Almost every candidate for office has placed a priority on addressing homelessness and affordable housing. Voters are being wooed to support the candidate based on their solutions to address or resolve these issues.

Residents often hear of terrible and hurtful incidents in our communities. The struggles are real for residents, intergenerational families with keiki, fixed and low-income people who are disabled, chronically ill and kupuna. Wage earners are forced to live in stress by working multiple jobs and living paycheck-to-paycheck. Stress is not good for the soul.

I challenge all the candidates, win or lose, to work together after the election, take your campaign solutions to heart and be visible in the community. Volunteer for nonprofit organizations like the River of Life Mission. Continue to walk the district. Talk to your constituents. May all the candidates make aloha and pono their way of life.

Calvin Hara

Kaimuki

Negative flyers unfairly attack Sylvia Luke

The mail brought not one, but two expensive flyers from the political wing of the Hawaii Carpenters union. Both mailers were filled with lies about state Rep. Sylvia Luke, candidate for lieutenant governor and for years one of Hawaii’s best and most effective legislators.

The union wants to defeat Luke because she opposed the creation of a permanent tax on Oahu residents to pay for the rail transit project. But instead of calling for honest debate, this shell committee is trying to smear Luke. I hope voters will not be fooled by these vicious and false attacks on an exceptional public servant.

Jim Loomis

Haiku, Maui

Term limits would cut corruption, negativity

I believe a way to make political campaigns cleaner is to have term limits. We all know most politicians start off with good intentions, but we all know power corrupts. Let them campaign on their merits and ideas, and not the negative things we are seeing in government now.

Let people serve for a period of time and do their best for the people of Hawaii, and then let a new group of people serve. Every year we fail to introduce term limits because people in government don’t want to give up their golden eggs, and so we have all this negative campaigning.

Ernie Itoga

Waialae

No one prepared for shutdown of coal plant

The closing of the AES coal-fired electric power plant on Sept. 1 will set a dangerous precedent for Oahu (“7% surge in Oahu electric bills projected next month,” Star-Advertiser, Aug. 7). Shutting down the 180-megawatt plant that provides 10% of Oahu electrical power was planned years ago, yet Hawaiian Electric has yet to come up with replacement renewable energy. Oahu likely will have brownouts and even some blackouts. And all of this is without considering the all-electric train that is supposed to begin operations within the next five years.

Hawaiian Electric claims that the $15 increase in monthly cost will be for the “typical” user at 500 kilowatt-hours a month. They don’t use the term “average.” I don’t believe any family living in a single-family home uses any less than 1,000 kilowatts a month.

I don’t think it’s worth the danger of losing power throughout the island to make environmentalists feel good.

Mary Monohon

Kailua

Democracies not afraid to prosecute leaders

Donald Trump and his supporters claim the search of his estate makes the U.S. look like a Third-World country. On the contrary, in Third World and autocratic countries like Nicaragua, Russia and China, there are no investigations of leaders.

Former prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Ehud Olmert (Israel) and Francois Fillon (France) are just some of the democratically elected leaders who have been investigated and convicted of crimes committed while in office.

In First-World democracies, wrongdoing by leaders is investigated and can lead to convictions. The fact that Mar-a-Lago was searched by the FBI demonstrates the U.S. remains a functional democracy and no one, not even an ex-president, is above the law.

By making false claims, Trump, his supporters and right-wing media only further erode the public’s faith in law enforcement agencies and other institutions vital to our democracy.

John Williamson

Manoa

UH campus should have a football stadium

It is obvious that a new 30,000-seat football stadium should be built at the University of Hawaii’s lower campus, rather than requiring fans to drive 10 to 12 miles away to watch football games.

There’s room around Cooke Field; a good architectural and engineering team can achieve a triumph. Then the school’s baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, swimming, track and field and wrestling teams can compete at the school’s campus.

To have to drive all the way to Halawa kills the spirit.

Stuart N. Taba

Manoa

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