 Hi everybody, I'm Chris Leeth, I'm here with Community Matters at OC16, Philly InfraJ Fidel the one and only. Today I'm going to be interviewing Calvin Griffin and Calvin, welcome to the show. Well thank you very much for having me on the show. I'd like to have you on the show. I'd like to talk a little bit about Calvin. Calvin is running for the U.S. House of Representatives first district. Yes. And you are a nonpartisan candidate. Yes, I am. It basically means that you're not a Republican, you're not a Democrat, you're running because you have a platform based on serving the people of your district. Yeah, the one question that most people ask anyone wanting for office is what is your platform, you know? Yeah. And with me it's a very basic thing, you know, it's not anything that's long drawn out, but what I believe in is the Bill of Rights Constitution and following, you know, the guidelines on that, you know. I believe that anybody who goes into office, I mean just my personal opinion of course, is that anybody who goes into office would have preset idea about having a long agenda, okay? I think there's a problem with that because what you're supposed to be is the voice of the people, you know? So there's certain things that I don't agree with, but if I'm elected to office then again with the majority of the people saying I have to respect that opinion. Okay, okay, that's good. This is your first time running for office? No, actually I ran before, I ran for mayor and also I did run for Congress before. It was more of a symbolic thing where, you know, it wasn't a concentrated effort, you know, to do it, but I was serious, you know. But I do know the political realities over here and, you know, I didn't want to have people or supporters, you know, use their efforts for, I wouldn't say a losing cause. But again, when you're dealing with the political realities over here, you know what you're up against. Well, it's winning an office against an incumbent anywhere is tough. It's a tough road to hoe. I ran for the Senate two years ago as you may know. And it was, I was out there every day slogging it out, sign waving, knocking on doors, doing the heavy lifting that it takes to run for office. And with all that, I still ran against a candidate who didn't do anything basically, and it was still lost. So displacing an incumbent can be a really difficult task. Yeah, no, no, that's fine. So you had some key things that you wanted to talk about today because the voting system is something that, you know, has gotten a lot of publicity lately. You know, Donald Trump's been talking about how the system is rigged. We're seeing things in the news about how reporters have been passing inside information to Hillary on the questions that are going to be asked during a debate. We're seeing a lot of things that don't really represent fair play. You know, and then of course there's the issue of people who've been long dead still voting. That's quite a feat. I hope I can still do that when I'm gone, but I can still come back. Well, that's being very patriotic. Make my opinion known. When you vote from the grave, you know that you're a dedicated... You're a hardcore voter, that's for sure, yeah. Yeah, one of the things with the voting system is we say, well, Mr. Trump was mentioning that the system was rigged. Being over here, and like I said, I know that you're being associated with the political and climate over here. There's something that I forgot what your dictator said, but it's not those who vote, but those who count the votes. And here in Hawaii I've seen that there's certain discrepancies or problems within the mechanism as far as voting. Recently I came across some information on trying to go ahead and make public or try to have the public address that is important to all of us. Because if the system is not fair, it doesn't make any difference what your political persuasion is. The thing is, if the will of the people or the vote goes with a certain individual or whatever, or cause, then that should be respected. But when it's rigged against you from the start, I mean, which I believe from what I see, there's some things that definitely need to be addressed over here that are not being addressed. Well, you know, the first issue, of course, that's an area of consternation for a lot of folks is the way they draw up the boundaries, you know. Whatever party is in power gets to decide where the boundaries are. And so they draw the boundaries that favor them. So you have boundaries that go little lines like this to grab the right constituency that's going to ensure they have an opportunity to, you know, every opportunity to win. I feel like that's somewhat problematic. Yeah. The one thing that I see, being a veteran and you're being a veteran also, you know, we served in countries, I served in a country that was under a dictatorship that we happened to be supporting. It was back in the 70s. And we try to, we say we're exploiting democracy around the world, but then again, we don't really practice it here at home, you know. And the way things operate in certain states, not saying this is one of them, but anyhow, you know, where it seems like there's certain local juntas in place that prevent, you know, the will of the people from being done. Over here, we have low voter turnout. And I think a lot of that has to do with the way people feel intimidated, because one of the things that I'll talk to you real briefly, because I know we hadn't discussed this all before, but the ballot system over here. I don't believe it's really, truly secret. You know, if you look the way this thing is set up with the barcodes and everything else, you can be traced back. And the one thing I don't want to be irresponsible about saying certain things to discourage people from voting. Right. But we still have an opportunity. I mean, we're getting down through the wire. But as far as actually, you know, questioning these things ahead of time, you know, so in case there is a question about being voted, talking about voter intimidation. Yeah. Then, you know, it needs to be addressed because that's the only way I think that as far as being good citizens that we need to, you know, that we are good citizens by asking these questions, even if it's uncomfortable. Well, you know, I think that's, I think, you know, anytime that there is even the perception that there's a problem with fairness in the system. I think it's important that we address it. Yeah. You know, I think so. Right. And, you know, we're about a week away from the election. Right. There's some other issues out there that I think are sort of the top of the news. The ongoing issue, of course, for us in Hawaii is our biggest expenditure or our largest investment, which is the rail. Right. It's an area of great consternation because this was a conversation that was started back in the 1980s about having a rail. Yeah. There's a lot of consternation over where the rail route is going. And now there's, of course, the issue of how much are we going to spend on this thing? Yeah. And what are some of your concerns? What are your thoughts on this thing? Well, before the thing was built anyhow. You might have been a resident over here about 28 years. Okay. And you see what happened, like I say, with H3, you know, the old thing behind that. That was the most expensive highway ever built in America. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of people made money off that anyhow. But, you know, the questions that were brought up before. Yeah. It was, you know, when it was being debated. And then now we see people who were championing the rail system. All of a sudden, they're backtracking and trying to play the good guy by saying, okay, we're going to cut back on certain things to cut back on the price of the overall project and everything else. Why didn't these people do their homework before? You know, because I'm pretty sure the way things have been developing and the information that's coming out, they knew it was a lie from the beginning, you know? Yeah. They went ahead and they promoted this. And they know that for the most part, not only here in Hawaii, but across the country, most of the electorate have a very short image, I mean, a very short attention span. Okay. What's hot today is cold tomorrow. Yeah. So they're betting that, like I say, somewhere down the road, two years from now, whatever it is, whatever transgressions or whatever they messed up on, they're hoping that the voters will forget, you know? And unfortunately, with the media, the way things are going, that's the case. Well, we do run a 24-hour news cycle today. And it seems like everything's very abbreviated in the news. We don't go into in-depth stories. You know, the days of Walter Cronkite are long gone, you know, where you had somebody who had a very independent thought process and presented the news in a very factual manner. Now it's, you know, it's given to us, it's fed to us, you know, and the way that we think that we should think about things. Yeah. We're manipulated. They talk about freedom of the press and everything else. We really don't have true media freedom here in this country. It's all on how you align yourself or who's willing to back you, you know, if you want to put on a program. It takes money to do that. For sure. I know myself because when I was doing my radio program, I did it for about 10 years and couldn't get any sponsors because one thing they say, the basic thing was, what you need to do is be more controversial. You need to go ahead and cause more things. The thing is, the role of the media is to provide information and I know the realities of the, you know, the current world and everything else. But when you, there's either one or two things, you're an entertainer or you're someone who's trying to promote the truth. Okay. The truth may be painful, but the thing is, you have to be able to deal with it. Other than that, you should just, you know, proclaim, I'm just an entertainer. I'm here to give you certain information as I see it and take it from there. Yeah. The one thing I want to thank you for allowing me to come on the program is because doing this whole campaign, I haven't been asked to come on any programs whatsoever. I'm not allowed in any debates and I know the reason why, for the most part, because being a non-partisan and these are third parties, the two major parties with two major entities are trying to make sure that there is nothing to rock the boat, you know. So I understand what's going on, but still I believe it's, to me, it's un-American. You know, if you really want to have a really, increase the confidence of the voters in the system, then you have to play by the rules. And the thing is that a lot of people in America are played by the rules and it seems like once you start learning what the rules are, they want to change the rules. Then they change the rules. Yeah. It sounds like something that I've heard of before when it comes to dating and about rules and stuff like that. Yeah. But we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. I'm Chris Leitham here with Community Matters and our guest today is Calvin Griffin. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha. My name is Josh Green. I serve as Senator from the Big Island on the Kona side, and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on Think Tech is called Health Care in Hawaii. We'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting Think Tech. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera, and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Viva Hawaii, every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to show you news, issues, and events local and around the world. Join me. Aloha. My name is Reg Baker, and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We highlight success stories in Hawaii of both businesses and individuals. We learn their secrets to success, which is always valuable. I hope to see you on our next show. Aloha. Yeah, and we're back. Hi, I'm Chris Leeds of the Community Matters, and today's guest is Calvin Griffin. Calvin is running for the House of Representatives as a nonpartisan candidate for our first district. Yes. And so we're talking a little bit about why you decided to run and a little bit about the whole voting thing and passing on information. Now, the rail, we're going to go back and talk a little bit about the rail. The rail is, of course, a large investment. Right. And it wasn't necessarily full disclosure about how much this thing was going to cost when we first decided, the city council decided to authorize the building of the rail. What do you see as our, where do we go from here? Do we start to find ways to turn it into an economic engine? Do we get rid of the rail and put buses on that monstrosity? Do you have any ideas or suggestions with your thoughts on this? My personal opinion on this one, I think, have you heard of the Hegelian dialectic? I have not. And I don't know, has anybody heard of the Hegelian dialect? Right in. Hegelian dialect is the thing where you create a problem that you already have an answer to. And I think that's what happened over here. They knew exactly what was going on. One of the things that I came across when doing some research is that there's a Canadian company that specializes in open toll road operations around the world. From the information I got, they were contracted years ago. I believe that a lot of things that's being put in place right now in the system is designed for future use because at some point, what they're doing around the different parts of the country is they're starting to tax people for driving. They tell you, okay, well, you conserve energy, you're helping the environment and everything else, you're helping people with tax revenues. So what do you have to do to make up for it? Okay, you charge people to use the roads by their driving. Then it gets into another area. If they can go ahead and monitor how many miles you're driving, they can also monitor where you're going. And one of the things I see over here with this, with the rail, I mean, this is something that generations we're going to be paying for this through the nose. There's areas that have not been touched on. I think, well, as one individual, Dr. Perbedors, I think he's been very instrumental in getting information about some of the things that were not being addressed. And I think it's just the beginning because if you go way back so many areas that there seem to be avoiding right now where these were built up years ago, like, say, 50, 60, you know, longer, okay. When you get to these areas, what's going to happen? We have areas where, you know, it's unknown. I think that's what's going to happen. And that's why they keep shifting it back and forth. Again, that's my opinion. But as far as what I think, what they may do, you know, if I was part of the, I would say the dark side, but if I was part of what was going on, then, okay, if people complain enough, then whatever's been constructed so far, they probably turn that into like a toll road, okay. Where you go ahead and charge and give people, okay, this is how we're going to make our money back. Other people, you know, I talk to, I'm sure you hear a lot of people say tear it down, you know, and go with the bus system. But the thing is, it's in place. There's monies that already been spent, you know. But I believe that as far as the die being cast and the individuals who've made the decisions about this rail, they knew what was going on, you know. They're already comfortable, you know. So I think it's a disservice, you know, for them to go ahead and say that, you know, what they didn't know. They didn't know. Anybody who voted for you and really championed this thing, again, if they didn't do their homework, they don't belong in office. That's my opinion. Yeah, yeah. And so my thought is, is that was a rail, and I sort of have my own opinions about the rail, but I see it as something that either is going to be an albatross around our neck, or we have to figure out ways to motivate people to invest in businesses along and residences along the rail route and turn it into an economic engine. And I only look at that because, you know, if we set up tax structures that provide investment incentives, if we come up with ways to reduce the cost of development along the rail route by implementing pre-approved plans for construction that keeps the cost down and build workforce housing along the rail route where people who can live here can actually afford to buy a home, maybe we could turn it into something over time into something valuable. Yeah. One thing that they didn't mention, or I don't haven't heard, what is it going to cost to ride this thing in the first place? Okay. And the other thing is that one of the things, as far as with my campaign, a lot of people say, well, you know, you never held office before. That's true. Yeah. And but I do, in the course of doing my media thing in the past anyhow, ran across a lot of people that have a lot of common sense solutions to a lot of the problems of today, you know. And if we start going into the communities and listening, really listening to these people who, you know, are living the experience, you know, then I think that we could come up with a more viable solution not only for the current, you know, generation, but for the future because we have an obligation to, you know, our children and their children instead of saddling them with debts and obligations that they had nothing to do with in the first place. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Well, yeah. And they inherit the problems of their project, right? Right. So, and then you're also a veteran in the Army. And I know veterans issues are an area of concern for you as well. Yeah. And, you know, we've had some issues with the VA in the past. We've got certainly we've got a big problem with suicide from our young men coming back from combat. Yeah. Yes. I happen to be on the Wahoo Veterans Council and as I want to clarify, I'm speaking for myself, not any other members of the operation anyhow. But my thing is what's happening with the VA is indefensible, all right? We have people here locally like say work within the VA. When the veteran tries to get into the system, once they get in, the care is great, okay? But in the meantime, which you have to go through as far as with the benefits and things of that nature where, you know, it's, I say it's just really incomprehensible like say what the way they're being treated. You have veterans who are literally dying. And there was a report that came out late last year and a country, you know, worldwide, he had about 503,000 veterans roughly passed away waiting for benefits. Doesn't mean that they were all qualified, okay? But when you got a backlog, like say, where people who have served their country and then top it out, it's not only the veterans, male and female, it's their families that suffer. Yeah. When you go into combat or you go into a situation where you served your country, you get injured or whatever happens to you, you know, you're not fully functional, okay? Then we have an obligation to our veterans to make sure that their needs are met, okay? Because what happens when they don't get their benefits, this becomes a burden on the family. It causes, not only financial hardships, it causes a lot of different things that people are not even dealing with. I mean, the toll that it's taking on the children, on the spouses, you know, of these veterans. You know, the suicide rate, that's why, the one thing that really gets to me is a lot of people will talk about how much they love the veterans, they want to do this, those whole kind of events and everything else, and what really ticks me off to the max is when I see groups who profess to love veterans and they turn around, they pad their pockets with different events, money-making schemes, whatever, all right? That gets to me, all right? Yeah. If you want to show your love for a veteran, nowadays, we don't have that many people who have family members directly involved in the military, but okay, as citizens, when we have individuals who a lot of them truly believe in what they're doing, they gave up lucrative careers on the civilian side to join the country, I mean, join the military because a lot of them really truly believed it, all right? As citizens, you know, we have the obligation to make sure that the elected officials live up to their part of the bargain and take care of it. I mean, we got, I mean, it's unbelievable what's happening. A lot of things do not make the media. The suicide rates is skyrocketing. Well, they don't actually talk about suicide rates in the military because it seems that it perpetuates more suicide. No, the thing of what perpetuates suicide is the fact that when people have got their backs against the wall, when they say, okay, we got these different programs to go ahead and prevent suicide and all that, okay? But I ran into an individual that recently that, and I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but the thing is, ran into this gentleman and we just happened to talk, we just, you know, met and it was like, he says, I'm going back over, but I'm not coming back. I said, well, you think you would have got a permission about something? He says, no. He says, I did four tours already. He says, I went to a party the other day and they say they were videotaping and after the party, I reviewed, got a chance to look at the tape. He said, I didn't even recognize myself. At this point, he was estranged from his family. His wife was divorced and things of that nature. He was deep in debt, these things. And he said, well, you know, did you go with the program? I've been there, got the t-shirt and all that stuff. He says, well, sooner or later, my number is going to come up the way they have been deploying us anyhow. So if I'm going to check out, I want to do it under the conditions that I choose. So if I go back into combat, I'm with my battle buddies. If I get it there, it's my choice. The thing is, my family, like I say, will get their insurance money. My community will think of me as someone, I'm a hero, not that he's looking for it, but the reality is his back was against the wall. How many other veterans, like I say, and individuals have been through this, going through this situation, and they feel totally ignored, they feel totally abandoned. If we can't speak out for them, who can? Yeah, that's absolutely true. We do need, we've got to take care of our veterans. And I don't know that we have done enough for them. And certainly, part of the problem, of course, is the way that we, you know, you get debt piled on you. When you don't really have anything that you can do about it. Because you're overseas, you're in a combat situation. You're not really in a position where you can sit down with a financial planner and work through your issues. You know, you just, your mind's not there. And of course it's tough too, because if they're away from their families, it's hard on their kids. And you know, you're not their parenting doing the thing that you do best, which is be a parent. Yeah, I think we just got to live up to our responsibilities because one of the things, a couple years back, in 2014, any how, we lost more dependents here in the state of Hawaii through suicide than we lost troops in combat. My goodness. And again, you don't hear about that. You don't. And that's the thing. And that's what really upsets a lot of people within the veterans of the military community. You know, not that you want to belabor it or actually, you know, talk about the downside. Yeah. Because a lot of people that do not, you know, they're doing fine with their careers and everything else. Yeah. But what about the ones who are not covered who are really bearing the brunt of a lot of the issues that we're dealing with? Well, it's tough. Yeah. It's tough. And a lot of us sort of live in our little bubbles. Yeah. Right? And we're not really thinking about what's going on around us. Right. If people wanted to find out more about your campaign or they wanted to contribute to your campaign, how could they reach out to you? I was going to say there was a bar hanging out there, but I'm not going to go there. Yeah. They can go to, I forgot my home website, gforcongress.com. Gforcongress.com? Yes. Okay. Or they can reach me at 551-3701. 551-3701. Yeah. But by our campaign, phone numbers are on there also. Okay. All right. Great. Well, it was great to have you today as a guest on The Community Matters. Yeah. And I hope we'll see you out there. And good luck with your campaign. Well, thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate you having me. You're welcome. And today's show is Community Matters with Calvin Griffin and look for him out on the campaign trail. And I'm Chris Liepman. Hello.