Lawmakers out of touch with voters

Lee Cataluna’s column hit a home run for the middle-class voters (“Voices of working folk have grown eerily quiet,” Star-Advertiser, March 5).

The locals in Hawaii are squeezed so tightly with different forms of taxes, fees, regulations and mandates. What she failed to mention was the aftermath of the quiet anger. Our local government continues to think that we will dish out the kala because we love our home and our relatives enough to robotically work (sometimes two jobs) and pay taxes while our elected officials happily spend.

They are so out of touch with their constituents they are unable to see the societal ebb and tide. The wealthy are moving into Hawaii while the locals are moving to the mainland, to states that do not have income tax. The minority loudmouths are suppressing the locals, who will either quietly move away or cause a tectonic shift in the 2018 election.

What Cataluna expressed is what mainlanders felt for the past decade. For this very reason, they chose Donald Trump as our president. Our local government should wake up or meet the hatchet in two years.

Stella Yasuda

Aiea

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Journalism reduced to talking pundits

We have far more media outlets today than back in the 1960s, when we had three major television networks and PBS.

But in those days, marketing money was far more concentrated and that enabled deeper investigative journalism. Today it is just cheaper to have opinion talk, President Donald Trump as a reality TV star, and endless charges of racism and sexism.

If the discourse seems to have cheapened, it is because it has — literally.

Lloyd Lim

Makiki

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Taxpayers pay for every city service

I have to take exception to the Star-Advertiser editorial, “Rein costs before raising city taxes” (Our View, March 5). In attempting to rationalize the city budget plan to begin charging a double tax for trash pickup, the editorial says that “the city is still subsidizing at least part of the costs.”

The city is not subsidizing anything. Otherwise, paying for police, fire and lifeguards also would be subsidies. Honolulu citizens have been paying the whole amount for city trash collection from the beginning. Property taxes have never been higher and the city continues to be rewarded through increased property values every year since Mayor Kirk Caldwell was first elected.

Charging twice for trash pickup is unfair.

Mary Monohon

Kailua

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Single-payer health system still the best

President Donald Trump’s health care plan should be a non-starter. Health savings accounts and tax credits? Fifty percent of working Americans make less than $30,000 a year. How are they going to afford a savings account?

As for tax credits, you have to wait over a year for those, so how does one pay for health insurance? Policies sold across state lines? That is laughable. Companies will go to a state with the least regulations and churn out cheap policies that have to be used in their network. Go outside the network and you pay 100 percent.

The only workable plan for America’s $3.2 trillion spent on health care is single-payer universal coverage like the rest of the world. In Canada, overhead costs are 1 percent. Medicare’s overhead is 2 percent. One-third of our health costs are administrative. That would disappear, saving billions of dollars annually.

It is astounding Americans allow this travesty to continue.

Jim Quimby

Kamehameha Heights

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Inflexible red-light law not practical

Justice and fairness are rarely found in an unthinking rigid application of any law.

Even something seemingly as simple as running a red light may occur under mitigating circumstances: Perhaps a driver preparing to stop at an intersection notices that a following vehicle is so close that proceeding through a yellow light is a safer alternative, but he misjudges the timing by a fraction of a second and enters the intersection as the signal changes to red. If no one has been endangered, this may have been the safer action.

To those who think red-light cameras and draconian fines achieve justice, I quote Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Good men must not obey the laws too well.”

John Keiser

Makiki

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Don’t dump garbage in only 1 location

Regarding, “Planning panel gives city OK to use the landfill till it’s filled” (Star-Advertiser, March 2): Seriously?

How tall a mountain should “till it’s filled” measure? Condos are coming up everywhere. Where is all the garbage going? Why should a single neighborhood be the dump for the entire island?

It is time that every area of this island handle its share of garbage disposal. Sewage and garbage should be discussed while building up a neighborhood, just the way builders prepare for schools and parks.

Split the island up into pieces, and have each piece figure out where its garbage should go and how that will be handled. Perhaps that will make the many who dump carelessly more aware of what they purchase and throw away.

The west side of the island has consumed enough of the island’s garbage. Put it elsewhere.

Pamela Nakagawa

Pacific Heights

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Fight back to protect our environment

Your personal well-being of health is under attack. The Environmental Protection Agency is being dismantled, and recently it was reported the new administrator met with gas, oil, electric and political groups to reverse safety regulations.

It was reported recently that Fukushima nuclear power plants continue to leak radiation and contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. We have problems here with GMOs and chemicals such as chlorpyrifos.

As consumers, we still have some control over our health and the environment we want to live in. Support organic food and green energy.

Chris Jansen

Mililani