City Council meeting

Earlier today, I went to the Honolulu city council meeting for the 1st time.

This was to testify against some of the bus service cuts.

I have done more than enough blogging on the issue, but now it was time to actually say it in front of the people who can do something about the issue.

Because most of us are working, most of us don't have time to attend city council meetings, or even have time to find out when the next one will be.

But since I'm on summer break (which will end soon for me), I got the time to testify.

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The meeting was to start at 9am, though some of the city council members showed up AFTER the meeting had started.


How many of us can get away with showing up to our jobs late?

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The meeting started with going over a few resolutions over city officials accepting girfts, and on property taxation. Those things didn't take very long (thank God) because what everybody wanted to discuss was  the bus service reductions.

First, transit director Wayne Yoshioka (who I've criticized in earlier blog posts) and the city budget director responded to questions from the City Council.

Most of the questions focused on the cuts in bus service for the North Shore and Windward Oahu. Yoshioka acknowledge that there were problems with the cuts in bus service and promised some adjustments in the future.

Then it was time for the average citizens to give testimony.

Some have discussed the hardships caused by the cuts in bus service already made for North Shore and Windward Oahu!

Another person criticized the cuts in the #14 bus service (which I went over in the blog post
 http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/07/bus-service-cuts-hurt-disabled.html.)


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Then it was My Turn to testify!

I was glad Wayne Yoshioka was still in the room, because I could say my thoughts right in front of him, instead of just hiding behind my blog

 I mentioned that Yoshioka was earlier reported to have said that the reduced bus service wasn't going to be restored because "rail is the future". I mentioned the rail wasn't going to serve the North Shore, Windward Oahu or East Honolulu. I then acknowledged that Yoshioka was starting to be more flexible on the issue according what he said earlier in the meeting

Then I went to the meat of my testimony. I testified AGAINST the change in the #4 bus routes. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, and I have mentioned at this morning's meeting.

It went something like this (this isn't word-for-word)

The #4 route (which zig-zags from Nuuanu,downtown, Makiki, UH-Manoa, Mo'ili'ili, and Waikiki) there have been plans to  ELIMINATE SERVICE going from UH-Manoa to Waikiki!

I'm going to  testify against those cuts in services

The #4 buses going from Waikiki to UH are MEGA-CROWDED in the mornings! Many of them are exchange students who live in student-oriented apartments in Waikiki!

As for the UH students who live on campus, those students go to Waikiki on Friday and Saturday nights.

And in some of those occassions, the #4 bus gets MEGA-CROWDED.

For example - Halloween! Waikiki is where the action is on Halloween! That's where all the college students want to be on Halloween night!

and I know from experience that the #4 bus gets EXTREMELY CROWDED on Halloween, it's so bad that the #4 bus can't even pick up any extra riders after it leaves University/Metcalf bus stop! And those bus stops after University/Metcalf are FILLED with TONS of people who are ANGRY that they waited so long for a bus, and the bus doesn't stop for them because IT'S CROWDED AS HELL!

Then I briefly mentioned the hardships that the #14 bus service cuts will give to the Arc, a community service organization that assists the developmentally disabled. ( again, check out http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/07/bus-service-cuts-hurt-disabled.html)

Then I was done.

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The City Council gave the average citizen 1 Minute time limit, and they had a timer that goes off after the 1 minute!

I went slighty above 1 minute!

Look, I understand why they give us time limits. Otherwise, one person could just take all day to talk, while everyone will get impatient and not have their turn to talk!

But I think a 1 minute time limit is WAY TOO SHORT!

Other people at the meeting had even more to say than I did, and wanted to bring up some serious concerns (ie. the safety of the long-buses going over the Pali, the hardships many North Shore residents face with longer waits at the bus stop, the increased hitch-hiking going on in the North Shore due to the bus service cuts, etc) and 1 minute is not enough time!

The City Council gave Mr Yoshioka a lot more than 1 minute to talk.

They should start giving the average citizen at least 5 minutes to vent on the issues!


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I sticked around to listen to more testimony after I was done. Then about a 1/2 half later, I just left the meeting since I have other things to do.

But yeah, it was a good experience to testify at the City Council meeting.

If you got the time, give it a shot! It's good to tell the powers how you feel, right where they can hear you!

Part 2 : protecting the wrong people

Yesterday, I mentioned a case from Kentucky when a rape victim was facing punishment for mentioning the names of her rapists online.  Notice that the rapists are being protected in this case.

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/07/protecting-wrong-people.html


Today's post mentions a case from right here in Hawaii.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/newspremium/20120724_Cleared_of_slaying_woman_man_guilty_of_kidnapping_her.html?id=163515956

A jury Monday convicted a 34-year-old man of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, eight months after he was acquitted of murdering her in a separate incident.

The jury had sat through nearly the entire kidnapping trial without being told why ex-girlfriend Royal Kau­kani was unavailable to testify against defendant Toi Nofoa. But at closing arguments Monday jurors were told Kau­kani is dead, and hours later returned the verdict convicting Nofoa.

At the start of the trial, Circuit Judge Randal Lee had ruled that telling jurors that Kaukani is dead would deny Nofoa a fair trial

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Look at what I highlighted in red. The judge did NOT allow the prosecutors to tell the jury that the kidnapping victim was already dead before the trial!

In other words, the Judge wanted the prosecutors to Lie via Omission.

Because telling the truth would (omg.............nooooooooh) mean an unfair trial to the kidnapper Toi Nofoa.

This was NOT the first case that Nofoa was PROTECTED by a judge denying a truth be mentioned in a trial against him.

As mentioned in the quoted paragraphs above, and I'll mention it again here

A jury Monday convicted a 34-year-old man of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, eight months after he was acquitted of murdering her in a separate incident.

So how did Nofoa get convicted of kidnapping but not of murdering the same woman.

Well, the murder trial came first. So why was Nofoa not convicted?

 http://www.staradvertiser.com/newspremium/20111124_Jury_acquits_man_in_Ewa_murder.html?id=134447173

Arrisgado said the prosecution was unable to introduce important evidence during the trial, including numerous assaults upon Kaukani by Nofoa and a statement from her about how Nofoa had threatened her with a black revolver and kidnapped her from her workplace in Haleiwa on Sept. 11, 2008.

Yep, the jury in the murder case were NOT allowed to find out that Nofoa had previous violent offenses against his ex-girlfriend before the murder occurred.


That information could have changed everything! But again, presenting TRUE INFORMATION considered unfair to the defendant!

In other words, Toi Nofoa was PROTECTED by not having the truth mentioned!

Nofoa was protected by not allowing the jurors to even hear "Nofoa was alleged to have done this..."

Notice that Nofoa could have just dared the prosecutors bring up that information so he could have his lawyer prove it wrong! Nofoa DID NOT DO THAT! What he did was WAY WORSE! He got his lawyer to block important information that made him look bad from being mentioned in front of the jury!

If that doesn't sicken you enough, check out this article about the violent actions Nofoa committed against his ex-girlfriend, Royal Kaukani before the murder.

http://archives.starbulletin.com/content/20090319_relationship_bore_many_scars

Nofoa had been out on bail for allegedly kidnapping Kaukani on Sept. 11. According to police, Nofoa had abducted Kaukani at gunpoint from her workplace in Ko Olina. She escaped at a service station in Haleiwa with the help of bystanders.

Nofoa allegedly began threatening and attacking Kaukani again last month.

The affidavit said on Feb. 11 a police officer was called out to the Aiea home of one of Nofoa's relatives to get Nofoa to leave.

After he left, Kaukani told the officer that Nofoa attacked her on Feb. 8 at about 3 a.m., the affidavit said.

Kaukani reported that she had tried to leave the same house, but Nofoa forced her into a bedroom at knifepoint.

Nofoa threw her onto a bed and choked her until she passed out, she said. When she regained consciousness, she noticed blood and a cut on the left side of her head. She reported Nofoa hit her and cut her with the knife.

Police opened cases of kidnapping, second-degree assault and first-degree terroristic threatening.

On Feb. 20 at about 9:45 p.m., Kaukani reported to police that Nofoa had repeatedly called her cell phone and harassed her about not keeping her mouth shut, the affidavit said.

Kaukani told the officer that she had a protective order against Nofoa until Dec. 1, 2028

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Police opened investigations into five protective restraining order violations against Nofoa for five calls that Kaukani answered.

Five days later, police opened more restraining order violations against Nofoa for allegedly calling Kaukani's cell phone and swearing at her. After Kaukani told him to stop, Nofoa called her more than seven times, the report said.

These are the actions of a sick, violent monster! There's NOTHING MINOR ABOUT THIS!

Sure, even a dangerous psycho like Toi Nofoa deserves a fair trial. But a fair trial is supposed to have true information mentioned, even information that could make the defendant look bad!  A fair trial is suppossed to mention if the defendant has a history of violent behavior.

But Nofoa had a trial in which the judges blocked such information from being mentioned to the jury. The judges are complicit in Nofoa's evil in protecting Nofoa from having the truth mentioned about him!

The wrong people are being protected here. Nofoa was being protected when his victim, Royal Kaukani had NO REAL CHANCE OF BEING PROTECTED AT ALL!

Nofoa got off easy. He's probably laughing and  bragging to his friends how he could get off so easily. Of course, that will happen when there's no video-cameras to record that!

Meanwhile, the message is being sent by the judge Randall Lee towards victims of domestic violence. The message being sent is "you dont matter, your pains are minor, we dont care about you, too bad!"

This is no different from Judge Glenn Kim giving an extremely lenient sentence to Matthew Kupa, who attacked (for no good reason) an older, smaller man so bad, that his victim got SEVERE BRAIN DAMAGE! Kupa only got 18 months (not years, months) in jail, and five years of probation.

Learn more at
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-lenient-is-too-lenient.html

Those judges are as evil as the violent bullies they protect! They better hope karma does come to them!

Protecting the wrong people

In a world of sanity, rapists go to jail, not the rape victim.

In a sane world, the rape victim is allowed to tell the world the names of the rapists! After all, if the rapists need to be held accountable to the public.

Unfortunately, this is NOT a world of sanity!

This month, in Kentucky, two rapists will get leniency, yet their victim is facing jail time for mentioning their names.


http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120720/NEWS01/307200106/?nclick_check=1

Frustrated by what she felt was a lenient plea bargain for two teens who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her and circulating pictures of the incident, a Louisville 17-year-old lashed out on Twitter.

“There you go, lock me up,” Savannah Dietrich tweeted, as she named the boys who she said sexually assaulted her. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”

Now, Dietrich is facing a potential jail sentence, as the attorneys for the boys have asked a Jefferson District Court judge to hold her in contempt because they say that in naming her attackers, she violated the confidentiality of a juvenile hearing and the court’s order not to speak of it.

This confidentiality stuff is supposed to protect innocent people, not those who are guilty, (and in this case, the boys already pled guilty)
 
In my industry (the education industry) , I'm not supposed to tell  the public which students have a learning disabiltiy or a health problem.  That is done to protect innocent kids from harm.  This is where confidentiality is supposed to be applied.
 
But those 2 boys have raped a girl. Not only that, they have spread photos of what they have done! They were basically bragging to their social networks what they have done!
 
But now those 2 boys want privacy? Hell NO!
 
Those 2 boys ought to be embarrassed and humiliated! After all, that's what they already did to that girl!
 
Those 2 boys ought to be held as an example of how not to act! That's why they deserved to have their names public. As one online commenter said
 

THE BOYS SHOULD BE MARCHED DOWN MAIN STREET HOLDING A PLACARD ADMITTING WHAT THEY DID.

Too much leniency for the predator is not only a middle finger to the victim ( after all leniency for rapists = telling their victims "you dont matter much"), it is also bad for the predators themselves! After all, remember how the troublemakers in your school acted when they got a lenient consequence? It only encouraged them to cause more trouble! They're like "aah, the authorities are nothing, I'll just do it some more!"

In other words, too help the troube-makers in the long-run, give them a consequence that matters! Give them harsh, humiliating punishment! That way, they'll start thinking "it wasn't worth, it's time for me to grow up already" That mindset WILL ONLY come after feeling the pain from a negative consequence!

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Some will say that naming names will humiliate those falsely accused of crimes.

That doesn't apply in this case. Those 2 boys already plead guilty!

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Also, some online commentators are getting on the victim's case (instead of getting on the rapist's case) because she was drinking alcohol and "she should have known".

Well, she already learned her lesson the hard way, so there's no reason to pile the hate on her!

But more importantly, being an imperfect, naive young person DOES NOT MEAN it's OK to rape her!

We only have a limited amount of outrage within us before we experience "outrage fatigue".

Save the anger towards the rapists! Save the anger at those who hurt instead of help someone who was in a vulnerable position!

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Some online commentators are saying "she should've just followed judge's orders, the law is the law"

SCREW THAT!

The USA  is a great nation because many DEFIED STUPID LAWS!

Remember the Boston Tea Party? Remember the Declaration of Independence? Remember the "underground railroad"? Remember Susan B Anthony? Remember Rosa Parks? Remember Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement?

And outside the USA  ...... Remember Jesus Christ? Remember Gandhi? Remember Nelson Mandela?

Because all those people defied STUPID UNJUST LAWS, the world is a better place!

Of course we should have laws, especially laws against rape, which was what those 2 boys did!

But stupid laws that limit freedoms, encourages discrimination, and discourage those who speak out against injustice......... those laws should NEVER exists and should be countered with Civil Disobedience!

So thank you Savanah Dietrich for doing some civil disobedience!

As for the 2 boys who raped, as soon as I find out their names, I'm posting it on this blog! They should have seen it coming!

The Paranoia over adultery

A few months back, I saw this article by a ultra-conservative writer Kathryn Lopez that is so full of nonsense. I didn't have time to blog on it then, but I did save the article. And now I got time to write on it all.

http://townhall.com/columnists/kathrynlopez/2011/12/09/marriage_deserves_our_respect/page/full/

That article was titled "Marriage Deserves Our Respect".

So.......... that just sounds so nice.......................i mean who wouldn't agree with that?

However, that article has so much idiotic nonsense that I can't let it go unchallenged!

from Lopez's article

Before he left, Nancy and David made rules, in a painfully honest conversation about human frailty. No drinking during the year of separation. Nancy would not "have phone conversations with men, or meaningful email exchanges about politics or any other subject." Nor would she be on Facebook where "the ghosts of boyfriends past" could contact her. When Nancy innocently started emailing with a man associated with a radio show about faith, she told David about it, and he asked her to end the relationship. David knew, with his "stomach clenching," that "the most intimate conversations a person has are about life and faith." And that "spiritual and emotional intimacy frequently leads to physical intimacy."

Ms Lopez thinks those restrictions help make a healthy relationship. These restrictions are NOT conducive to a healthy relationships. These BS restrictions are a conducive to an UNHEALTHY relationship that is a product of control freaks and their paranoia!


Yeah I got a facebook with plenty of females on it. So what? They're mostly former classmates and co-workers! You got a problem with that?

Yeah, I have conversations with female classmates, co-workers, and etc, etc. Some are married or in a relationship! What, I'm supposed  to  avoid communicating with classmates, co-workers, customers, etc just because they're a different gender?  I'm not supposed to say "hi" or even smile when I see them in public?  SCREW THAT!

Just because I'm greeting or talking to them, that doesn't mean I'm bringing them home for some "groupie love". 


more on that from the article

What a difference little cautions make. I know married men who won't have lunch alone with women who are not their wives, who won't close the office door during the most professional of conversations. It's about not just temptation, but appearances. It's a policy with added benefits, too: "It helps to insulate me against a false accusation by a woman," Mark DeMoss, author of "The Little Red Book of Wisdom," has told me.


Is all this overkill? Or perhaps an extreme but justified backlash to a culture whose mores have gone chaotic, a society that could use a little order, and some higher expectations and standards?

Is all this overkill!  DUH TIMES A MILLION!   This is not to greeted with a wimpy "perhaps an extreme but justified backlash to a culture whose mores have gone chaotic"

This nonsense of "you can't have a conversation with someone with the opposite gender besides your spouse" is AN EXCUSE FOR SPOUSE ABUSERS TO BE ABUSIVE!

Some territorial/possessive punk-ass getting all verbally abusive at his/her partner having (gasp) conversations or (gasp) greeting or (gasp) meeting a co-worker/classmate/whatever of the opposite gender........ THIS verbal abuse is NOT A MINOR ISSUE!

It doesn't take long for that verbally abusive punk to go a step further and escalate into physical violence.

So this nonsense that Kathryn Lopez calling all this as "respect for marriage" is actually something that can EASILY escalate into a very violent abusive marriage! 
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This is why some lady who I've met at a library, said she took me off her facebook list because her boyfriend told her to do so! I straight up warned her that her boyfriend is being too controlling and this a warning sign of worse things to come. She said she didn't care if her boyfriend is controlling. She actually said that!

Well, she can't say she wasn't warned if their relationship gets worse, which I have ZERO doubts that it will. A very classic sign that you are with a potential abuser is when he/she wants to cut you off from your friends or family! That's exactly what her boyfriend is doing by regulating her facebook list!

I haven't seen her for a year! Why am I not surprised?

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This also reminds me of a former female co-worker who had an older brother who was PARANOID over her talking to boys that he doesn't know. When she was a high school freshman, her older brother kept getting on her case when she was talking to male classmates while on campus. How dare she talk to classmates who happen to be the other gender?  This has gotten so out of hand that she ended up transferring high schools just to avoid her older over-protective brother.

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Thomas Sowell has some interesting statements on this topic of talking to someone of the opposite gender.

 http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/11/10/the_real_scandal/page/full/

Another woman who has come forward tells of Herman Cain asking her, at some conference, to see if she could locate some woman in the audience who had asked him a question, so that he could take her to dinner. This apparently struck her as suspicious.

This too reminded me of something I knew about personally. Many years ago, I was at a conference where a woman made some very insightful comments, and I took her to lunch to continue the discussion.

It so happens she was a nun. Contrary to cynics, there is more than one reason for a man to take a woman to lunch or dinner.

AMEN to that! Just having a meal and a conversation with the opposite gender doesn't mean it would lead to a night of promiscuous sex.  Sometimes, a conversation is just a conversation, nothing more, even if does involves people of opposite genders.


And people like Kathryn Lopez just need to chill!