Your editorial on monster houses was excellent and I will add to your comments: The easiest and fastest way to curb this type of building is to simply require an additional parking space for every bedroom (“Tough tools needed on monster houses,” Star-Advertiser, Our View, Dec. 3).
Lack of parking causes tremendous frustration and congestion. Parking is the most critical issue with housing and neighborhoods; it creates the most stress, as we have seen in the Kalihi Valley community. Regardless of rail transit, families will need their cars for shopping, medical visits and access to recreation.
In a typical home of three or four bedrooms, there is a two-car carport/garage with additional space for two cars in the driveway. So if someone wants to build 28 bedrooms, no problem — they must provide 28 parking stalls within their property lines. If they can’t fit them all in, then they cannot build 28 bedrooms. End of story.
Sometimes the simplest solution is staring us directly in the face.
Stephany L. Sofos
Principal, SL SOFOS
Waikiki
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Marijuana law unconstitutional?
Possession and cultivation of marijuana are illegal under both federal and Hawaii law. But you can violate those laws here, and not be penalized, if you have a medical marijuana card.
We don’t allow people to break other laws against nonviolent crimes. Yet our medical marijuana law (like those in other states) creates two unequal classes of residents: one that’s entitled to break the marijuana laws and the other that’s not. No other statute shields people from the consequences of breaking other laws against nonviolent crimes.
Suppose federal agents were to arrest a Hawaii resident with a medical marijuana card for violating federal statues — as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said he wants to do. Would the state provide him with counsel in federal court, or even file an amicus brief on his behalf? What would happen — as indeed it could — if some incident like this were to actually raise the issue of unequal treatment under the law? Are medical marijuana laws therefore unconstitutional?
Hal Glatzer
Hilo
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Travel ban story buried inside
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump’s travel ban to proceed in spite of Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin’s baseless attempt to stop it.
Why is it that the Star-Advertiser put the story way back on Page B1, and didn’t mention Chin’s name until the very last part of the story on Page B3 (“Trump travel ban to take full effect,” Star-Advertiser, Dec. 5)? You gave Chin’s baseless claims Page A1 coverage several times, including his photo.
Voters with minimal intelligence knew right from the beginning that Trump had every right to ban the countries involved, except of course, Chin, who clearly wasted our tax dollars fighting the ban while glorifying himself in his moment of shame. And for what?
Chin only wasted our tax dollars for his own personal beliefs. The lower courts can argue all they want. When all is said and done, the Supreme Court will approve the ban.
Frank DeSilva
Haleiwa
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High court shows Chin’s weakness
As a city prosecutor, Doug Chin handled my case when my purse was stolen. He did a great job.
As the state Attorney General, Chin spent $150,000 of our money to stay President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which the U.S. Supreme Court just lifted. Chin is the perfect example of the definition of the Peter Principle.
Joyce Almeida
Waimanalo
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Don’t subsidize U.S. sugar market
It’s time to end federal programs and subsidies handed to the U.S. sugar- producing industry. This is federal corporate welfare.
End the federal program, begun in 1934, that lowers production and artificially raises the U.S. market price for sugar. Let the price be set by free markets and not by federal government policy and taxpayer money used to implement federal price supports, and import quotas and tariffs. The consumer price for U.S.-grown sugar is double that on the average world market.
Sugar is not a health-promoting food. It is known to cause heart disease, and it is a primary cause of inflammation leading to other serious chronic diseases. While sugar producers get federal money to artificially prop up U.S. sugar prices, consumer pays with their tax, retail purchase and medical care money.
Elaine Tamashiro
Kaimuki
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Stop booms of illegal fireworks
It is so interesting that there is so much news coverage over a legally lighted tree on the east side of the island while illegal fireworks have been bursting around all of us, islandwide.
Why can’t anything be done to prevent these booms that are so loud and unexpected even the dog jumps out of his skin?
Teresita Knight
Waipahu
