I know we can find a balance between protecting our national parks and ensuring everyone has access. It’s because of the national parks we have such a strong environmental movement.

Hawaii’s approach to expand the Papahanaumo- kuakea Marine National Monument is carrying preservation to an extreme. Unless you are an academic in the marine field or a Native Hawaiian, you’re not welcome. This is inconsistent with the Hawaii Constitution that guarantees the people of Hawaii free and equal access.

Kevin and Susan Mulkern

Kuliouou Valley

Presidents need executive skills

I agree: Business executive skills have little value in politics (“CEO skills don’t apply to politics,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, July 6). So what?

America has three co-equal branches: executive, legislative and judicial. So logically the executive branch requires executive skills. The executive branch’s duty is to protect, not rule, Americans. To enforce laws made by Congress, not make law.

Like corporations, whose boards (Congress) set rules, and executives (presidents) who execute them, good governance, not good politics, is needed.

Since I was 10, I’ve watched the political class grow and Americans become less free, successful and educated. The U.S. has gone from a tiger no one crossed to an easy target for “JV team” terrorists.

And America’s workers are now like a piñata, beaten out of their wealth by China, Mexico and the dynasties of the Walton-Buffet-Clinton political class.

America needs executive, not political, skills.

George L. Berish

Kakaako

RFK offered timely wisdom

In pondering the character that is Donald Trump, I seem to come up with only one word as a description: divisive.

It is enlightening to contrast his rhetoric with that of another presidential hopeful from 1968, Robert F. Kennedy. I will not quote Trump, as we will continue to have an earful of his divisiveness. However, I would like to quote a little of RFK’s speech, in Indianapolis, on the evening of April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”

This speech by RFK is credited with keeping Indianapolis calm on that horrible night.

I know what I’m voting against on Nov. 8.

Jim Howard

Manoa

U.S. needs czar for cybersecurity

I am disgusted by the July 7 cartoon comparing Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon. It is another of a series of vicious cartoons against her and a sneaky way to present your views.

There is nothing to the Clinton email issue except poor judgment; certainly nothing like what was done by Nixon.

The real issue is that we have no cybersecurity czar responsible to ensure and continuously monitor this security across all federal agencies and departments.

There should be a coordinated approach to make all of our federal servers secure and communications safe.

Paul Tyksinski

Kailua

Don’t use history to foster division

I read with great sadness the letter, “Don’t expect Hawaiians to be grateful to U.S.” (Star-Advertiser, July 2).

It is past time in this country — and Hawaii is part of this country — to stop teaching hate. Our history, like that of so many countries, is filled with horrible atrocities of what man does to man. Let those be recorded accurately and passed to future generations as cautionary tales and not cause for continued hatred.

It is up to future generations to protect and save this world we live in. They cannot do that with hatred as a guiding tool. We are all in this together and must recognize that we are not so very different, and work as one.

Judy McMorrow

San Diego

Finish rail now or pay more later

Let’s finish the rail now.

If we pause and wait another 10 or 20 years to finish it, imagine the cost increases. I know we’d look back at how much we could have saved if we had just scraped up the money and finished it now.

We also should keep a larger share of the rail tax that is collected for administrative costs, since the excess will eventually be used for something unrelated, when it should be used for rail.

Joan Navales

Aiea