethnic Hawaiians who exercise government authority would be in the position of taking resources owned by all of us and giving those resources to themselves and their blood brotherhood based on nothing but race. The divisiveness and far-reaching consequences of the Akaka bill are explored in the 302-page book "Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State" at
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/BookPromo.html
There is at least an ethical duty, and perhaps a legally enforceable obligation, for any ethnic Hawaiian who is a federal, state, or county government official to recuse himself from (i.e., step away and not participate in) any voting or decision-making related to supporting the Akaka bill, or especially implementing the bill after it passes.
The duty for ethnic Hawaiian officials of the state government to recuse themselves on matters related to the Akaka tribe is exactly at the same level, and for the same reasons, as the duty of a judge to recuse himself from hearing or ruling on a lawsuit involving a company owned by his own family. It is the same as the duty of a legislator or city council member or county department head to recuse himself from voting on a bill, or issuing permits, to construct a highway and place an exit ramp right next to a large parcel of land owned by his family where the family is planning to build a shopping center.
If the Akaka bill passes, then the one issue that will take up most of the time of state and county decision-makers is how to divide up government lands, resources, and jurisdiction. That issue cuts across nearly all government departments, and involves executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The chopping up of Hawaii's public resources will be a lengthy process with no finality, just as lawsuits between Indian tribes and their neighboring states and communities have been ongoing for two centuries. The Akaka bill places no time limit on demands for compensation for historical grievances going all the way back to Captain Cook's arrival in 1778, and imposes no deadline for a global or final settlement resolving all issues. An initial massive division of assets will be followed by decades of further demands, transfers, and lawsuits. State and county officials at high levels have authority over many, or even all, departments. Ethnic Hawaiians in such high positions would need to recuse themselves so frequently, from so many matters, that it behooves ethnic Hawaiians not to run for office, or to resign from office if already in place. But since they are not likely to do that, it is unfortunately necessary for the rest of us to do it for them -- to discriminate against them by never voting for or appointing ethnic Hawaiians to such high-level positions in the first place.
Government offices for which there should be a racial bar include Governor, member of the legislature, judges, mayors and county council members. In addition some positions in cabinets, department heads, and boards and commissions should be looked at as possibly appropriate for a racial bar -- especially departments dealing with land management, zoning, law enforcement, tax collection, procurement, or other areas where concerns over nepotism, favoritism, and corruption are always major factors even aside from the racial issue or the Akaka bill. The racial bar applies only to high-level decision-makers who would frequently be dealing with conflict between the tribe and the state or county government. Obviously there should be no racial bar for low-level government employees who deliver services or whose scope of authority falls outside areas of tribal conflict; for example, school teachers and administrators, highway repair workers and supervisors, firefighters, etc.
Isn't it racist to single out and target an entire racial group as being ineligible to hold high-level public office? Normally it would be. But the Akaka bill is a proposal to use race as the sole basis for dividing up the lands and resources of Hawaii -- to take resources belonging to all of us and give them away to a particular racial group which excludes all the rest of us for no reason other than race. It most certainly is not racist to defend against such racialism. On the contrary, the best way to fight racism is to make sure that people who support racial supremacy or racial favoritism are not given positions of power where they can use governmental authority to carry out their racism.
There is only one ethnic group in Hawaii, some of whose leaders are demanding race-based benefits and even a race-based government. Most ethnic Hawaiians are in favor of integration, not racial separatism. Most ethnic Hawaiians are proud to be Americans and do not seek secession or ethnic nationalism. However, there are some ethnic Hawaiian leaders whose whole lives are focused on racial entitlement programs and building a race-based government. If such race-focused tribalists become state legislators, executives, or judges, they effectively function as fifth columnists in the ongoing battle for ethnic Hawaiian racial supremacy in Hawaii.
There are powerful, wealthy race-based institutions holding hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and receiving tens of millions of dollars per year in government handouts that are racially exclusionary. All such institutions in Hawaii serve ethnic Hawaiians. There are no African, Caucasian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, or Korean leaders demanding such things for their ethnic groups in Hawaii. There are also very few ethnic Hawaiians with the courage to speak out publicly against the racists in their group. For a webpage tribute to one such hero, Professor Emerita Rubellite Kawena Johnson, see
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/AkakaRubelliteKawenaKinneyJohnsonTest030105.html
and for a webpage tribute to another such hero, Sandra Puanani Burgess (together with her husband attorney H. William Burgess), see
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/burgessmidweek010202.html
The situation is somewhat analogous to the difference between militant Islamist suicide bombers and everyday people whose religion is Islam. A small number of horrible troublemakers create a stereotype that everyone in their group is like that; and yet the vast majority of decent people are too fearful or passive to speak up for what's right.
Why should an entire racial group be excluded from high public office, when it is only a relatively small number of racialist zealots among them who cannot be trusted to hold government power? The answer is found in another question: Why should all members of a large family be recused from government decision-making on any issue that will directly benefit the family? Even though there may be some family members who are honorable and could resist the pressures placed on them by other family members, there's no way for the public to know which family members are honorable. Ethics regulations regarding conflict of interest and recusal do not attempt to distinguish between good and bad attitudes. If there is an actual conflict of interest, or even the mere appearance of one, then there must be a recusal. If the need for recusal would be a rare event because most of the decisions to be made by an office-holder do not pertain to his family, then the requirements of ethics would allow that person to hold office. However, in the case of a high office with a wide-ranging scope of decision-making responsibility, at a time when a great number of decisions will have to be made that are directly related to his family (perhaps even a majority of the decisions), the large number of recusals would cripple decision-making and deny the constituents of their right to representation; so the public interest requires that anyone holding that office should not be a member of the family which stands to gain or lose by the outcomes of such a large number of issues.
The only way ethnic Hawaiians should be eligible for high state or county government offices is if the Akaka bill is permanently abandoned. If the bill passes then there will be a major conflict of interest for all high-level government office-holders who are ethnic Hawaiian. The fact that the bill has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate, and the President has promised to sign it, means that there is a strong likelihood that anyone now running for office, or any current office-holder whose term extends into 2011, is likely to face the reality of that conflict of interest if he is ethnic Hawaiian. And if the Akaka bill fails in 2010, it will surely be introduced again in 2011, posing the same likelihood of conflict of interest for any ethnic Hawaiians holding high office in 2011 or beyond. Senators Dan Akaka and Dan Inouye, and Congresswoman Maizie Hirono, are likely to stay in office for many years to come and will keep pushing the Akaka bill. President Obama has promised to sign the bill, and he will be in office through the end of 2012 and perhaps 2016. All three major candidates to replace Congressman Neil Abercrombie have said they support the concept of the bill (Ed Case and Charles Djou have both said they oppose the current version of the bill but support the basic concept, while Colleen Hanabusa supports even the current, most dangerous version). In the foreseeable future we will always have the Akaka bill hanging over our heads, whether it actually passes or is waiting to be called to the Senate floor for a vote (like the proverbial sword of Damocles).
Regardless of what happens to the Akaka bill as federal legislation, the State of Hawaii enacted a law in 2011 to begin the process to create a state-recognized version of the Akaka tribe. Thus everything in this essay about the conflicts of interest faced by ethnic Hawaiians holding high-level positions in the state and county governments now becomes immediately relevant. SB1520 passed the legislature on May 3, 2011, and was signed by Governor Abercrombie on July 6, 2011 to become Act 195. The bill recognized ethnic Hawaiians as the state's only "indigenous people", and required the Governor to appoint a five-member Roll Commission whose duty is to assemble a membership list for the tribe. Once the tribe has been created and has chosen its leaders, the state and county governments are likely to begin negotiations to transfer land, money, and jurisdictional authority to the tribe. Every member of the state legislature and the county councils who has at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood will be in a position to make decisions that will directly enrich themselves and their families. The same is true for every department head in the state and county governments, and every judge. A webpage providing full text of Act 195, along with the legislative process whereby it was enacted and news reports and commentaries about it, is at
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/SB1520StateRecognizedTribe.html
During the Arakaki#2 lawsuit to dismantle OHA on the grounds it is unconstitutional, there came a time when federal judge Susan Oki Mollway dismissed the case on the grounds that the mere fact that the Akaka bill was pending in Congress made the issue into a political question where the court should not exercise jurisdiction. In other words, the mere fact that the Akaka bill had been introduced in Congress imposed on the court a duty to rule as though the bill had already been passed. Today the people of Hawaii should exercise that same level of prudence. When voting for any high level state or county official, imagine that the Akaka bill has already passed and do not vote for any ethnic Hawaiian who would have the ability as a government official to give away government resources or show favoritism to the members of his blood brotherhood.
In terms of the standards of proof used by lawyers, the demand for recusal on specific topics for low offices, and an outright racial bar for high offices, is far beyond reasonable suspicion, probable cause, rational basis, or preponderance of evidence. The argument in favor of it reaches at least the level of being narrowly tailored to meet a compelling governmental interest, or clear and convincing, and approaches the ultimate level of being true beyond a reasonable doubt.
It is a terrible violation of the Aloha Spirit to be telling an entire racial group that they should be excluded from holding high government positions. It is with great sadness that I have reached this conclusion and now proclaim it. The only cause or justification for this deplorable conclusion is the existence of the Akaka bill. The only way to restore the full right of candidacy for high government office to ethnic Hawaiians, without conflict of interest or need for recusal, is for the Akaka bill to be permanently withdrawn, or decisively defeated with such strong revulsion that Hawaii's Congressional delegation would never again feel comfortable in introducing it.
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CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND RECUSAL IN GENERAL, AND REGARDING ETHNIC HAWAIIANS SPECIFICALLY
Let's take a look at what standards we customarily apply regarding conflict of interest, and recusal, for government executives, legislators, and judges. As we consider those standards in general, let's keep in mind the particular issue of the role of ethnic Hawaiians who serve as state officials while also being members of an Akaka tribe to which the state will be giving huge assets.
Should legislators, judges, or government officials be voting, making rulings, or executing government policy on matters directly related to their personal assets in real estate or the stock market? Such decision-makers exercise power to control assets belonging to all the people. Should those decision-makers be able to use that power for the purpose of turning over those public assets to a private group where they are members and will receive great personal benefit? Would we consider it acceptable for a mayor or governor to be the decider who awards government contracts to companies owned by himself or his family? How about a senator voting for a bill to give a government bailout to a bank where he or his family owns millions of dollars in bank stocks?
These questions become very important when we consider the Akaka bill. That's because the Akaka bill would give political recognition and governmental powers to one racial group. Then there will be negotiations between the Akaka tribe and the State of Hawaii to decide how much land, money, and legal jurisdiction the state will turn over to the tribe. Throughout those negotiations, many decision-making government officials of the State of Hawaii and its counties will simultaneously be members (and perhaps even leaders) of the Akaka tribe. This is a recipe for conflict of interest, nepotism, cronyism, and outright corruption on an unprecedented scale.
Recently Honolulu city councilman Rod Tam was censured because he had used government money to pay for restaurant meals for his family members, and he was forced to pay back the money. A few years ago there were allegations of criminal wrongdoing against Mayor Harris and various construction companies who had made secret deals known as "pay to play", whereby the companies funneled lots of money to the mayor as campaign contributions in return for receiving city contracts on very favorable terms. Large fines were imposed by the Campaign Spending Commission against the mayor's campaign committee and numerous companies. There was talk of criminal prosecutions.
Such corruption is trivial compared to what will happen when ethnic Hawaiians who are officials of the state and county governments negotiate with the ethnic Hawaiian leaders of the Akaka tribe to transfer perhaps half of all the land in Hawaii to the tribe for the exclusive benefit of ethnic Hawaiians. It is commonly said that blood is thicker than water. Huge amounts of land and legal jurisdiction now belonging to all of us will be transferred from all of us to the 20% of us who are members of a blood brotherhood; and many powerful people who decide how much of our resources to transfer to the blood brotherhood will themselves be members of that brotherhood.
It would clearly be foolish for those of us who lack the magic blood to expect well-connected partisans with a history of racial activism to protect our interests against the desires of their own blood brotherhood. But it's not always easy to know whether someone who has the magic blood is going to be a racialist partisan or whether he is truly a person whose primary allegiance is to the State of Hawaii but who just happens to have some of the magic blood. Judges, governors, legislators, and department heads are expected to recuse themselves to avoid not only actual conflict of interest, but even the appearance of conflict of interest. The fact that someone has always been a trustworthy pillar of the community does not give him license to exercise authority in situations where a less trustworthy decision-maker might be likely to abuse power.
It might be illegal, and would certainly be unethical, for a Senator, Representative, President, or Supreme Court Justice, to buy or sell stock in a company shortly before voting on, or signing or vetoing legislation, or making a ruling on a lawsuit, that will directly affect the price of that company's stock. To avoid such conflicts of interest, high-level public officials who deal with a wide range of issues are expected to put their assets into a blind trust before taking office, so they are shielded from knowing whether they still have assets that would be affected by their decisions. But in the case of the Akaka tribe, there can be nothing similar to a blind trust, since every individual who has a drop of Hawaiian native blood can be a member of the tribe. For example, Dick Cheney had been President and CEO of military contractor Halliburton before becoming Secretary of Defense and then Vice President of the U.S. Cheney owned megabucks in Halliburton stock, and stood to make huge personal profits from Halliburton's role as a major contractor in both of the Iraq wars. His political opponents repeatedly accused him (whether true or false) of bending U.S. foreign policy and military contracting to suit his own desire for profit even at the cost of many thousands of American and Iraqi lives.
Low-level public officials who deal with only a narrow range of topics might not need to create a blind trust, but are expected to recuse themselves, on a case by case basis, from deciding any matters that directly affect themselves. For example, if an appeals-court judge receives a case in which she previously served as a trial court judge or attorney, she is expected to recuse herself from that case unless she discloses her prior activity and all parties agree to waive the issue of conflict.
Even though a worldwide company like Microsoft might have millions of shares of stock worth billions of dollars, and a local government official might have only a small number of Microsoft shares worth only a few thousand dollars and will be dealing only with a local issue affecting a particular Microsoft building (perhaps a building permit or an issue about recognition of a labor union), nevertheless the official might be expected to at least offer to recuse himself to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
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RECENT EXAMPLES OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST INVOLVING ETHNIC HAWAIIANS (AB)USING GOVERNMENTAL POWER TO BENEFIT THEIR BLOOD BROTHERHOOD: WALTER HEEN; BOYD MOSSMAN; DANTE CARPENTER; ROBERT KLEIN; MELE CARROLL; CLAYTON HEE; NATIVE HAWAIIAN CAUCUS IN THE LEGISLATURE; HONOLULU CITY COUNCIL PURCHASE OF WAIMEA VALLEY AND TRANSFER TO OHA.
Walter Heen was formerly a state judge and also Chairman of the state Democrat Party, but has now been serving for several years as a trustee of the race-focused Office of Hawaiian Affairs where he is one of the most aggressive pushers of the Akaka bill. Boyd Mossman is another former judge now serving as OHA trustee and actively pushing the Akaka bill. Dante Carpenter was formerly a member of the state legislature and also mayor of Hawaii Island. Carpenter then became a trustee of OHA. Now Carpenter has taken Heen's old job as Chairman of the Democrat Party. In hindsight it seems clear that when Heen, Mossman, and Carpenter were state and county government officials they were most likely bending their decisions to favor their blood brotherhood on any issues involving OHA, land ownership, property tax waivers for Hawaiian Homestead parcels, etc.
Perhaps the most clear cut example of a racial partisan wolf in the sheep's clothing of a non-racial state official is Robert Klein. He was a Justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court, where he authored the infamous PASH decision giving ethnic Hawaiians special rights to trespass and gather on private lands. He ruled that Hawaiian custom had always included that right before Captain Cook's arrival, that the right was never changed when private property ownership was created during the Hawaiian Kingdom, and that such a racial right to trespass and gather continues today as an implied easement on the title of private property owners.
www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/sullivanpash.html
Not long after that decision he resigned from the Court to take a lucrative job as attorney representing OHA in public relations, legal brief-writing, and litigation against the state. One of his first cases as litigator for OHA was Arakaki#1 (the right to run for public office in Hawaii regardless of race).
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/arakaki.html
Klein's main argument in court was that a candidate for election as OHA trustee should not have freedom of speech to claim that OHA is unconstitutional. Klein's bizarre theory was immediately rejected from the bench by Judge Helen Gillmor, who seemed to have some difficulty suppressing her own laughter at Klein's attempt to trample the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Both the PASH decision with Klein as state Supreme Court Justice, and the Arakaki#1 lawsuit with Klein as litigator for OHA, display Klein's racialist mindset and eagerness to bend U.S. and state law in service to his blood brotherhood. In hindsight his signing on with OHA and his performance in Arakaki#1 showed how his mind was working when he was a Justice of the Supreme Court in the PASH case. He should have recused himself from PASH, but did not do so. The Governor who appointed him and the state Senators who confirmed him should have rejected him instead, for the reasons described in this essay.
Ethnic Hawaiians are very powerful in the state legislature. During the 2009-2010 session 21 out of 51 members of the House, and 6 out of 25 members of the Senate, were members of the Hawaiian Caucus. About half of the caucus members have Hawaiian blood, while the other half are pledged to bow to them in support of whatever legislation they want. The chair of the caucus was Representative Mele Carroll, who was also chair of the House Committee on Hawaiian Affairs which drafted and passed out of that committee legislation to prohibit the governor from selling any ceded lands (after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled it was OK to do so), and legislation to license a gambling casino on the Hawaiian Homelands, and numerous other bills for racial favoritism. Every year OHA introduces a package of bills in the legislature, which the ethnic Hawaiian members and their caucus try to push through. Recent examples included bills to "settle" "past due" "rent" for state use of the ceded lands, a resolution to support the Akaka bill; and appropriations for OHA, the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, etc.
During 2009-2010 Senator Clayton Hee was chair of the very powerful Committee on Water, Land, Agriculture, and Hawaiian Affairs. But Senator Hee had previously served for many years as Chairman of OHA where he filed lawsuits against the state on behalf of his blood brotherhood, and tried to extort megabucks from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy as a payoff for quelling ethnic Hawaiian opposition to the placement of a new telescope on Mauna Kea. Hee engaged in nepotism to arrange a sole-source contract for fiberoptic cable, involving perhaps $500 Million, between DHHL (for exclusive benefit of ethnic Hawaiians with at least 50% native blood quantum) and Sandwich Isles Communications (where the president and all the directors were ethnic Hawaiians including Hee's brother and the Chairman of the Kamehameha Schools Board of Trustees). Today Hee is chairman of a powerful committee in the state Senate whose jurisdiction includes all legislation related to water, land, agriculture, and (ethnic) Hawaiian affairs. Thus Hee will be a major decider on all issues related to how the lands and waters of Hawaii will be divided between the state and the Akaka tribe. Such a conflict of interest simply must not be tolerated.
Ethnic Hawaiians on the Honolulu county council have also exercised their power as public officials to benefit their blood brotherhood. Perhaps the most flagrant example occurred in 2006. OHA acquired ownership of the entire 1,875-acre Waimea Valley on the north shore of O'ahu, where there is a nature park formerly operated as a tourist attraction by the same company that owned Sea Life Park. Most of the money to acquire the valley was paid by a consortium of public and private groups, with about 15% coming from OHA. The largest portion of the purchase price was $5 Million paid by Honolulu county. As soon as the purchase was closed, the deed was handed over to OHA, from where everyone understood it will be transferred to the future Akaka tribe. For details see item #2 at
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/big60/EvilEmpireOHA2005thru2007.html
Ethnic Hawaiians, eligible to join the Akaka tribe, also make up a voting bloc of 20% of the state's population, and can be expected to vote for their brothers and sisters of the blood to become state legislators and governors. Throughout the U.S. (and, indeed, the world) minorities who feel historically aggrieved can be expected to vote overwhelmingly in favor of candidates from within their own race. It is commonly said that 95% of African-Americans voted for candidate Obama to become President. But imagine the outcry if 95% of Caucasians had voted for candidate McCain! There's an astonishing level of "political correctness" and hypocrisy when the public tolerates blacks voting almost entirely for blacks but would not tolerate whites doing the same thing. Whether ethnic Hawaiians engage in identity politics with similar zealotry either has not been studied or else the studies have been hidden away in the archives of OHA and Kamehameha Schools. Every election year OHA sponsors voter registration drives in ethnic Hawaiian neighborhoods and on the grounds of Iolani Palace, because OHA expects that ethnic Hawaiian voters will vote for ethnic Hawaiian candidates or for "fellow traveler" allies who will support an ethnic Hawaiian agenda.
Ethnic Hawaiian state Senators and Representatives, and county council members, will vote on how much government land to give to the the Akaka tribe for the sole benefit of ethnic Hawaiians (i.e., themselves). Ethnic Hawaiian state judges will make rulings in lawsuits brought by the Akaka tribe against the state; or by the state against the tribe. Ethnic Hawaiian state governors and county mayors will have the power to sign or veto legislation according to whether it would help or harm the tribe to which they belong; and to nominate their brothers of the blood to judgeships, boards and commissions where important decisions will be made that can help or hurt their tribe.
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ANALOGIES BETWEEN CARVING UP HAWAII ALONG ETHNIC LINES TO CREATE A RACE-BASED AKAKA TRIBE, AND THE FOLLOWING: CARVING UP INDIA TO CREATE PAKISTAN; TAPEWORMS IN HUMAN INTESTINES; PARASITIC WASP EGGS DEPOSITED INTO CATERPILLARS AND EATING THEIR INSIDES UNTIL EMERGING AT MATURITY; FRENCH CITIZEN FIFTH COLUMNISTS WORKING INSIDE FRANCE; AMERICAN CITIZEN SPIES TURNING OVER ATOMIC WEAPONS SECRETS TO AMERICA'S ENEMIES; NEIL ABERCROMBIE SPENDING 10 YEARS IN CONGRESS CREATING THE AKAKA TRIBE AND THEN BECOMING GOVERNOR TO PRESIDE OVER THE TRANSFER OF HAWAII'S ASSETS TO THE TRIBE
The situation in Hawaii might be compared to the situation in India during the 1940s and 1950s when India was a unified nation under a single government, but negotiations were getting started to carve out two huge portions of India which then became East and West Pakistan (and later East Pakistan split from West Pakistan to become its own separate nation of Bangladesh). During that period it would have been unthinkable for citizens of India who were planning to become citizens of Pakistan to be allowed to continue holding high positions in the government of India and serving on the negotiating team for India to decide how much of India's assets should be given to Pakistan.
In terms of that analogy, the way the Akaka bill would work in Hawaii is that even after Pakistan had broken away and had its own government, all citizens and government officials in Pakistan would also continue to be citizens of India and would continue voting for and serving as government officials of India right up until today. Such a bizarre situation would never happen in India/Pakistan. But that's exactly the sort of thing that will happen in Hawaii after the Akaka bill passes.
Members of federally recognized Indian tribes remain full-fledged citizens of their state and county, including the right to vote and hold office. In Hawaii, unlike any other state, that's a 20% voting bloc who would effectively function as a "fifth column," undermining the authority of the state and county governments and grabbing their resources. See a webpage "Hawai'i's Fifth Column: Anti-Americanism in the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/antiamerican.html
Readers might recall various examples where parasites use the body of a host as a source of food. This is not the gentle symbiosis of a cleaner wrasse and a reef fish, where the wrasse feeds itself by eating the parasites plaguing the reef fish, and thereby both the wrasse and the reef fish benefit. Perhaps the mildest example of a harmful parasite is the tapeworm which enters the human body through food or ingested dirt and then grows in the intestine to lengths of several feet, eating the food being digested in the intestine and thus sapping the person of strength and causing disease. A more monstrous example is the parasitic wasp. The adult female wasp uses its ovipositor to puncture the skin of a caterpillar and deposit numerous fertilized eggs inside the caterpillar, where the baby wasps eat the caterpillar's insides until the full-grown wasps emerge and fly away as the caterpillar dies.
The example of the tapeworm illustrates how OHA has been feeding itself off the body politic of Hawaii and how most Indian tribes feed themselves off the money and infrastructure given to them by federal and state governments. The example of the parasitic wasp illustrates how some Hawaiian independence activists see the Akaka bill as a vehicle for secession -- use the Akaka bill to obtain political power and huge amounts of land and money, which can then be used in political elections and in U.S. courts to extract further concessions. The Akaka tribe's money and power can also be used internationally to work with anti-U.S. governments in the United Nations to fuel demands for total independence. Supporters of the Akaka bill, including Senator Akaka himself, envision such a scenario.
www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/AkakaSecession.html
We are all familiar with fifth columnists in the mid-twentieth century both in Europe and in America. During the 1930s and 1940s there were French citizens who helped the Nazis by spying on military bases, handing over government economic data, and undermining confidence in the government through political agitation. During the 1940s and 1950s there were U.S. citizens who spied for the Soviet Union, handing over secrets that enabled the Soviets to build atomic bombs, and then hydrogen bombs, years before they could have figured out by themselves how to do it. In France, America, and also in the Hawaiian sovereignty situation, some fifth columnists do their treason for money, some do it for fame and glory, and some do it because of a sincere belief that the existing government is corrupt or oppressive to an ideology they admire.
It is not necessary to have Hawaiian native blood to be a fifth-columnist on Hawaiian sovereignty. Perhaps the best example of this is Neil Abercrombie, a Caucasian born in Buffalo N.Y. who moved to Hawaii in his mid-20s to do graduate studies at the University of Hawaii. He linked up with a radical crowd including the mother and father of Barack Obama who were his fellow students. Obama's father and mother met in a Russian language class where the father, from Kenya, was sponsored by a scholarship at a time when the Soviet Union was trying to exercise great influence in all the emerging African nations including Kenya.
Abercrombie introduced the first version of the Akaka bill in the House in 2000, and kept introducing it for a decade. He pushed it to passage three times, most recently February 2010 when he successfully substituted the most radical version of the bill on the floor of the House and got it passed just days before resigning from Congress in order to run for Governor. As Governor, Abercrombie would be in a position to preside over the transfer of enormous amounts of land, money, and jurisdictional authority from the State of Hawaii to the same Akaka tribe which he was responsible for creating. In effect, Abercrombie would the Godfather of the Akaka tribe (mafia-style), responsible for creating it in Congress and then handing over most of the land and wealth it would acquire from the state.
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TRIBE VS. STATE: WHY HAWAIIAN TRIBAL LOYALTY IS LIKELY TO DAMAGE STATE GOVERNMENT FAR MORE SERIOUSLY THAN ANY DAMAGE SOME PEOPLE MIGHT IMAGINE COULD HAPPEN TO AMERICA BECAUSE OF RELIGIOUS OR ETHNIC LOYALTY BY CATHOLICS OR JEWS ON ISSUES SUCH AS ABORTION OR AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD ISRAEL OR IRAN.
Ethnic Hawaiian state or county office-holders who rule or vote the "wrong" way will be excoriated by their families.
In mainland Indian tribes, any tribal member is likely to be expelled from the tribe if he exercises authority in a state or local government in a way that is detrimental to tribal interests, or even if he merely speaks out in tribal meetings in opposition to the policies of tribal leaders. Expulsion means losing access to tribal lands and services and also losing large amounts of money in annual per capita disbursements of revenues to tribal members from the profits of tribal casinos and businesses.
Ethnic Hawaiians who are either political activists or cultural activists all hold a religious belief that there is a sacred family relationship among the gods, the land, and the ethnic Hawaiians. This religious belief is taught in the "Hawaiian focus" public charter schools, as well as the Hawaiian studies component of the curriculum in the regular public schools. According to the creation legend known as Kumulipo, the gods mated and gave live birth to the Hawaiian islands as living beings. Later the gods mated and gave birth to a stillborn baby from whose buried body the taro plant sprang forth. Later the gods mated and gave birth to Haloa, a perfect child who was the primordial ancestor of all ethnic Hawaiians. Any person with at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood is therefore a child of the gods and a younger brother or sister of the land and the taro. That sacred family relationship, and the accompanying rights and obligations of receiving and giving care, pertains to ethnic Hawaiians exclusively. Anybody who lacks a drop of Hawaiian native blood can never be a child of the gods or a brother to these islands and is always an outsider -- a mere guest in the Hawaiian ancestral homeland. Therefore ethnic Hawaiians are entitled to racial supremacy in Hawaii, while everyone else is relegated to second-class citizenship. The family relationship among the gods, the land, and the ethnic Hawaiians means that all decisions about how the land is used, who has a right to live here, and what the laws should be, belong to ethnic Hawaiians. Any ethnic Hawaiian who holds power as a state or county official is likely to believe in that religious theory. Their decisions will be shaped by it. This is the opposite of our long-standing commitment to a separation between church and state. See the webpage "Religion and zealotry in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement: How religious myths are used to support political claims for racial supremacy in Hawaii" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/religion.html
In the late 1950s it became a political issue whether a candidate's religion might, by itself, be a conflict of interest that would disqualify him from high office. No Roman Catholic had ever before been a major party's nominee for President. Some pundits said that John F. Kennedy could never be elected President because Roman Catholics owe their primary allegiance to the Pope, who is the head of a foreign nation (the Vatican). There were fears that the Pope or the Cardinals and Bishops might force President Kennedy to make decisions in line with Catholic dogma about birth control, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, foreign policy in the Middle East, etc. Nevertheless he was elected, and his performance in office showed that he was not a puppet of the Pope. The election of President Kennedy put to rest most worries that Catholics had a conflict of interest when serving in high government office. However, from time to time there are still difficulties, such as when a Catholic bishop orders a Catholic government official not to participate in Holy Communion during the Mass because of how the official votes or carries out his government authority regarding abortion or same-gender marriage. One might wonder whether some Catholic government officials might carry out their government duties differently because of fear of disobeying the doctrines of their religion or the dictates of their clergymen. On the other hand, every person has his own upbringing and set of moral values, which are part of his character and also part of the reason why the people elected him to public office; and every government official is entitled to seek advice from people he trusts, including priests.
At the present time some respected political analysts (and some appropriately disrespected anti-semites) see it as a problem that 15 out of 100 U.S. Senators are Jewish, which is vastly disproportional to the 2% of U.S. population who are Jewish. Does this very powerful voting bloc in the Senate distort U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East? Should Jews in Congress recuse themselves from voting on foreign aid to Israel, and American policy toward Iran (which has threatened to build nuclear weapons for the purpose of wiping out Israel)? Do the Jews in Congress vote in favor of government bailouts for banks and financial institutions because of the stereotype that banks and financial institutions are dominated by Jews? Pundits point out that the confirmation of Elena Kagan as Supreme Court Justice brings the total of Jewish Justices to 3 out of 9 -- a powerful 33% faction which is more than double the power of the Jewish caucus in the Senate. Should Jewish Justices be expected to recuse themselves from cases dealing with whether state or local governments must give paid religious holidays to Jewish employees on the same basis as Christmas and Easter, or whether a cross must be removed from a hilltop on federaly owned land?
It is "politically incorrect" to raise such questions about Jews, partly because of a long history of anti-semitism and persecution of Jews throughout the world and also here in America. Perhaps the best answer to questions of conflict of interest and recusal for Jewish Senators is that the answers will be different for different Senators, depending on how close their personal ties are to the nation of Israel and how typical the Senator's views are by comparison with the citizens of the state he represents.
In some sense, all Jews worldwide are potentially citizens of Israel because of the "right of return" whereby any Jew has a right to move to Israel and immediately be a citizen. Some individual Senators might feel a very close emotional/spiritual bond with Israel as "The Promised Land" and their place of ultimate refuge in a hostile world. Some ethnic Hawaiians born and raised in California or Germany, who have never visited Hawaii, regard Hawaii as their true home in the same way.
Some Jews might regard it as the most important definition of their personal identity that they are descendants of "God's Chosen People" with whom God established a covenant that included ownership of "The Promised Land" in perpetuity. That attitude is very much like the attitude of ethnic Hawaiians who believe the religious creation legend in Kumulipo. Jews who feel that way might have greater loyalty to Israel than to America (just as many ethnic Hawaiian activists have greater loyalty to Hawaii and regard the U.S. as an occupier and oppressor), and if so they should seriously consider recusing themselves from voting on matters directly affecting Israel. On the other hand, if most of the people in the state a Senator represents feel the same way about Israel (many Christians also feel that way about Israel), then the Senator is quite properly speaking on behalf of the people and has no reason to step away from the topic.
Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii from 2003 through 2010, is Jewish. She has been a lifelong member of Hadassah, an activist organization of Jews supporting Zionism (Israel defined as a Jewish nation). Lingle has always supported the concept of the Akaka bill and has lobbied zealously in Congress for it, although she disagrees with the current version of it. She has also participated in "red-shirt" rallies at Iolani Palace, and written legal briefs and given speeches, in support of Kamehameha Schools' racially exclusionary admissions policy. What's the connection between Lingle's support for Zionism and her support for ethnic Hawaiian racial separatism? In 2002, during her campaign for Governor, Lingle gave a speech to the Kamehameha Schools alumni association in which she compared her support for Kamehameha's admissions policy and for the Akaka bill to her support for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish nation -- she said that both movements share the same concept that "a people" have a right to self-determination.
Both Jews and ethnic Hawaiians are defined by both blood and religion. Nationalism is a powerful emotional and political motivator when based on either blood or religion alone, and even more powerful when based on both. Thus Lingle's race/religion have had a major impact on the political decisions she had made to shape the future of Hawaii. See
https://www.angelfire.com/bigfiles90/LingleZionismHawnSovDetailed.html
Can we draw a conclusion from the examples of President Kennedy's Roman Catholic religion, the discussion about the presence of 15 Jews in the U.S. Senate, and the discussion about the role of Governor Lingle's Judaism in relation to the Akaka bill? A good rule might be this. An elected official should lean toward recusal in proportion to three factors: the extent of his personal allegiance to the entity that is the focus of the decision he is empowered to make; the extent to which his devotion to that entity is not typical of the population of the electorate he represents; and the extent to which he will personally profit (either financially or emotionally) from an outcome that is favorable to the entity.
The most important differences between ethnic Hawaiians serving in state and county government, vs. Catholics or Jews serving in federal, state, or local government; are these.
For Catholics and Jews the issues where they encounter conflict of interest and should recuse themselves from decision-making are a small percentage of the issues they deal with as government policy-makers. Furthermore, for most of those Catholics and Jews, their primary loyalty is to America and their religion is not the central force driving their daily lives. And they have little to gain in personal wealth or political power by whatever decisions they make related to the Vatican or Israel.
But for ethnic Hawaiians, the situation is very different. If the Akaka bill passes, a very large percentage of decision-making for state and county officials will involve dividing up land, money, and jurisdictional authority between the state and counties, and the Akaka tribe. To recuse themselves from such a high percentage of decision-making would mean that their constituents are not getting the representation they deserve. And far worse: to fail to recuse themselves would mean that the 80% of their constituents who have no native blood are getting "screwed." Furthermore, for nearly all those ethnic Hawaiians who are active on political or cultural issues, their loyalty to their blood brotherhood is far greater than their loyalty (if any) to what those activists view as their invader and oppressor, America, and its illegal puppet regime State of Hawaii. Also, unlike Catholics and Jews in government, ethnic Hawaiians have tremendous amounts of land, money, and power to gain for themselves, their families, and their blood brotherhood from the decisions they make as state and county officials.
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ON APRIL 21, 2010 THE ISSUES OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND AN ACCOMPANYING DEMAND FOR RECUSAL WERE RAISED FOR THE FIRST TIME REGARDING THE TOPIC OF HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY, DURING TESTIMONY BY KEN CONKLIN BEFORE THE HONOLULU CITY COUNCIL.
In March and April 2010 the Honolulu county council drafted and passed a resolution to support the Akaka bill. In testimony televised live on April 21, Ken Conklin explicitly raised the issue of conflict of interest (member Ikaika Anderson and council chairman Todd Apo are ethnic Hawaiian), saying the ethnic Hawaiian council members had a duty to recuse themselves. This was the first time the issue of conflict of interest, and accompanying demand for recusal, had ever been raised before any government body in Hawaii on the topic of Hawaiian sovereignty. However, the resolution passed 8-1; so it would have passed even without the votes of the two ethnic Hawaiians. Conklin's one-minute testimony, and much lengthier cross-examination by council members, can be found in two YouTube videos at
https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=KenConklin#p/u/0/Cnpc3rjWSIY
and
https://www.youtube.com/profile?user=KenConklin#p/u/1/AB67brcAXqk
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CONCLUSION
There is only one way to rid ethnic Hawaiians and everyone else of racial strife and conflict of interest related to the Akaka bill -- abandon the Akaka bill. If the bill passes, the conflicts of interest will be far-reaching and never-ending. If the bill does not pass but continues to be introduced (as seems likely for the foreseeable future), then the threat that it will pass makes the conflict of interest a looming possibility. Therefore, ethnic Hawaiians have at least a moral, and perhaps also a legally enforceable, obligation not to serve in high-level state or county government positions in the executive, legislative, or judicial branches. And the rest of us need to do all we can to prevent them from serving in such positions, if we hope to protect unity, equality, and aloha for all.
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