Don’t give A&B water permit

This is 2016, and yet it seems that the oppressive and tyrannical days of The Big Five over the lives and livelihood of Hawaiians are not over.

If they were, then the small farms in East Maui would not be begging for water for their taro and crops to survive. Alexander & Baldwin’s entire history is one of privilege at the expense of hardworking local people. The Board of Land and Natural Resources should not grant A&B’s request for a new temporary permit to continue to divert water from public streams.

Sugar cane is no longer an excuse, but A&B still wants to keep the public water from the people. The BLNR’s approval would not only be environmentally criminal, but socially and economically unfair to farmers and fishermen. Show A&B that they are no longer in control.

Denise Boisvert

Waikiki

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Don’t validate nutty theories

It’s beyond me why the Star-Advertiser would help promote wild conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton (“Trump’s agenda better than Clinton’s,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Dec. 8).

The country has enough problems as it is. For example, a president-elect who spent years promoting the theory that Barack Obama was not born in America; and a director of the Environmental Protection Agency who is a climate- change denier.

Meanwhile, the national security adviser nominee and his family are peddling nutty theories about how Islamic law is taking over America and the Clintons are running a child sex abuse ring out of a pizzeria in Washington.

What the country needs now is to deal with facts, not right-wing conspiracy theories.

Thomas Wills

Kaimuki

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Stop supporting prison industry

Thank you for publishing Lorenn Walker’s commentary (“Invest in ways to keep people out of prison,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Dec. 6). It makes a lot of sense and I hope people will pay attention to it.

I consider the prison-industrial complex to be one of the greatest threats to freedom in this country.

When I was growing up, the Soviet Union was supposed to have had the highest incarceration rate in the world. That was supposed to be a major difference between a free country like ours and a communist country. Sadly, times have changed. Today, the United States leads the world in locking up its own citizens.

Now Hawaii is talking about a new correctional facility. Why? To continue feeding the almighty prison-industrial complex, in which a few become rich off the misery of others?

A new facility should not even be considered until alternatives to our current ineffective judicial system are fully explored. Portugal was smart when it decriminalized drugs. We should follow its example.

Erick Ehrhorn

Kailua

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DOE incapable of nimble change

Gov. David Ige should have appointed members to his ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) task force who are committed to his campaign promise of empowering schools. They recently released a draft “Blueprint for Education,” which contains aspirational statements about school empowerment, but no plan for achieving it.

School empowerment requires a restructuring of Hawaii’s public school system, because the way in which an organization is structured affects its capacity to respond to a changing environment.

Hawaii’s school system is structured in the style of a highly bureaucratic model developed in the 1800s to operate factories. It can work in an environment that changes slowly because it adapts slowly.

School systems, of course, operate in environments of constant change. They need modern structures that adapt quickly in dynamic environments.

Although “Blueprint for Education” contains worthy educational objectives, it relies on an obsolete organizational structure that cannot possibly achieve them.

John Kawamoto

Kaimuki