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The next and final council meeting on this is Wednesday, December 21....

They were issued three weeks ago with no public announcement....

Abercrombie's budget seeks to achieve a healthy surplus, incorporates savings achieved through solid fiscal management, funds high-priority programs, and does not rely upon any tax increases....

Upcoming Congressional Bills

• House: Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011

...the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission moved to intervene in the lawsuit as a plaintiff in order to protect and enforce the state antidiscrimination law, which Aloha Bed & Breakfast claims does not and cannot constrain its conduct....

...the surprise development raises concerns about its impact on Pyongyang's ongoing leadership transition, regime stability, and North Korean security and foreign policies....

It is a hopeful vision of the future of broad prosperity.’ But it's hard to see how voters are going to see any hope at all.” (John Dickerson, “Obama’s Victory Plan,” Slate, 12/13/11)

 Egyptian Scientific Institute: December 17, 2011

In a short dispatch, KCA stated, "Chariman Kim passed away in the train on December 17th, 2011 at 8:30am due to physical overwork."

This week’s closure of Hawaii Medical Center hospitals in Ewa and Liliha—with the loss of 1,000 jobs--will be the first of many unless the Abercrombie administration abandons its suicidal policy of dismantling the Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act.

Another consideration is the amount of participation that will be needed to make a gaming industry a lucrative source of public revenue.... Will the cost, time and distance be attractive enough to gamble in Hawaii?

We must work to ... require local and out-of-state internet service providers to comply with Hawaii law enforcement and explore the idea of licensing web designers.

...Comments on page 23 of the 71 page-long Technical Review of the Hawaii DoE proposal point to a previously unknown DoE scheme to link up with Abercrombie’s much maligned Medical Homes proposal and use federal Medicaid money to screen—and therefore designate--even more children as Special Needs or High Needs....

...there is not a single mention of delisting, crashing solar panel prices, expiring tax credits and subsidies, difficulties in completing the Pocatello plant, nor the crashing price of the polysilicon Pocatello is supposed to produce....

Unfortunately, it was opposed by members of the House, who wanted a variety of devastating anti-environmental riders which, if the Senate accepted, would have set back our nation’s air and water protections for many years to come. 

Rather than produce a timely budget by way of standard operating procedure, congressional leaders again butted up against the deadline and reached a deal on a trillion-dollar "mega-omnibus" nine-bill appropriations package that sadly is yet another disappointing failure to rein in government spending.

No matter how powerful or pervasive a regime is, it can still be overrun by the sheer superior numbers of the people it governs. However, this traditional political framework has been undermined by the development of the modern welfare state ....

The akamai reader will note that this short and information-free announcement purports to identify the problem, identify the culprits, and pronounce sentence -- without actually identifying anybody or anything.

The Hawaii Public Housing Authority Board of Directors voted unanimously Thursday morning to appoint Muslim Association of Hawaii President Hakim Ouansafi as HPHA Executive Director.