Our ridiculous rail fiasco, Honolulu’s most mismanaged and over-budget project, dodges its required audit, with the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation saying there is no need “to muck around in the past and try to figure out what we did wrong … It’s more trying to get forward.”
Meanwhile, the state spends $150,000 hiring outside lawyers in a quixotic fight contesting President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
Regardless of how you feel about Trump, it makes no sense for Hawaii to showboat with this litigation and “sanctuary state” declarations. Several other states are already doing likewise — let them lead. And how foolish for the state to prick at Trump’s notoriously retaliatory nature while the city asks his federal transportation authority for more than $1 billion for rail.
Government’s two primary functions are public safety and public works (i.e., handling dilapidated public spaces, homelessness, potholes). Instead of fulfilling these basic responsibilities, our single-party politicians pursue false personal agendas.
Private businesses never operate in such foolish fashion. Only government’s travesty defies requirements for common sense, fiscal responsibility, or even basic arithmetic.
Bradley A. Coates
Waikiki
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Let fish live where nature intended
Save our fish friends. The little, colorful ones that have been lifted out of the water to serve out the rest of their limited lives in little tanks.
It profits the few, and banishes them forever from the eyes of Hawaii’s people. Nature has been stripped of its tropical fish, and commercial value has been deemed more valuable and influential in the Legislature than beauty itself, which is far more valuable than money. Those influences continue to strip Hawaiian waters of tropical fish.
People who grew up here know that our colorful fish-friend populations are down and dwindling. My weekly ocean swims show me that their numbers are smaller than the fish themselves.
Harvesting should be stopped, and not just limited, to allow the return of the fish to all ocean locations. Tropical fish contribute to making Hawaii a unique and beauty-filled place.
Amy Brown
Kaimuki
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Trump’s actions embarrass America
Carl Sagan once wrote, “The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
By deliberately denigrating people, President Donald Trump reveals the self-serving bias of a pompous and mendacious tyrant. How can he expect honor, respect and trust when he lacks integrity? His chronic and unceasing offensive and defensive actions and words are without forethought, and bringing, perhaps not to himself, but embarrassment to America.
It surmounts previous scandalous presidencies.
Congressional silence enables Trump to inflate his chronic unabashed conceit.
In his scurrilous shadow, members of Congress divert many Americans toward a tabloid presidency rather than to the issues important to the lives of their constituents.
With their silence, the bully takes center court, with congressional jesters to humor the masses.
Noella A. Takai
Makiki
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President shouldn’t need job training
It seems a daily occurrence that President Donald Trump makes offensive or incorrect statements. Then the White House staff must send out someone to explain “what the president really meant” by his statement.
Recently their excuse for these misinterpretations is because this is the first president with no military or political experience.
Have people forgotten that the reason he lacks military experience is because he escaped the draft with a foot problem and a letter from his doctor? Of course, if you ask him now, he can’t remember what the problem was or even what foot it was.
As for political experience, when did the office of president of the United States become an on-the-job position to gain political experience?
Carol Schmus
Mililani
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Two immigrants took different paths
Two articles in the Star-Advertiser should be required reading.
The front page featured Andres Agana Ortiz, the Kona coffee farmer who is facing deportation for being in the United States illegally since he was 15 (“Running short on time,” Star-Advertiser, July 2). He is obviously not a threat and is an asset to the community. He is now 43. Nowhere have I read anything as to why he has never become a citizen of the United States in 28 years. So why hasn’t he?
The second article is by Jalil Dawood, a refugee from Iraq and now a “proud” American citizen (“Despite fuss, screening process protects us all,” Star-Advertiser, Insight, July 2).
He favors the travel ban and comments that the Obama administration’s ban favored Muslims over Christians when there was genocide taking place against Christians in the Middle East. Furthermore, his bans were on the same countries President Donald Trump has targeted.
I realize Dawood went through lengthy proper procedures and did not enter illegally, but there are avenues Ortiz could have used and become a citizen years ago.
Shirley Hasenyager
Kailua
