Freedom to leave is crucial liberty

Am I oversensitive because my family has been directly threatened by a rogue country?

Don’t worry, it is all just bluster?Should that help me sleep at night?

In this day of instant information, jet-age travel and expanding prosperity, it is reprehensible that a jail containing 24 million imprisoned people called North Korea is allowed to exist. The countries of the free world should be ashamed.

When will governments around the world guarantee all the world’s people their most basic human right, the right to vote with their feet?

Let’s not forget 1989, when the Iron Curtain collapsed and hundreds of thousands of people voted with their feet and escaped from their authoritarian rulers.

Stop demanding that North Korea end its nuclear program. Demand that North Korea open its doors.The people will leave.

If we truly want to protect our freedom, we need to protect everybody’s freedom to vote with their feet.

Sam Gillie
Hawaii Kai

Spending debate filled with irony

The irony here goes in so many directions, I don’t know where to begin.

Congress chided the Internal Revenue Service for spending $60,000 for a six-minute filmed parody.

Congress frivolously spends $60,000 in a nanosecond, such as the $30 billion we just sent to Egypt, which is America’s second-largest foreign aid annual recipient behind Israel.

This foreign aid is sent in the midst of America’s sequestration, which is closing schools, airports and other much-needed facilities on our very own soil.

Han Song
Kaneohe

Auto weight tax being misspent?

It would be very helpful to readers if there could be some reporting on the increases in our auto registration fees over the past four years.

Supposedly the vehicle weighttax is designed to maintain roads: The heavier the vehicle, the moreit contributesto wear and tear on our roadways, all other things being equal.

Since 2008, registration for both vehicles in our carport is up about 70 percent, with the lion’s share of the increase in the form of the weight tax.

So it seems while repair of the roads have been neglected, increases in the vehicle weight tax haven’t been neglected.

It would be nice to have the newspaper find out where this money went, because it surely didn’t go into maintaining our roads.

Joseph A. Holtzmann
Pearl City

City needs more left-turn lights

There is a significant problem with red-light cameras that I don’t believe has been addressed.

With heavy traffic in Honolulu at all times of the day, making a left turn across traffic is difficult unless there is a left-turn light as part of the traffic light system.

If there isno left-turn light, even if you are first in line you usually cannot turn left until the traffic light has turned yellow — and sometimes until it has turned red.

Unless Honolulu installs left-turn lights at every corner with traffic cameras, or does not allow left turns at those intersections, you will see a significant increase in tickets with a corresponding increase in insurance costs for the drivers.

You will also see asevere increase in traffic congestion on our already miserable streets.

The city lost significant funds in the fiasco with traffic van cams when the public demonstrated its objections to the system. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.

Gary G. Osterman
Makiki