Friday, December 16, 7 pm at U-Top-It Restaurant

(located behind Lava Java coffee shop on Alii Drive in the Sunset Plaza)

Come join the most exciting political round table discussion in Kona!

This is an open forum for challenging local and national politics.

All are welcome to join in respectful, honest, engaging conversation and debate.

Bring your thoughts…Bring your opinion…Bring a friend.

If you have an opinion about politics and you need a place to be heard, this is for you.

Cold brew and island style pupus available from the U-Top-It menu. U-Top-It cuisine is made to order and delicious!

By Evan Sayet

at the Heritage Foundation

Lowell Kalapa of The Hawaii Tax Foundation will be speaking in Kona on Friday, Dec. 2nd at 7 pm at the Kona  Vistas Pavilion. 

Mr. Kalapa’s commentary is printed each week in the Maui News, West Hawaii Today, Garden Isle News, and the HawaiiReporter.com.

His topic will be the Impact of Hawaii’s New Tax Hikes, giving an overview of the current tax burden on  Hawaii residents and what the state legislature has done and is doing regarding taxes.  He is expected to comment on the  findings of the Institute for Truth in Accounting’s 50 state study, ranking Hawaii 47^th among states with the worst debt problems.

Admission is free and light refreshments will be served. 

The Kona Vistas Pavilion is located at the intersection  of the Pualani St. and Lako. (mauka of Kuakini Chevron gas station)
The event is sponsored by Grassroots Institute, Smart Business Hawaii  and the Kona Tea Party.

The U.S. is delaying the Keystone XL Pipeline, costing jobs there and in Canada.

America impacts our neighbor to the north. Ezra Levant figures it’s an Obama re-election ploy. Watch the interview here. 

Obama Prefers Saudi Oil  -  A Canadian Perspective by Ezra Levant

Barack Hussein Obama announced America’s new energy policy: He prefers Saudi conflict oil shipped in on tankers over Canadian ethical oil in a pipeline. It’s a bizarre decision for the president of a country with 9% unemployment, that could use the thousands of well-paying jobs that will be created building the state-of-the-art pipeline.

It’s not just jobs and the property taxes that the pipeline will pay in perpetuity. It’s the energy security. There’s no risk of a Gadhafi-style revolution in Canada. There’s no need to spend $1 billion on a Pentagon mission to secure Libyan conflict oil, with friendly Canada to the north.

But in some ways, Obama’s decision isn’t surprising. He has adamantly opposed drilling in northeast Alaska, though his own administration estimates that would provide an additional 800,000 barrels a day, almost as much as America imports from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Obama doesn’t much like drilling in the Gulf of Mexico either — his moratorium there caused many deep-water rigs to move to other countries, costing more than 100,000 lost jobs in states like Louisiana, jobs that won’t come back for years.

Who benefits from Obama’s refusal to use oil from North America? The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will. Those dictatorships are on track for $1 trillion in revenues for the first time in history.

But, as luck and geology would have it, we Canadians are sitting on top of the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves — 175 billion barrels, 99% of it in Canada’s oilsands. And over the past decade, the oilsands managed to push the Saudis out of top spot for the number one source of U.S. oil imports. The Saudis obviously hate the oilsands. So do Hollywood B-list celebrities such as Daryl Hannah and Mark Ruffalo, who have tried to use this issue to change their airhead reputations.

Obama values the Saudis’ approval  and Hollywood’s political donations more than he values American energy security.

Canada will still have enough pipeline capacity to sell all our oil to the U.S. for the next few years, even without Keystone XL. But it’s simply prudent for Canada to consider what might happen if Obama does eke out another win next year. The biggest market for oil these days isn’t America. It’s Asia. It’s China, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. There is a proposal, called the Northern Gateway, to pipe oil to the B.C. coast and ship it to Asia — 550,000 barrels a day. That would put $20 billion a year in our pockets and could cut our trade deficit to China in half. It would be a strategic blunder for Canada not to speed up the approval of this pipeline.

But there’s another idea too. Did you know that Eastern Canada actually imports most of its oil? We sell our oilsands oil to the U.S., but Eastern Canada burns Saudi oil. Russian oil. Algerian oil. We’re an oil exporter, but we also import OPEC oil. Let’s fix that. Let’s look at pipelines running from the west to the east. Not built by any government fiat — we don’t need another National Energy Program telling us what to do. But let’s at least permit it.

There is an MP who proposes doing just that. She’s not a conservative. But maybe you’ve heard of her: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

- Read original source for above commentary here.

If you like to engage in lively discussion of current political events over a cold brew, come join us!

The third Kona Beer Party round-table for Kona citizens will be November 11th from 7:00 – 9:00 pm at U-Top-It restaurant at Ali’i Sunset Plaza, behind Lava Java.

Build relationships and express yourself. No matter education level,  income level, political affiliation, race, color or creed…ALL are welcome. Hear and be heard. 

Prime the pump!! Click here to listen to Peter Kay’s podcast of 5/10/11. 

$3 beer special and island style pupus will be available for purchase. 

 (click here to read study.)

Join us October 10, to Hear the Truth about our National and State Debt.

Sheila Weinberg, of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, gives a chilling visualization of total National and Hawaii debt.  Join Us!!
 

   Topics Include: 

• Accumulating Federal and Hawaii State Debt
• The Truth about Balanced budgets
• Impact of Aging Baby-Boomers
• Deficient Govt. Accounting Principles masking fiscal challenges
• Politician’s lack of will to solve these dire financial issues
• Your Questions and Answers 

Sheila Weinberg, CPA, is founder and CEO of the Institute for Truth in Accounting (http://www.truthinaccounting.org/), a non-partisan advocate of comprehensive, comprehensible and transparent government financial reports.

Weinberg works closely with members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, members of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB), Department of Treasury personnel, and accounting advocacy group leaders.

She has testified before the FASAB and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board on government accountability issues.

Weinberg’s writings include:

• “The Truth about Balanced Budgets:  A Fifty State Study”, which the Institute recently published naming Hawaii as the 47^th worst state financially.
• “Fuzzy Math: Fuzzy Decisions: Truth and Transparency in Federal Decision Making,”
• “Where Has All the Money Gone? A Guide to Truth in Federal Government Accounting.”

Weinberg serves as:

• A legislative advisor to members of Congress on Federal budgeting and accounting issues
• A member of the Academy of Government Accountability Advisory Council
• A member of two Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board’s Task Forces.

Her editorials have appeared in USA Today, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.

For an introduction and overview, we invite you to listen to a KHVH interview with Weinberg at:

Sponsored by:

The  Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, http://grassrootinstitute.org/

Small  Business Hawaii, http://www.smallbusinesshawaii.com/ 

and the Kona Tea Party   

“We have the opportunity – within our lifetime – to actually craft a proper role for government in our nation that will allow us to come closer than any Americans have ever come to our collective vision of a nation where both prosperity and compassion exist side-by-side.”