Tsunami Relief for Hawaii
With all the focus on the March 11 tsunami’s impact on Japan, some have forgotten that Hawaii also was impacted, specifically Hawaii County, Maui County, and the City & County of Honolulu.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will provide federal disaster aid to Hawaii to fund state and local tsunami recovery efforts.
Michael L. Karl, the Federal Coordinating Officer, said additional designations may be made at a later date.
Akaka Talk-a
It was no surprise that the Native Hawaiian Reorganization Act, also nicknamed the Akaka Bill for its sponsor, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-HI, passed the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs by a voice vote and was sent to the floor for the full consideration of the Senate. After all, Akaka is the chair of that committee.
The question is, now what? Congress has taken up the Akaka Bill more than a half a dozen times since 2000, the year the Akaka Bill was introduced. While it passed the House three times in 2000, 2006 and 2010, the Senate never voted on the measure.
With Akaka set to retire in 2012, and even with the backing of powerful Appropriations Chair, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, the legislation’s momentum may have run its course.
Steven Duffield, former chief counsel to Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), told Hawaii Reporter. “This bill couldn’t get through with Democrats in absolute control of Congress and it certainly can’t get through now.”
Trumping Obama
New York Real Estate Mogul Donald Trump has a team on the ground in Hawaii who are charged with proving that President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii or anywhere in the United States, so is not eligible to be President.
Trump may run for President against Obama in 2012. A recent poll shows him the second most popular GOP presidential contender at this time.
The Wall Street Journal has Trump and Mike Huckabee tied for second place at 17 percent and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney ahead by 3 percentage points.
Trump us using Obama’s secrecy over his birth certificate to his advantage, maintaining that there is something on Obama’s birth certificate that he does not want people to see.
“I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding, I’m starting to think that he was not born here,” Trump told the NBC Today Show.
Trump and others are demanding to see a certificate of live birth not a birth certificate summary that Obama has already displayed.