Stating Facts is NOT slander

Some people think that mentioning embarrassing facts is slander and defamation of character!

But what is slander?


(from dictionary.com)

noun

1. defamation; calumny:rumors full of slander.
2. a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report:a slander against his good name.
3. Law. defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc.

Notice that the word false is in bold! 

False is one of the required criteria to be slander!


What is defamation?

(from dictionary.com)

noun

1. the act of defaming; false or unjustified injury of the good reputation of another, as by slander or libel;calumny:She sued the magazine for defamation of character.

Again, I put false in bold!


Mentioning embarrassing facts doesn't count! 



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I use my blogs to defend myself and my honor!

Doing so isn't cyberbullying, it is Cyber-Standing-Up-to-Bullying! 



A lot of times, if you don't stand up for yourself, then nobody else will!

Since beating up your enemies can send you to jail, I just go on my blogs and expose the wrongdoings committed by others!

Silence is not an option! Silence can be interpreted as "approval" or "no worries, it wasn't that bad".

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After all, if I did something wrong, I have to own, regardless of how embarrassing it is!

But exposing wrongdoers isn't wrong, and standing up to bullying is NOT cyberbullying! 

Stop Drafting People for Jury Duty

In the USA, we haven't had a military draft since the 1970s.

But people in the USA still are being drafted.

They are still being drafted into Jury Duty.

Granted, being on a jury isn't the same as being sent into military combat where you risk getting your limbs blown off!

But there is something sketchy about forcing people to be in a position to  make life-altering decisions for someone else, and not only that, in high-profile cases, be forced in a position of being isolated for weeks and facing possible death threats due to an unpopular decision based only on the information the lawyers weren't able to get blocked from being exposed in trial.

Here's an article from the 1st Bill Cosby rape trial that ended with a Hung Jury.  (Cosby has since been convicted and is awaiting sentencing) 

Thomas MacMillan, “How the Psychological Toll of Isolation Might Be Affecting Bill Cosby Jurors,” The Cut, June 15, 2017, 

https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/sequestered-jury-psychological-toll-cosby-trial.html

A court will sometimes rent out an entire hotel floor to prevent jurors even from encountering other hotel guests. It can start to feel like a prison, said Thaddeus Hoffmeister, a law professor at the University of Dayton, who studies juries.

“When is the last time you’ve been locked into a room for a day to work on a single problem and not allowed to leave?” said Andrew Ferguson a law professor and author of Why Jury Duty Matters. “We’re just not used to that.”

Experts say that psychological effects of sequestration can often take a toll on deliberations, which can quickly get contentious, and jurors don’t get to go home at night and take a break from the day’s arguments. “You’re with these people all the time and some of them you might be disagreeing with and yet you’re seeing them for meals and there’s no escape,” said Nancy Marder, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Michael Knox, a juror who was removed from the Simpson trial, alluded to these difficulties when he told reporters that “personality conflicts” on the jury had come up. “The only problems the jury is having is problems any of us would have if they put us all in this house and sequestered us for any length of time,” he said.

The pressure of sequestration can mean that jurors sometimes get aggressive, putting heightened pressure on holdouts when a majority has settled on a verdict, said Richard Klein, a law professor at Touro College. Yolanda Crawford, a juror on the O.J. Simpson trial, told the New YorkTimes that the monotony of sequestration may have led to speedy verdict in that case: “I think everybody was eager to come to a conclusion.”

Another danger is that sequestration leads to a kind of “groupthink” where jurors stop thinking for themselves because they’ve spent so much time together, said Hoffmeister. Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the Simpson trial, warned against this dynamic after the not-guilty verdict in the Casey Anthony trial, in which jurors were sequestered for more than two months.

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People tend to assume that trials are about the morality of the situation.  

But actually, trials are about technicalities already determined by the restrictions by the law as it was written as well as the judge's orders.

Jurors are many times morally conflicted about allowing truly awful people go unpunished because the law forces jurors to focus on technicalities of the law instead of the morality of the whole situation.

An example would be the George Zimmerman trial. That was the trial in which amateur security guy George Zimmerman was acquited of murder and manslaughter charges related to the death of Trayvon Martin.  Many activists felt that the acquittal meant the jurors approved of racial profiling and anti-black hate crimes. However, the jurors weren't allowed to take into account the morality of George Zimmerman's action in the pursuit of Trayvon Martin. 

In this article, a juror described the pressure to focus on the technicalities instead of the morality of Zimmerman's situation.

Amy Zimmerman, “The George Zimmerman Juror Haunted by Trayvon Martin’s Death,” The Daily Beast, July 24, 2017,

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-george-zimmerman-juror-haunted-by-trayvon-martins-death?source=facebook&via=desktop.

Four years later, Maddy is still horrified by the tragedy of Martin’s death, but maintains that she had no choice but to adhere to the law as she understood it. It’s a point that comes up time and time again in The Jury Speaks—the painful chasm between a personal urge to administer justice, and a citizen’s responsibility to go by the letter of the law.

As Maddy tells The Daily Beast, “They give you this paper, and the five women were explaining it to me, saying, ‘This is the way it has to go’—you can’t look at the situation from where George Zimmerman was calling 911 and was chasing him or, you know, hovering over him—that’s not necessarily intent to hurt anybody. You have to look at it when Trayvon Martin was on top of him. Did he feel like his life was in danger? So you look at the rules they gave you, and you’re stuck in a box. You have no choice…it’s not emotional, it’s not what we want.” In other words, “The decision is made before we even get there.”

The same juror then mentioned that she recently moved to Florida before the trial began, so she was unaware of the case before being drafted on the jury

What Maddy and her fellow jurors did have in common was a shared ignorance of the Trayvon Martin shooting—before the trial, they were ostensibly unfamiliar with the details of the case, as well as the larger cultural significance of the shooting. Maddy explains that her lack of prior knowledge was equal parts preference and practicality. She was living in Chicago at the time, and “I never watched the news, because in Chicago, all you see in the news is the same things: gangs, shootouts, another person passing away. After a while the news got repetitive. Being a mom and working over 40 or 50 hours a week, I used to just come home, go to sleep, wake up, take care of my kids, and then get ready to go to work again.”

After months of forced isolation (that's what sequestered means), the same juror was totally unprepared for knowing how public the issue of George Zimmerman has become, and how much information was hidden from her during the trial.

Once Maddy and her fellow jurors, along with George Zimmerman, were free to go, Maddy began to experience a new kind of pain. “When I came out of deliberations, they put us in the car, and then I saw the helicopters,” Maddy recalls. “I’m coming home, and I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ And they explained it to me, they gave me a big red folder, and in the folder there were a bunch of different news channels that wanted to speak with me, and I was like, ‘About what?’ In my mind, I’m thinking that when you go to court, it’s private, not knowing that half of the people at that trial were news people.” She continues, “When I came out, when I got home, and I started watching the TV, I started panicking. I had no idea it was more about black and white, about racism…I realized how big it was.” In the months and years after the trial, Maddy “went through it all”— “losing my home, work, friends and some family.” She was harassed, threatened, and treated “like I was a contributor to Zimmerman killing.”

“These tough words were very hard to handle,” Maddy says. “Again, I had no knowledge of how big the trial would be…we’re victims of the society that brings us into this situation. For three years of my life I had to feel like I’m carrying a child on my back.”

Forcing people to be on a jury in cases like this is psychological torture! 

Forcing people to be on a jury in cases like this is a severe abuse of power by the government.

Telling people "you better come to judge someone's situation or else we will send armed government agents to physically drag you into jail" is exactly what jury duty is.

Why do we defend this?

Why can't we have professional jurors?

Why can't we have a "jury reserves" just like we have a military reserves, where people can voluntarily join in and wait to be called into service?

Why can't we have a system where people are being judged by people WHO WANT to have that responsibility?

Why can't we have a system where people are being judged by people WHO HAVE FULL UNDERSTANDING of the legal issues.

Some say "we need a jury of our peers". I want a jury of people who are morally and intellectually qualified, not people who are coerced into judging a situation they don't understand.

Look I get that some people want a "jury of our peers" so that a nonwhite defendant could at least have some people of his/her ethnicity judging his/her case instead of worrying about being convicted by an all-white jury. But we could still recruit nonwhite jurors willing to listen to cases with nonwhite defendants, instead of forcing people to judge a situation they don't want to get involved in.  

I get that in some cases, having some females in the jury might be beneficial in sexual harassment & sexual abuse cases, being that female  victims might worry that male jurors might underestimate the psychological vulnerabilities women experience as well as over-sympathize with the male defendant.  But we could still recruit female jurors willing to listen to cases involving sexual harassment/abuse cases, instead of forcing people to judge a situation they don't want to get involved in.  

We should also have a screening system so that we don't have people joining juries for the purpose of automatically convicting any nonwhite defendant or automatically acquiting frat boy date rapists. We have to have a checks & balances.

If the worry is "if we don't draft jurors, we will have a shortage, and trials will take forever to begin", then start paying Jurors more than chump change! 

[note: Hawaii only pays $30 per day for jury duty. That's less than minimum wage] 

If you want people to be willing to be in judgment in other people's lives, you have to make it at least something that can sustain a middle-class lifestyle!  

Or make it an upper-middle-class wage that can afford private security and well-guarded residences if you're going to recruit someone willing to make decisions on high publicity cases!

If that means the government has to spend a little more on our judicial system, then so be it! 

But we have to stop forcing people to judge other people's lives.

2018 Hawaii Primary Elections

Last Saturday (8/11/2018) was the Primary Election Day for Hawaii.

Being that Hawaii is an overwhelmingly Democrat state, that was where most of the campaign action was.

Those who earned the spot for the Democratic nomination are the likely winners for the General Elections.

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Hawaii Governor 

4 years ago,  an obscure state senator David Ige pulled an upset over the incumbent governor Neil Abercrombie for the Democrat nominee for governor. Obviously, Ige went on to win the General Election.

Now, it was Ige in the hot seat.

Ige isn't the most charismatic politician out there and has usually been slow to communicate with the public when it comes to almost everything. Ige was a big fan of the "Quiet & Effective" mold of leadership personified by former governor George Ariyoshi. However, Ariyoshi was a governor before the era of the 24-hour news cycle and social media. Nowadays, people want instant answers from their elected officials.

This came to a boiling point in January when a false missile alert came ringing on many people's smartphones on one Saturday morning. It took 38 minutes between the false missile alert and the notice that the missile alert was false.

Meanwhile, Governor Ige forgot his Twitter password.

That didn't inspire confidence from a public that wants instant answers! 

Colleen Hanabusa saw opportunity. She noticed many people were dissatisfied with Ige, and viewed it as a perfect time to run for governor.

She ran many attack ads calling David Ige an incompetent leader.

However, nature gave David Ige second and third chances to prove that he is leadership material.

The flood hit Kauai and the volcanic eruptions displaced many people in the Puna district on the Big Island.

Emergency operations mostly went smoothly and there weren't that many complaints. David Ige was communicating more with the public, giving them the confidence that he is up to the task.

Meanwhile, Hanabusa continued with the attack ads questioning Ige's competence as a leader.

Ige then had a TV ad that started with the statement "criticism isn't leadership".

Hanabusa's female allies had a press conference calling that ad "sexist" and accused it of perpetuating sexist double standards associated with female leaders.

But nearly nobody fell for that abuse of the gender card.

watch this TV ad and tell me if you think it's sexist

https://vimeo.com/278753570

Anyone who watched that ad would be hard pressed to find real sexism there!

Nobody believes David Ige is any type of sexist.

Plus, his wife was a longtime school administrator, so much for the idea that Ige looks down on female leaders.

So, therefore, the results are in, David Ige won this round

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On the Republican side, there was perennial candidate John Carroll, whose name appears on a ballot every election but hasn't won an office in decades.

Meanwhile, state legislator Andria Tupola brought new energy to the Republican side of the campaign.

She is a conservative Christian, but she wants a more lenient immigration policy. That ticked off  Eric Ryan (a vocal supporter of Jon Carroll) who made many memes mocking Tupola as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Ryan was later accused of cyber-bullying Tupola, and he was served with a restraining order.  

Tupola won the Republican nomination and will face David Ige in the General Election

Lieutenant Governor

Being that current Lt Gov Doug Chin was running for US House (more on this later in this blog post), it was an opportunity for other politicians to climb the ladder.

They included

• Jill Tokuda (state legislator known to be relatively fiscal conservative and a critic of the rail project)
• Josh Green (state legislator and emergency room doctor)
• Will Espero (state legislator known for demanding accountability from law enforcement)
• Bernard Cravalho (Kauai mayor and former UH football player)
• Kim Coco Iwamoto (former Board of Education member)

 Tokuda and Green were the front-runners. Green just overwhelmed the airwaves with ads focusing more on his supporters than on himself.  That was a winning strategy.

Will Espero's campaign probably didn't have enough money, which is too bad, because I loved it when he demanded higher accountability standards for local law enforcement and he was brave enough to publicly criticize the police officer's union leadership, as well as the former Honolulu police chief who is currently under investigation. 

Congress

Mazie Hirono went unopposed for her party's nomination for US Senate.

Meanwhile, most of the action was for US House District 1.

Colleen Hanabusa left that seat to run for governor. So now it was time for other local politicians to get their chance to represent Hawaii in Congress.

The early announcers for the seat included

•  Donna Mercado Kim (longtime legislator)
•  Kaniela Ing (young progressive legislator)
• Beth Fukumoto (who recently left the Republican Party)
• Ernie Martin (city councilman)
• Doug Chin (former Attorney General turned Lieutenant Governor)

Donna Mercado Kim was a very vocal long-time legislator so she had the early lead in the opinion polls.

Doug Chin and Beth Fukumoto were basically "Johnny Come Lately's" whose main claim to fame was their public criticisms of Donald Trump.

Beth Fukumoto basically left the Republican Party because the rest of the party was angry over her public criticisms of Donald Trump.

Doug Chin was mostly unknown to the general public until he led the state's lawsuit against Trump's immigration restrictions against people from 7 Muslim-majority countries. It was a shocker that Hawaii would take the lead on this issue because even though Hawaii is known for its diversity, not many Muslim immigrants come here. But Doug Chin wasn't afraid to defend a persecuted minority regardless of how few of them are here.  This made him a national hero for many anti-Trump people.

Kaniela Ing is a young progressive leader who felt the other nominees weren't progressive enough. He felt being anti-Trump wasn't enough, that  the mainstream Democrats were neglecting the lower-income residents, and noted that his opponents were against same-sex marriage until very recently, and therefore, insufficiently progressive.

Kaniela Ing was also the rare brave soul to publicly note that the deceased senator Dan Inouye was a sex offender. 

[I blogged about that issue at

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2018/03/dan-inouye-was-rapist.html

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2018/02/comments-on-metoo-al-franken-and-dan.html 

Ernie Martin had little name recognition and only gained publicity when criticizing Kaniela Ing for his criticisms of Dan Inouye.

But there was one more person to join the race.

On the final day to officially file with the Elections Office, Ed Case joined in.

Ed Case was a former legislator and Congressman who hasn't held elected office for a decade.

But he had name recognition! 

His presence basically sucked the oxygen from Donna Mercado Kim's lead!  Like Kim, Case had strong credibility as a longtime leader. But he also had a less polarizing personality.

Ed Case was a long-known for being a relatively fiscal conservative compared to most Democrats.

When word got out that Ed Case was the new leader in the polls, California-based Cenk Uygur (of the Young Turks Network) acted so shocked that a progressive state like Hawaii would support Ed Case.

see Cenk Uygur's commentary here

https://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks/videos/10155849852459205/

Uygur (like many from the continental US) misunderstand Hawaii and Ed Case.

Here are my comments that I posted in regards to Cenk Uygur's analysis

Kaniela Ing was the rare brave soul who publicly called Dan Inouye (dead late senator considered a demigod here) an alleged rapist, and he got backlash for that! All for believing a rape victim who went public DECADES ago when Dan Inouye was still alive! But too many "progressives" (including our ENTIRE Congressional delegation) view Dan Inouye as a saint should never be questioned!

Because Kaniela Ing publicly questioned a "demigod", that put a target on his back by political operatives who later found out that Ing committed some campaign spending violations. That right there slowed his momentum

Ed Case got into the race last minute (as in he only made the announcement right before the filing deadline). He is definitely a fiscal conservative, but he has long been pro-choice, anti-gun and even pro-LGBT decades before that was even considered cool. Yes, even in the late 90s (when the allegedly "progressive" population of Hawaii voted AGAINST same-sex marriage), Ed Case supported same-sex marriage. So that issue alone would've made him an outcast in the Republican Party!

Another thing that's not mentioned in this video is that Ed Case was the ONLY major politician in Hawaii to question the Jones Act, the shipping law that severely farms US occupied islands like Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. that law restricted our access to international law and made imports even more expensive than they already are. The Jones Act have long been supported by local politicians paid off by big shipping companies and the ILWU. The allegedly "progressive" Kaniela Ing side with the protectionist shipping lobby.

Being that Jones Act is the biggest economic threat to Hawaii (and all US occupied islands), I'd have to go with Ed Case, regardless of what "progressives" from a thousand miles away have said!

Also, the so-called "progressive/conservative" divide is a social construct imported by Westerners! They don't always easily match how local people in Hawaii think.
People do tend to vote Democrat here basically because 1) we have a majority non-white population and therefore have an instant gag-reflex towards Trump's xenophobic attitude, 2) many of our workers are unionized, 3) our sexual mores tend to be more lenient for heterosexuals, making many of us supportive of legalized abortion BEFORE Roe vs Wade
However, that doesn't erase the fact that much of Hawaii's population had a gag-reflex towards homosexuality until very very recently. In fact, many so-called "progressives" in our legislator BEGGED former governor Neil Abercrombie to not call for a special legislative session to resolve the same-sex marriage controversy after a court ruling in 2013. Those legislators were crapping in their pants fearing that their constituents would retaliate against them. But then same-sex marriage passed the legislature and people finally realized the world didn't end!

Also, in the 90's, Japan (our major source of tourist & investor income) economy plummeted, bringing less revenue to our tax collectors. In that climate, fiscal conservatives starting to rise in our political scene, making room for Ed Case and moderate Republicans (meaning they're not as insane as Jesse Helms or Donald Trump) like Linda Lingle, Charles Djou and Beth Fukumoto to win elections in the 2000's. So it doesn't surprise me AT ALL that Ed Case will win in our political climate! 

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Yes, I noted Kaniela Ing had some campaign spending violations. When that was publicly revealed, THAT knocked his campaign's momentum down big time.  People expected better from someone who goes around talking about how progressive he is. People also expected better from someone who is already a legislator, they would've been more lenient if this was someone running his first campaign. 

Also, his defense of the Jones Act was a major turn-off. 

I've actually met Ed Case in the summer, a few days after he criticized the Jones Act during a debate. I personally thanked him for that, though he did admit he hasn't talked much on the issue compared to during his previous campaigns.

Now that Ed Case has won, he can at least try to do something about the Jones Act.  He needs to be ready to pounce anytime Jones Act is in the news and hold hearings on the issue.

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As for US House District 2, Tulsi Gabbard kept her seat.

Only a few years ago, Tulsi Gabbard publicly spoke for the need for more debates between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

But Tulsi Gabbard refused to debate her opponents this time around. In other words, she didn't want to publicly defend her record from aggressive questioning. 

Tulsi's claim to fame was defeating an established politician Mufi Hanneman back in 2012. If Tusli keeps ducking debates in future campaigns, she might be the next established politicians to go down to the next underdog politician.