 Aloha and Mabuhay. Welcome to another edition of Pinoy Power Hawaii. I am your host, Amy Ortega Anderson. We want to first thank the wonderful staff of Think Tech Hawaii for giving us the opportunity to come to your homes every Tuesday at 12 noon. Today we have a special guest and she is within our mission to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and empower. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Marisa Dipasupil Kearns. Welcome to our show, Marisa. Thank you, Amy, for inviting me to be here and I would like to thank the people from Think Tech Hawaii for this opportunity for letting us, you know, put out our message to our people in Hawaii and, of course, our Filipino Kababayan as well. So our show is done in Itaglish, Tagalog and Sakai English. So it is about empowerment and I know you have a lot of empowerment in you. But before we go into our main topic for today, we would like to know a little bit more about Marisa Dipasupil Kearns. Thank you. I would like to start with my humble beginnings, you know, as what everybody know now, know now that I was born and raised in the Philippines. My parents are business owners from the beginning, like my mother came from a company that manufacture or produce or make ice cream in the Philippines and her parents, yeah, her parents supply Malacanyang from 1939. Sorbetes? Sorbetes. Until 1956, the brand name was Seleqpa. Ayinako. Yes. My mom, yeah, my mom's the eldest out of the family, 12, they were 12. So my mom remembered pretty much everything and she's still around. My mom's 93 years old now and 93, yeah, they used to also own a trucking company a transport company but they did, they refurbished some military buses and they used it for passenger transport. So they call it Kapalaran transit. Kapalaran. Kapalaran. Kapalaran. Like a jeepney or bus. No, it's their buses. Oh, like school buses. Like school buses. Yes, yes, yes. So that's my mother's side. My father's side, he was a farmer. When he was a young teenager, he joined the Bataan Death March, you know, those guerrillas. He's one of those guys that joined and helped the country, helped the citizen, the people, the Americans and his relatives and other people of course that went into the march, went into the camps. So my dad was one of the guerrillas and it was a hard work. He told us a lot of the stories about that, you know, and after that he became a sorbetas vendor. He was working with my mom's parents' company. So that's how they did it. To promote and select. So knowing my dad came from really like, you know, I would say farmer, you know, he was a farmer. Both of them combined. They're really work hard, you know, really working hard people. That's what I can offer to the public. I came from the people that really work hard from they were like really young people with the war, with I would say being the parents or business people. So I have very good upbringing, you know, got morals, got values, culture. We try to keep that as much as we can. You know, transferring it to our kids nowadays, you know, in the generation, completely different, having the millennials. They never had to go through that. So I'm very proud of our generation. Of course now it's different, you know, technology, the way people social, right? It's completely different. But having that foundation I have in life, I was so grateful and so proud, you know, and flattered that I have parents like this. And even now my mom got to see all of this where I'm now, but I was very, very excited. I've always been in my, you know, political campaign, you know, she's on a wheelchair, she's sideways and all that stuff. But knowing I'm, again, I'm a strong, I have a strong foundation as a Filipino, proud Filipino. I would rather put this strength, this foundation all the way, move forward to the next future, next generation and contribute and make a big difference. And I think that's the other things that other people in our community doesn't have. I have different stuff to offer. I have different culture values to offer into our community. And I'm always been a reformer, a fighter, you know, a person that understand the business because I'm always been in business since I got here. I'm in public sector for the last 31 years and I'm always been in transportation and logistics. And now I'm doing all kinds of stuff, you know, trying to bring more, I would say, business into my shoulders so I can show my kids, other people, how things can be like, you know, prosper through hard work, of course, great effort in everything you do. So knowing now, I'm, again, I'm very strong with military. I'm married to a retired Air Force. And of course, my dad is Bata Andet, March Gorilla, my mom's business owner. I love where I came from. It's something that a lot of people doesn't have. I'm very, very fortunate. I'm blessed all the way up to now. You know, I came from a poor family. My mom only had like seventh grade schooling. My dad's like barely like seven or six, you know, but they worked hard for us because we were 12 too. I'm, you know, 11 siblings. Wow. So it's very hard. And my dad passed away when I was 14 years old. So my mom cannot be there all the time with, you know, to oversee us. So I learned that I have that, you know, the perseverance. I'm always been very competitive in anything I do. I compete. I pretty much master what I know in life, you know, being a salesperson. I'm always on the front. I'm always the person that never, never really feel like, you know, I'm timid or I'm shy. No, not me. I, you know, I'm just listening to your story. And I mean, oh, yeah, so much. If you see my, my autobiography, you know, online, you know, www.garrisa.com, I have my bio over there and I have people. It's probably a manifesto of over 100 pages. Balitang America was surprised, oh, we should put you in. That's why I've always been in there, you know, Balitang America, I'm worldwide and became like, you know, even local kids, Kamehameha students are like going into my website. They said they were really inspired and he's just too bad, you know, we were never really like part of the debate, the debates like recently that happened from their school. So I'm very fortunate. I'm giving back to the community without even in the office. I don't have to be there because I'm not a politician. I'm a business owner. I'm a mother, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm community, you know, besides being community organizer, I'm a community person, you know, so. Well, listening to your story and your trials, your experiences in life, the struggles and, of course, the success that comes along with that, no wonder you can't wait to be a public servant and your run for the Lieutenant Governor office will give you that chance to showcase or to let everyone know that you have the makings of a great Lieutenant Governor. So let me ask you also that along with these experiences, these life experiences that you have had to empower you to make you a better servant for the people. What is that one thing that would stand out when people hear of your name? Marisa Dipasupil Kearns. Okay, we're talking about, I would say, community service. I'm always being with the people that really want it. I'm supporting 100% people that would like to make change, challenge other people, discuss things, and be a part of the community to, to make a big difference. You know, I'm that person that I look at it. I'll study. I'll reach out and take all the people that, that really want to make a difference for everybody, not just one for themselves, not for one organization, because Hawaii grew so big. I've been here 31 years and we got a lot of, a lot of stuff to do because right now with the leadership, we have, I don't think they really understand the business, running a business. And that's what we're lacking in our state. You know, we have people been in office for 20-something years, have not touched any of the business, you know, information or business. They don't have any business argument and that's the problem. They don't understand where we're coming from as business owners. They don't understand where the rest of, of, of, I would say earnings that these people are going to pull out before they started taxing. So I have a different outlook in life. I'm not a politician. I'm a business owner. I'm always been a standalone business owner. And I acquired company, you know, I bought a trucking company. With my own money that I work for, I used to work for Emery Worldwide, UPS, 500 fortune companies. I was a product of a boardroom for, for a national companies. I sat with these big hunches, making decisions, making strategies. How can we compete in the marketplace? So I've done a lot of that, mostly private. So understanding the legislature, I don't think you're going to need a scientific study to do that. Come on, you know what I'm saying? Mostly reading, understanding. But right now, I don't think those legislators understand what's the final, what's the result, what's the bottom line of those bills that they're introducing, who's going to get affected, who's going to win, who's going to lose, you know what I'm saying? So in other words, your business experience will give you an advantage, an edge. Way, way advantage. Way more, way more. Because you understand exactly how the numbers line up in order to be productive and successful. If it's a program, you know, yeah, you just gathered so much millions of dollars for one program, okay? Who's going to benefit for this program? Who's really going to need this thing? How long the program's going to last, right? Where's the money going to go? You know, we have to show our people that really pull up and earn to make that money to that program makes sense. You're always looking for the bottom line. If you're a business owner, is this really a bottom line that we're going to get? Is this really the thing that we really want to accomplish for a lot of the people? Not just one, you cannot cherry-pick that you as a government would like to subsidize. Government should not be subsidizing anybody. It should be open market, you know, from shipping to bottle water supply to, I would say, you know, all of this, like the refineries shutting down some of the areas of their refineries, you know, we got to open the market. What do you think McDonald's coming up with, like, value mill, right? Those value mills they have, because they have Burger King, they have Jack in the Box, they have Wendy's. The more we have people, you know, enterprise, businesses in the market, the better for the consumers. They got to afford those value mills, and that's what we're lacking in our state. Well, I believe in healthy competition too, rather than I agree with you when it comes to, you know, competition is better than having just one person rule and having a monopoly, you know, because it does a lot to stimulate the economy, and it spreads the money around more evenly so that it's fair competition, fair game for everyone. Yeah, I want Hawaii to be a business-friendly state. I don't want Hawaii to be like a sanctuary city. That's the Hawaii Act 172, 2016, they went ahead and passed that in 2015, 2016, it became a law. And that's the thing that really our legislators are missing, to let the people know and inform that, oh yeah, we're gonna bring all these 50,000 illegal aliens or undocumented immigrants into our state. You know, how are we gonna be taking care of these people? How are we gonna feed these people? How are we gonna house them? You know, that's what happened to us two, three years ago. You know, that's why all the housing is like, nobody could afford it. And what happened? About 150,000 people fled the state, they left. And of course, they said, oh, our population never really changed. It's because we have these micronitions coming in. And again, that's another, you know, millions of dollars that we're gonna have to take care of those people. Plus, the illegal immigrants, you know, the Latinos, the Mexicans, who knows. They're all over here because we have no borders. And I don't think our governor understand that, you know, we can't bring all these people. We cannot afford to be, you know, to be like a sanctuary city. There's no way. I understand where you're coming from, Marissa, but you know, especially Hawaii is known as the melting pot capital of the world, being that we welcome all ethnic group to come to our borders. But there is a big button that, and you can agree or disagree with me, that, you know, when it comes to immigration, we have to do it in a legal manner where my family, my grandfather, waited 15, almost 20 years before he could finally come and be reunited with his family. Yeah, and that's a long time to wait. And I know that you will agree with me that it should be a fair game. It should be a fair competition where everybody have to wait their turn, you know? Yeah, you cannot cut the line. No, that's not right. That's not fair because I have Filipino friends that, you know, I never even gonna even think about bringing all my siblings here, you know? Eventually, I'm probably gonna figure out how to bring them in because my dad served the Bataan Death March. And again, our federal government cannot be handpicked. Who can come here? Who can get paid 15,000? I don't need the money. I want my family, you know what I'm saying? Hold that thought for a moment because immigration is a very technical issue, technical matter. We will come back. We need to take a quick break. Our guest today, and Pinoy Power Hawaii, is the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Marissa Dipasupil Kearns. We'll be right back. Aloha, I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to come visit with us on Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000 year odyssey where we explore and examine the plant that the muse has given us. And stay with us as we explore all the facets of this planet on Wednesdays at noon. Please join us, Aloha. Hello, my name is Stephanie Mock, and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pamai Weigert. And we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on a Thursdays at 4 p.m., and we hope we'll see you next time. Welcome back to Pinoy Power Hawaii. I am your host, Amy Ortega Anderson. And today we are having a very healthy debate on the economy, taxes, competition, and also immigration. So we are all over the place when it comes to topic, but there are some things that we wanna zero in because that's your platform. Yes. Talagangian platform, right? Yeah, I'm an immigrant myself, you know? Yes. Because I got here in 87, and I became citizen in 92. And then about six months after that, four months after that, I brought my mom here. So just me and my mother, my mom's still alive. She's 98. So I took the right path. I did not violate the law. I waited for my turn till I bring my mom here. So it's unfair for others that's been on the line for many, many years, especially our... Waiting. ...Kababayan. Yeah, they've been waiting. And all of a sudden, we got these Zoom thousands of people came into our state, and now we're where they at. They're all over the place. These illegal aliens are all over. They're using our hospitals. They're using our schools, our roads, our highways. We're all over the place. We're using our schools, our roads, our highways, our social services. Now we're gonna have to compete with these guys with jobs. It's a lot of things that these legislators and our state leadership don't understand. They do not understand. They're gonna get it out alive with all this compensation, with all this amount of services. Look at our DMB office lines. Five to six hours, because most of the people out on the line are illegal aliens. It's constant. So I wish I get elected. And that's one of the first thing I'm going to do. I'm gonna have to really... What would you do when you get elected? What's the first thing you do? Same thing in the mainland. We cannot afford to house these people, to care for them. We have no money. We couldn't even afford taking care of our own homeless. We couldn't afford those small, young families that try to survive here. And now others, they can just come here for free. It's wrong. It's completely wrong. So your solution to that situation is to send them back? To where they're from? We have to send them back, because we don't really have the capability or resources to care for them. And it's a big mistake. I want to repeal that law. That's Act 172. It's already a law to allow them, but you want to... Yeah, I want to put that into the public. Have the public... Let them decide. Yes, exactly. And not the legislators. That's why I'm against with Con Con. Because they have the control. They can do whatever they want, and they're going to eat us alive. Well, I hear you as a taxpayer, it isn't fair that we pay so much taxes, and these taxes are used to just support those that have not worked for it. I agree. So how could we afford to take care of additional dependents when we can't even take care of... Our homeless people have a real problem there, right, in our backyard. We can't take care of people. We can't care for them at all. We cannot. So... There's no problem. The legislators, they never really thought about it. That there's a big, big, I would say, debt that's going to come to us. That's the reason there have been... Well, we're already in debt. Oh, big time. You're right. State employees pension, they're unfunded, 25 billion, okay? Look at the city. Let's go like the $3 billion, what, you know? Unfunded, or what? It's just too many. Look at the rail, that's $10 billion. We're talking monumental debts, you know? And then they have all these new bills that they introduced, SB 2922. The state created their own property tax. That's illegal. Can't do that. We can only have one property tax. They say they need money for education. I think they're wrong. They're completely wrong. I tell you right now, this is one stats, one metrics that I got from my daughter. When my son graduated from Capola High School in 2014, their aptitude, I would say their aptitude in math was only 45%, it means the entire school, only 45% can do math. Their comprehensive is like really bad. Now my daughter graduated this past May 2018. She called me, mom, guess what? We have to stay one more hour because the principal was upset because he found out our math comprehensive aptitude down to 25%. And I don't think whoever requesting this legislator does want money for education. Where are they gonna put the money? Look at our kids. Our kids are failing. And by the way, look at Iggy. Iggy sent his kids, his three kids to Punahou. And now they're in college in the mainland. I think that's wrong. We cannot continue running our state like this. They're the one trying to make education number one. I don't think they have faith in our education system. Otherwise they would have sent his kids to a public school. Exactly. Pro City High School or whatever, A Elementary School. Come on, you know, give me a break. Why do that? You're the leader of the state. You should be the model. It doesn't matter to have scholarship, just that like the moral value on who you are that running the state, making your kids going to the high end, you know? I might have said that's why you elect me. Everybody can go to Punahou. We'll go ahead and have the school choice. I'll take the $12,000 if the parents want their kids to Punahou, boom. They just pay for the difference. They can go to Punahou. You know, I want them to do the same thing. But that's not where the majority lies, yeah? That's what you think. Even the state employees, you know, some teachers, they take their kids to private school because they have no faith with our public school system. But what I'm saying is that we should concentrate and focus on what we can do for the majority, which is the public. Yeah, that's why it's good that we have charter schools. That's good that parents are doing their homeschooling. That's perfect. It's better because parents and the kids, they need to have a banding to avoid those homeless, those drugs. Do you know seven out of 10 kids or school students, seven out of 10, okay? They either try drugs, they're using drugs. That's why, you know what I'm saying? Are you gonna continue taking your kids to public school? It's dangerous. You're lucky if your kids graduated with no any, you know, drugs. And that's probably why a lot of people that can't afford to send their children to private school. Yeah, they try to avoid the public school, yeah. Exactly, and again, because no one's policing anymore. No one really looking at the whole picture. Where do we go from here? How come myself, I'm not sending my kids, no, you stay where you at. Liberal city, I live in Capole, I live in Mililani. You know, I know Mililani's doing good. They're number one high school right now, which is the best ever happened to our state. There's somebody that taking the lead. There's smarter kids out there, because that's a diverse too. Because Mililani have like the military kids from the mainland, like same thing with Capole. Because some of them, they graduated only in their junior. It's because they came from Florida, their military families, because my son's telling me this, that's their classmates, right? From Florida, and my son was told, I guess what, our Capole school, our math is like two years behind compared to Florida. So it's just like it tells you right there. So we need to take a look and overhaul our public school system. You can't centralize and you can't have a nice standardized higher up programs for the students. And that can tell you, if Iggy cannot even get involved with the school, with the education, he need to get out. He need to get out because I can't stand in front of him and tell him, my kids graduated magna cum laude at the Capole High School. I'm proud of the Capole High School. They made my kids, you know. So public schooling has worked for your children. Yeah, exactly. Okay. You know, the thing is he's a moral, he's a governor. He's gotta put his mouth, you know, his money where his mouth is. But don't do that, don't just pick and choose, oh yeah, you got money, but. We can spend a lot of time talking about education, which is, I agree, it's very, very important to build a solid foundation for our future. Now, you have this thing about privatized rail now. Why do you think it should be privatized? From the start, it should have been privatized because there's no check and balance, there's no accountability. What's going on right now? All the money that they collected from our taxes, it goes directly to Hart, directly to the mayor, and now Governor getting involved with it, right? The legislators, so it's an entire state project now. It's not gonna be the city. It's the state. So if it's privatized, you feel that there'll be a better way of tracking. Exactly. There's just a border right there. There's somebody gonna check. It's just like when Mayor Farsi was around, the city was losing money. People, employees are stealing the buses and stealing the equipment over there, right? They're taking the buses and then they're painting them. All of a sudden he ran out of like what assets? You know, the city's coming down, running out of money. So the best thing he did, our Mayor Farsi, to privatize the Oahu bus, right? That way people are more accountable. Yeah, exactly because OTS now, what they do is, they receive all the equipment from the city and they do the inventory. They manage how to run the bus. They hire and fire, make sure it makes sense that every time they get the new budget for the bus, they make sure they're taking care of how to run it, to operate it. What's the bottom line? All those stuff that they understand. So not just the city, the heart can just take the money and run away like rail, run away rail that the money going down, flashing the toilet. We don't know where the rest of the money. If they pay Q it like what, 550 million? But technically how much we spent? Almost like $3 billion, where's the rest of the money? That's why we need an audit. We need to audit the Mayor and the heart. Be accountable. Yes. All right, the next thing is, how do you feel about the US government continuing to support those nations that really want to destroy us or hate us? And yet we continue to send aid to those countries. I see our President Trump kind of like downsizing that side of the, you know, that he did something with Palestinians, I think. He got a little bit of it. I think he's completely caught it because right in Hawaii, okay, you know, politics is always local. Hawaii, we need all that money. We need all those federal funds. You know, like funding our airports. You know what I'm saying? Because we can't do anymore. Like infrastructure, if you want infrastructure, if you want to build a brand new highways and roads, the federal will give you 80% of the cost. You're only going to come up with a 20. So I really like President Trump, what he's doing. He's cutting all those... Those sporn aids. Yeah, all those fat, you know what I'm saying? Because look at now, look at in Germany. The Port in the Barrow. We're helping Germany, yeah. Germany brought in all these illegal aliens, now what? Sweden, now what? They're all like having issues with their illegal aliens. They're suffering from that decision of allowing the borders to be open. Exactly, it's not good. It's not good, even though you know, even though we're friends, but hey, you cannot just completely subsidize them for many more years. Well, we've run out of time and thank you, Marisa Dipasupil-Kurns for taking the time to discuss some of these issues that are really affecting our economy and for better Hawaii. So thank you for sharing your ideas and your thoughts and hopefully we have done our job to enrich and lighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower you all, Mark of the Bions. Thank you again and please tune in for another edition of Pinoy Power Hawaii. I am your host, Amy Ortega Anderson. Thank you for joining us. Maraming salamat po, Aloha and Mabuhay.