Posted on 06/05/2006 6:56:45 PM PDT by AndrewWalden
Sen. Akaka’s plan to beat Jack Abramoff at his own game by Andrew Walden, Editor, Hawaii Free Press, Hilo, Hawaii
The Akaka Bill is back, scheduled for debate on the floor of the US Senate any day now. Bill sponsor, Senator Daniel Akaka says, “This is about establishing parity for Hawaii’s indigenous peoples in federal policies.” Native Hawaiians may want to consider whether “parity” with American Indians is desirable. Are Native Hawaiians to be “privileged” --or held back-- by the Akaka Bill? Indian reservations are not exactly a great model of success—they are often characterized by poverty and corruption, often with dictatorial rule by entrenched tribal power elites and little possibility of appeal to outside oversight.
Some say that corruption is precisely why Hawaii’s political elite are almost unanimously lined up behind the Akaka Bill. Anti-Akaka activist Ken Conklin, calls the bill “racist” and argues: “The (Akaka) bill would allow a few thousand people….(t)he fat-cats who run the big Hawaiian institutions, plus their employees and institutionalized dependents….to create a “tribe” and get federal recognition as speaking on behalf of all 401,000 Hawaiians.”
The Akaka Bill does not aim to resolve the numerous practical issues facing a new Hawaiian government. Instead it establishes an electoral framework by which these issues can be decided by native Hawaiians in negotiation with the federal and state government. Only those who register with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ (OHA) “Kau Inoa” signup program will be eligible to participate. According to OHA, only 42,000 have registered with Kau Inoa as of December, 2005. This is only 10.5% of all Native Hawaiians. If the Akaka Bill passes, the Kau Inoa signers would be the electorate which determines the fate of the 401,000.
Efforts to pass the Akaka Bill will be hampered by the negative recommendation of the US Civil Rights Commission which voted 5-2 against Senate passage of “the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005, or any other legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege.”
Recent polling of over 20,000 Hawaii citizens –about 8% of the Hawaii electorate-- by the Grassroot institute of Hawaii shows that 67% oppose the Akaka Bill. Among native Hawaiians 41% oppose the Akaka Bill. A similar Grassroot Institute polling effort during last year’s Senate Committee debate on the Akaka Bill showed 66.8% opposition to passage of the Akaka Bill with 47.5% of native Hawaiians opposed.
Since politicians chase votes, and the Akaka Bill seems to be unpopular with voters, why is there nearly unanimous support for the Akaka Bill for Hawai`i’s political class? Why would “fat cats” want a tribal government for Hawaiians?
Contrary to popular opinion, Indian reservations have a history in Hawaii. An Oct. 12, 1999, article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin describes the efforts of Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate (KSBE) trustees in 1995 to evade oversight of the corrupt doings which were soon to be exposed as the “Broken Trust” scandal. The Trustees’ self-serving investments caused losses of $264,090,257 in 1994 alone. To avoid scrutiny, they considered moving KSBE corporate headquarters out of Hawaii to the windswept plains of the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian reservation in South Dakota.
“In an apparent attempt to circumvent state and federal oversight, the Bishop Estate paid Washington D.C.-based (law firm) Verner Liipfert Bernhard McPherson and Hand more than $200,000 to look into moving the estate’s legal domicile, or corporate address, to the mainland, sources said.
“Verner Liipfert, whose local office is headed by former Gov. John Waihee, identified the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation as the top relocation prospect after reviewing the legislative, tax and judicial environments of 48 mainland states and Alaska.
“The study was part of a broader effort by the former board members to lobby against federal legislation limiting trustee compensation and to convert the tax-exempt Bishop Estate to a for-profit corporation.” The KSBE trustees’ efforts are also described in “The Cheating of America” by Charles Lewis and Bill Allison of The Center for Public Integrity. They quote former Hawaii Attorney General Margery Bronster explaining KSBE’s actions: “Their main motivation was to avoid oversight from the State Attorney General and the IRS.”
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin further points out:
“Gregg Bourland, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribal council … said there is good reason for an entity like the Bishop Estate to make inquiries about changing its domicile to the South Dakota reservation ...
“Since the 1800s, the Cheyenne River Sioux have had a government-to-government relationship with the United States which allows them to operate their own police force, court system and legislative functions.
“Such a system may shield the trust from Hawaii Probate Court jurisdiction, although Bourland was unsure if the IRS would continue to oversee the trust.”
Such a move would have also shielded Bishop Estate from the investigations that state Attorney General Margery Bronster was forced to launch as “Broken Trust” revelations emerged in the press. According to Lewis and Allison the activities Bishop Estate trustees were attempting to shield included: • Giving themselves significant pay raises, even while programs at the school were being cut; • Investing in questionable ventures recommended by a trustee’s personal acquaintances, including an Internet directory of would-be-adult-film actors and casting agents; • Frequenting adult entertainment clubs and casinos using money from the charitable trust’s coffers, reportedly inviting state legislators on such trips; and • Lobbying Congress to defeat or alter legislation designed to give the IRS more authority to penalize their multi-million dollar compensation packages. Lokelani Lindsey, the last of the five “Broken Trust” Bishop Estate trustees, was forced to resign Dec. 16, 1999. A few months later, in 2000, the first version of the Akaka Bill was introduced by Sen. Daniel Akaka. This is not just coincidence.
The recently released book, “Broken Trust” by Samuel King and Randall Roth is currently a Hawaii best seller.
In a separate scandal known as “Pay to Play”, over 100 Hawaii Democrat politicians have been charged, convicted and sentenced for campaign spending violations and other illegal political schemes since 1997.
Many of the individuals involved in both scandals remain active in Hawaii businesses. They form a cadre of corrupt opportunity seekers. A tribal government can be a conduit for billions of dollars in federal pork-barrel spending—with limited state and federal oversight.
The Hawaii State Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is preparing to become the “tribal governing entity” in a post-Akaka Hawai`i. A sharply worded April, 2005 report, issued by State Auditor Marion M. Higa, states that, “OHA’s casual administration of its finances does not demonstrate respect for its fiduciary duty to all Hawaiians. Certain…trustee expenditures appear questionable….” After 25 years of operation, the Audit says, “OHA continues to operate like a fledgling agency.”
If this is how OHA operates while under State control, how would it operate when independent?
The title of a recent speech by Senator Akaka is, “Hawaiians Deserve Recognition from Federal Government.” One may ask: What crime did Hawaiians commit to ‘deserve’ being condemned to live under the thumb of corrupt tribal politicians and their cronies?
It sure wouldn't break my heart if the United States just cut Hawaii lose completely. They can be a Japanese colony or something. I think almost all Americans have already seen Hawaii and those that haven't, can knock it out in a couple days.
I think Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Utah et al should secede and become a conservative-libertarian preserve
Akaka Bill = backdoor attempt to open gambling casinos in Hawaii so "hawaiians" (even if you have 1/16 hawaiian blood you qualify) can get even more welfare and a big fat cut of it to democrat political funds.
Kill this bill once and for all!
He's going to do what to Jack Abram?
sorry I couldn't resist the temptation. (:^D)
E Pluribus Unum?
Not in Hawaii.
BY SLADE GORTON AND HANK BROWN
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation's most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter.
The Akaka Bill classifies citizens by race, defying the express provisions of the 14th Amendment. It also rests on a betrayal of express commitments made by its sponsors a decade ago, and asserts as true many false statements about the history of Hawaii. It should be defeated.
The Akaka Bill's justification rests substantially on a 1993 Apology Resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton when we were members of the Senate representing the states of Washington and Colorado. (We voted against it.) The resolution is cited by the Akaka Bill in three places to establish the proposition that the U.S. perpetrated legal or moral wrongs against Native Hawaiians that justify the race-based government the legislation would erect. These citations are a betrayal of the word given to us--and to the Senate--in the debate over the Apology Resolution.
We specifically inquired of its proponents whether the apology would be employed to seek "special status under which persons of Native Hawaiian descent will be given rights or privileges or reparations or land or money communally that are unavailable to other citizens of Hawaii." We were promised on the floor of the Senate by Daniel Inouye, the senior senator from Hawaii and a personage of impeccable integrity, that "as to the matter of the status of Native Hawaiians . . . this resolution has nothing to do with that. . . . I can assure my colleague of that." The Akaka Bill repudiates that promise of Sen. Inouye. It invokes the Apology Resolution to justify granting persons of Native Hawaiian descent--even in minuscule proportion--political and economic rights and land denied to other citizens of Hawaii. We were unambiguously told that would not be done.
The Apology Resolution distorted historical truths. It falsely claimed that the U.S. participated in the wrongful overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in 1893. The U.S. remained strictly neutral. It provided neither arms, nor economic assistance, nor diplomatic support to a band of Hawaiian insurgents, who prevailed without firing a single shot, largely because neither the Native Hawaiian numerical majority nor the queen's own government resisted the end of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The queen authored her own ouster by planning a coup against the Hawaii Constitution to recapture monarchical powers that had been lost in a strong democratic current. She later confided to Sen. George Hoar that annexation to the U.S. was the best thing that could have happened to Native Hawaiians.
The resolution falsely asserted that the Kingdom of Hawaii featured a Native Hawaiian government exclusively for Native Hawaiians prior to the 1893 events. In fact, the kingdom was a splendid fusion of both native and nonnative elements in both government and society. The definitive historian of the kingdom, R.S. Kuykendall, elaborated: "The policy being followed looked to the creation of an Hawaiian state by the fusion of native and foreign ideas and the union of native and foreign personnel, bringing into being an Hawaiian body politic in which all elements, both Polynesian and haole, should work together for the common good under the mild and enlightened rule of an Hawaiian king."
The apology falsely declared that Native Hawaiians enjoyed inherent sovereignty over Hawaii to the exclusion of non-Native Hawaiians. To the extent sovereignty existed outside the monarch, it reposed equally with all Hawaiians irrespective of ancestry. The apology falsely maintained that Native Hawaiians never by plebiscite relinquished sovereignty to the U.S. In 1959, Native Hawaiians voted by at least a 2-to-1 margin for statehood in a plebiscite. Finally, the Apology Resolution and its misbegotten offspring, the Akaka Bill, betray this nation's sacred motto: E pluribus unum. They would begin a process of splintering sovereignties in the U.S. for every racial, ethnic or religious group traumatized by an identity crisis. Movement is already afoot among a few Hispanic Americans to carve out race-based sovereignty from eight western states because the U.S. "wrongfully" defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American war.
The U.S. Constitution scrupulously protects the liberties and freedom of Native Hawaiians. It always will. Native Hawaiians have never been treated as less than equal by the U.S. Their economic success matches that of non-Native Hawaiians. Intermarriage is the norm. Sen. Inouye himself boasted in 1994 that Hawaii was "one of the greatest examples of a multiethnic society living in relative peace." In other words, e pluribus unum is a formula that works. We should not destroy it.
Messrs. Gorton and Brown are former senators for Washington and Colorado, respectively.
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