IOLANI - The Royal Hawk: Supreme Court of the State case. and Know that they do Not Have Jurisdiction and are NOT the Court of Original Jurisdiction - Also Larry Sinkin is NOT the King

Amelia Gora

10:44 AM (1 minute ago)

sinkin is not a king; however, he sent this message which shows how the case affecting the State, Mauna Kea and how they're treating the "ceded lands".

fyi.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Lanny Sinkin <lanny.sinkin@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 10:51 AM
Subject: The King's Letter to His People and recent developments
To: Lanny Sinkin <lanny.sinkin@gmail.com>

To: Interested Parties

From: Lanny Sinkin, Ali’i Mana’o Nui, Kingdom of Hawai'i

The upheavals we are witnessing in the natural world and in Human civilization herald the time of the great awakening.

— AMN

1. In response to recent developments, the King issued the attached letter.

2. When the Kingdom was overthrown, the United States seized the Kingdom Crown and Government lands and later turned those lands over to the State of Hawai’i. The Admissions Act placed those lands in a public trust with the State having the fiduciary duty to protect and preserve those lands.

The State leased thousands of acres of these trust lands to the United States Military for $1 per year. The State had responsibility as trustee to ensure the military did not spoil the lands.

For years, the military has used these lands for training purposes, including live fire, bombing, etc. The military has also been very cavalier about their lease obligations to clean up after themselves.

Yesterday, the Hawai’i Supreme Court ruled that the State has allowed the United States Military to use trust lands essentially without any oversight by the State and without the State responding when the military littered the lands with unexploded ordinance and trash. Just one more piece of the unchecked exploitation since the United States overthrow of the Kingdom government. Perhaps the clean up will now begin. And perhaps the lease to the military will not be renewed.

One of my favorite parts of the ruling is the following:

"The State’s duties with respect to the leased PTA land are derived in part from the properties’ status as “ceded land”--which are lands that were held by the civil government or the monarchy of the Hawaiian Kingdom at the time of the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. See Pele Def. Fund, 73 Haw. at 585, 837 P.2d at 1254. When the United States annexed Hawai‘i by a joint resolution of Congress in 1898, real property that had been classified as government lands or crown lands was ceded to the federal government. Id. Recognizing their special character, the Joint Resolution of Annexation exempted these lands from the general laws of the United States that governed federal land."  Page 73. 

Just pause for a second and consider the part in bold.  The Hawai’i Supreme Court acknowledges that the “annexation” of the Kingdom took place through a "joint resolution" of the United States Congress.  Not through a treaty of annexation or any other agreement that included the Kingdom. A unilateral act of the United States Congress somehow dissolved a foreign country’s government and seized the foreign country’s lands.  Imagine the Hawaiian Legislature today passing a resolution annexing France to become part of the State of Hawai’i.  What happened to the Kingdom is no less ridiculous and legally ineffective.

As far as the “special character” of the Kingdom lands, the most accurate description of that special character is “stolen.”

3. The lands where the telescope wants to construct are also trust lands. In our litigation seeking to compel the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) to require the telescope organization to post a bond, the judge ruled that the regulation we argued is not operational based on earlier determinations by BLNR.

He also ruled, however, that we have not exhausted our administrative remedies because we can still petition BLNR to impose the bond based on the public trust obligations, rather than the regulation. We immediately filed such a petition.

The purpose of the bond is to ensure that should the telescope project be unable to finish construction and/or decommissioning for financial or any other reasons, the costs to clean up after them will not fall on the State and/or the public.

It has been remarkable to see the Governor, the Attorney General, the Board of Land and Natural Resources, the Mayor of Hawai’i County, and the telescope organization all arguing that TIO should not have to post a bond to protect the public from a default by TIO. Given that this telescope will be one of the largest and most expensive ever built, the potential default is also huge. Leaving the public on the hook for that potential loss is hardly in the public interest.