Schatz is typical PC-correct liberal

Regarding U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz’s outrage pertaining to Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters’ visit to New York’s Chinatown where Watters had fun interviewing the locals (“Schatz tells Fox reporter to stay out of Honolulu’s Chinatown after ‘racist’ story,” Star-Advertiser, Oct. 6): I never heard of Schatz being PC-outraged about Frank De Lima and other local comics having fun with race.

Did I say fun?

Yeah, fun. It’s called a sense of humor, something that perpetually offended liberals lack. Everything is so serious. To overuse the phrase, maybe Schatz should retreat to his safe place and cover his ears.

Gary Nitchman

Ewa Beach

Voters apparently easy to manipulate

Our 2016 presidential campaign displays how eager the public is to be manipulated and misinformed.

The cultural shift made possible by social media makes reality just your opinion and proven facts obsolete.

If you check the internet, you might be shocked how many Americans still believe Barack Obama is a gay Muslim and his wife is secretly a man.

This kind of misinformation runs wild at the highest levels of a Donald Trump campaign.

“Birtherism,” meant to humiliate and delegitimize a sitting president, is one of their flagships of undermining voter sanity with easily disproven lies.

How sad it is so effective.

Democracy depends on informed and rational voters.

Sara Marshall

Aiea

Free speech applies to corporations, too

In the second presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said that as president she would appoint Supreme Court judges who would reverse the 2010 Citizens United decision, which recognized First Amendment rights of free speech and press of corporations, labor unions and nonprofit organizations.

Clinton’s goal is to reduce the flow of corporate money into political campaigns. But corporations generally don’t support individual candidates.

Studies have found that they spend on lobbying for and against specific legislative proposals. Rather it is extremely wealthy individuals who are providing the huge sums contributed independently to the campaigns. Reversing Citizens United — which is defended by the American Civil Liberties Union — would not affect them.

This newspaper and most other newspapers, magazines and radio-television and internet organizations, are owned by corporations.

Does anyone believe that these corporations do not have First Amendment rights of free speech and press?

Carl H. Zimmerman

Salt Lake

Snowden doesn’t deserve adulation

All this bizarre praise and fanaticism for Edward Snowden is getting on my last remaining nerve.

All he accomplished by shooting off his mouth was to make it easier for terrorists to evade U.S. surveillance while plotting new ways to kill us, and to make American citizens who already were paranoid enough about their government even more so.

He stabs his own country — which he claims to love so much — in the back, just to make a name for himself.

Instead of being outraged, many Americans worship him like a god and hail him as a hero.

What an ironic society this has become.

Kevin Johnson

Downtown Honolulu

Kapalama Canal park fine as it is

Regarding Kapalama Canal Park, is the city out of its mind (“City wants Kapalama Canal park input,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 26)?

Build a park with what money, and make a place for homeless tents again to regroup?

It looks beautiful just the way it is. They just need to keep up with cutting the tall grass.

Art Mattingly

Mililani

New homes need more space for cars

Now that Ho‘opili is a done deal, the way developers design homes should be scrutinized more.

Garage openings next to sidewalks leave no room for extra cars, a horrid flaw forcing cars to park on the streets, where drivers need to stop to allow others to pass.

Today’s neighborhoods look like a crush of cars blocking driveways with neighbor-versus-neighbor complaints.

A better idea is to extend the garages to the back of the property line, allowing three or more cars to park in the driveway.

Yard space would decrease but sacrifices must be made for more civil and aesthetic neighborhood streets.

Lawrence T. Makishima

Pearl City

Red Hill explosion would be disastrous

Even a small fire around one of the 18 fuel tanks on Red Hill might result in a monumental explosion (“Navy hears from critics of its tanks on Red Hill,” Star-Advertiser, Oct. 7).

If one tank were to explode, the other tanks almost certainly would explode, too.

And if every tank were full, that explosion would be equal to a 2-billion-pound fuel bomb.

But if only one tank were to explode, and the others just leaked profusely, who would suck up all that fuel other than Mother Earth?

Fixing the water aquifer problem from a minuscule 27,000-gallon fuel leak is laudable but laughable when the scary problem could result in an explosion.

So empty the tanks and stop wasting money on protecting our aquifer with double-lined tanks and additional water-monitoring wells. Build single-lined tanks elsewhere.

Zario Zolo

Aiea