So the Board of Water Supply wants us to voluntarily cut water usage by 10%? Good luck with that.

You think the thousands of inconsiderate scofflaws who blow bombs and illegal aerials all year long will do it? They don’t care.

How about the thousands of drivers with expired safety checks, no registration and insurance? Think they’ll do it? Or the dozens of residents in those 15-bedroom monster homes? Let’s also not forget about all the obnoxious, attention-craving noisemakers on their motorcycles and racer cars, too. Will they do it?

Come to think of it, will our military residents conserve water? How are we going to get 10 million tourists a year to conserve water? And we’re still approving the construction of 3,000-plus homes at Koa Ridge, 15,000-plus in Kapolei, and all those 400-foot luxury condo towers in Kakaako? Crazy!

Instead of thinking wishfully and hoping for the best, think again. Get ready for mandatory water restrictions.

Brian Yamane

Moanalua

How many must suffer before we finally act?

As people across the country wrapped up their taxes for the year, we members of the Hawaii Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines are thinking of the thousands of Filipinos who have been tortured, arrested and murdered without the benefit of trial. Our tax dollars continue to support the military and police who commit these extrajudicial killings and other grave human rights violations.

The United States’ moral, political and financial support for Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration and its security forces have enabled these crimes against the Filipino people — arguably crimes against humanity — to persist and proliferate.

To date, none of our Hawaii federal representatives stepped up when we asked them to condemn these actions. Nor have they joined a growing number of their colleagues in Congress in sponsoring the Philippine Human Rights Act or held officials who are responsible for grave human rights violations accountable for their unlawful acts via the Magnitsky Act.

How can we claim to center human rights in our foreign policy, yet turn a blind eye to the growing human rights crisis in the Philippines?

Yoko Liriano

Waipahu

Mary Ochs

Waikiki

Forgiving student debt a way to buy votes

James Roller referenced jobs and student loan debt data, saying, “There are 45 million student debt borrowers totaling $1.75 billion” (“Debt forgiveness, free money not good moves,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, April 18).

The actual student loan debt is $1.75 trillion — not billion. Every student loan borrower signed a contract agreeing to his or her loan and repayment terms.

Roller’s concerns are fully warranted, as it does appear our president may soon cancel some or all student debt with just a stroke of his pen and not through the legislative branch, which is the only branch of government with this authority.

It seems the outright buying of votes with taxpayer cash has become normalized.

America is now over $30 trillion in debt, and this crushing debt costs everyone in terms of higher inflation, taxes, interest rates and retail prices. I strongly encourage everyone to write their congressional representatives to rein in executive branch power and forbid its use for what amounts to blatant autocratic partisan political gain at taxpayer expense.

Scott Brown

Keeau, Hawaii island

Thiessen’s dissemblance on Biden, Thomas

Just when I thought we’d put the damper on the excesses of “wokeism,” “cancel culture,” “police defunding” and the adolescent-style deflections of “whataboutism,” here we go again with Marc Thiessen’s blindly partisan dissemblance equating whatever it is that happened (how long ago?) with Hunter Biden in Ukraine to a Supreme Court justice (evidently) providing cover for his spouse who is in the act of trying to bring down the government (“If [Clarence] Thomas has to recuse himself, what about Biden?” Star-Advertiser, April 8).

Please! I have trouble reading Thiessen anyway, but in this case I couldn’t get past the second paragraph’s reference to “just cover for another attempted takedown of a respected conservative jurist.”

Is that all it is? What the world needs now is definitely not more of what Thiessen keeps trying to sell us.

Jared Wickware

Kalihi Valley

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