"It All Tracks Back to the Covid Testing."
The $35,000 distraction from "tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts"
I thought I said everything I had to say about Hawaii’s Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke in my last post.
But then she was on the front page of Honolulu Pravda this morning.
A vacuous update? That’s what I thought at first. So I didn’t bother to read either article. I skipped to the comments where someone quoted a section buried in paragraph 32 that got my attention:
In 2022 Capture Diagnostic got $65,978,340 and $28,825,576 in 2023 from the Kidney Foundation of Hawaii for the COVID-19 testing work, according to federal tax records. Choy’s H20 [sic; H2O] Process Systems received $727,349 in 2021.
What does that have to do with Luke? A quick review of the Luke case:
Despite having “a reputation for being by the book and professional” and “having high ethical standards” according to a Uni-farce-ity of Hawaii aca-dumb-ic1, Luke is suspected of being the Hawaii politician that accepted $35,000 in a paper bag in 2022. (The FBI supposedly has the incident on tape but won’t release it. Why not?)
Hipsta Pravda hypothesizes the $35,000 was given by Luke’s neighbor Tobi Solidum.
Luke herself said she might have received the $35,000.
Luke herself ALSO said she did not receive the $35,000. Her PR agent2 admitted her client’s contradictions are “clear as mud”.
Luke got $35,010 from Solidum and his friend Milton Choy: $10,000 from Solidum and his stepdaughter in 2022 and $25,000 between 2014 and 2019 from Choy and his family and friends.
Luke claims to have returned the $10,000 in 2022.
Luke did not report the $10,000 until February 7, 2026 - four years late!
Luke blames her campaign staff for not reporting the $10,000.
Now she claims her staff found another unreported $6,000 from a Brant Tanaka in 2021. Tanaka may be
a Principal at Enviroservices & Training Center based in Honolulu, Hawaii. [...] EnviroServices & Training Center is a leading full-service environmental consultancy operating in Hawaii since 1994. The company specializes in a range of services including environmental compliance, stormwater management, industrial hygiene, and hazardous waste management, providing tailored solutions to meet the unique environmental challenges of its clients. Their multidisciplinary team collaborates with government agencies, landowners, and various industries to ensure compliance with complex regulations and safeguard natural habitats.
“Waste management” - the same line of work as Milton Choy:
Milton Choy, a Honolulu wastewater executive, has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for his role in a multi-million dollar bribery scheme involving county and state officials.
[…]
During the six-year bribery scheme, Choy paid Stewart Olani Stant, former former director of the Maui County Department of Environmental Management, over $2 million. In exchange, Stant guided dozens of contracts, worth about $19.3 million, to Choy’s wastewater company.
While part of the propaganda class - that fraction of Hawaii’s populace that reads3 - has been upset over $35,000 - or even just $10,000 (but not Stant’s $2 million!?) - no one, myself included, asked a basic question: Who is Tobi Solidum? I still don’t know, but Honolulu Pravda dropped some hints today:
Solidum, Pae and several of their holding companies are listed as creditors in the 2025 bankruptcy proceedings of the Capture Collective, a Columbus, Ohio, company awarded tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts to do COVID-19 testing at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and elsewhere in Hawaii.
“Capture Collective” … such a benevolent-sounding name.
The campaign spending commission investigated the company in 2021, Hawaii News Now reported.
Solidum’s Geopolicy Development Group performed “contractual work” in Hawaii for the company between 2021 and 2023, according to federal court records.
“Geopolicy Development Group”? I am reminded of the late John T. Reed’s warning against companies with pretentious names.
Collective alleges in federal bankruptcy proceedings that that Solidum’s company owes it $7 million.
$7 million they can’t get because he fled to the Philippines. $7 million in alleged “overbilling” which was “common during the pandemic’s hasty and generous spending by government at all levels.” Spending of our money … on this:
Choy’s company and the Capture Collective worked on “contract services” for the National Kidney Foundation, according to federal tax forms from 2021 and 2022.
In late 2020, the Capture Collective began working with SynergyMed Global Design Solutions and the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii to provide COVID PCR molecular testing kits and to do testing during the pandemic, according to federal court records.
What do kidneys have to do with PCR testing? I Googled only 6 references to CONvid on the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii site. Who cares when there was SO much money to be made (emphasis mine)?
The companies grew, and at times “required as many as 80 employees and ultimately generated several million dollars in revenues over a two-year period,” according to federal court records.
“[M]ore than $100 per test” added up fast!
And that leads us to the paragraph that caught my attention:
In 2022 Capture Diagnostic got $65,978,340 and $28,825,576 in 2023 from the Kidney Foundation of Hawaii for the COVID-19 testing work, according to federal tax records. Choy’s H20 [sic; H2O] Process Systems received $727,349 in 2021.
Capture Diagnostic (an error for Capture Collective or a subsidiary of it?) got $94.8 million dollars. For a test of … dubious value, to be civil.
Hawaii Nausea has a clip of Solidum talking about how “the City and County of Honolulu is very interested in what we can bring to the table”: i.e., CONvid ‘testing’.
Who is “we”? Why would the City and County of Honolulu deal with Solidum? What does he know about medicine or even science? Even someone with a 100% orthodox view on CONvid, virology, and the power of PCR should have been hesistant to deal with him. But money can change minds:
Solidum may have had easy access to the mayor’s office because he was a prolific campaign donor, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians at all levels of government.
Here’s a sample of Hipsta Pravda’s list of Hawaii politicians who received contributions from Solidum including Luke (at the end; back in 2017) and Honolulu mayor Rick Blangiardi (in the middle).
Solidum lists “Aci Pacific LLC” as well as “Geo Policy Group” as his employer. ACI Pacific LLC is now Guam-based Aviation Concepts LLC,
the Western Pacific's premier FBO [fixed-base operator] facility providing 24/7 aircraft support services for business and commercial aviation.
Commenters at Honolulu Pravda wrote (emphasis mine),
It all tracks back to the Covid testing. Time to investigate National Kidney Foundation, the Airport, and Mayor Caldwell. Hundreds of millions of dollars given to companies with no medical or lab experience.
Total insider corruption. . Insiders with no medical experience got these contracts. Take a look at National Kidney Foundation and who was involved. Why didn’t local hospitals and labs get these contracts?
My first thought was the Kidney Foundation sure has a lot of cash.
Where did that cash come from?
And what does this say about the integrity of the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii?
You won the prize this is what is all about. Govt contracts the wheels that were greased to fleece the American taxpayer. High up political figures have their hand ibn the cookie jar trying to make this go away. Too bad the politicians took the jackpot and put it ibn their campaign funds,
All that is missing in Hawaii to rival Minnesota’s corruption is a Learing School.
The rest of the USSA has a lot of “learing” (sic) to do when it comes to being karap (corrupt), a pillar of our rich culture. If you question it, you’re Wacist. As a commenter put it,
I just wish the mainland transplant attacker would just go home.
What “mainland transplant attacker”? Scroll back to the top of that article, and you see who’s attacking (emphasis mine):
State Reps. Kanani Souza, a Republican, and Democrat Della Au Belatti continue to call for the appointment of a special prosecutor and a separate legislative investigative committee to run parallel probes along with the investigation underway by the state Attorney General’s office, which had been notified of the allegations by federal investigators.
Regardless of the results of the investigation into the $35,000 affair, nobody will look into the $94.8 million affair. Into all the money made off dethplague hysteria. Not just here but where you live.
I write these pieces not only to vent but also to get people to think locally. To wonder what’s going on where they are.
To spot the Solidums in their midst.
As absurd as that description is, Honolulu Pravda went so far as to call Luke and Scott Saiki, another One Party pillar,
dissident, ideological outsiders who called for government transparency and reform.
Luke’s PR agent is Ann Botticelli, a former longtime local TV reporter. She was recently a police commissioner, though she doesn’t mention that on her LinkedIn page for some reason. Hawaii is a tiny place. The same people turn up again and again.
The rest doesn’t read and doesn’t care. Hence these predictions for Luke’s future career:
Yet, in this state, she will still be elected Governor
Yuup - ill informed electorate & she knows and plays off it…
That’s why
[e]veryday we see articles here about corruption, incompetence, mismanagement, and the problems they create for all of us who live here. And yet, in spite of that, people here keep voting for more of the same.
It’s like taking milk out of your refrigerator, noticing it’s sour, and then putting it back in the refrigerator thinking it will be better tomorrow.
Stop letting yourselves be distracted by things going on on the mainland [TRUUUUMP!], which none of us have any control over, and start focusing on what’s going on in our own backyards.
This is the kind of journalism that despite being powerless to change things can lead to poor outcomes for the journalist. That is both a compliment and a warning.