My thanks to the officials who dreamed up a 15-cent-per-bag fee for things that you buy in a store. I very much appreciate them controlling my spending habits and those of others — not!
I have big hands and can carry a lot of groceries. Since bags are no longer free, I find that myself and others are now spending less when we go shopping.
People who thought up this horrible new fee do not know what it’s like to buy stuff and have to hold it without a shopping bag. I will not pay 15 cents. It’s the idea of it.
A cashier at Whole Food commented that people are buying less or only as much as will fill their own bags. Gone forever in Hawaii are the impulse buys that used to fill my shopping cart.
Jim Delmonte
Hawaii Kai
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City runs Chinatown like a slumlord
The city owns approximately 40 percent of Chinatown. It also runs the police, parks, planning and street-cleaning departments. It has the choice to run things well or like it doesn’t care, like a slumlord.
The city put a mental health and shower facility next to a homeless encampment and between two liquor stores, both drug-sale hotspots. It has ceded Aala Park and River Street to gangs, drugs and homelessness. Pauahi Street is the Wild West with street brawls, drugs, liquor, prostitution and vandalism 24/7.
It is unable to police the area effectively despite having a substation one block from the problems. Crime, violence and drugs are up and the city fiddles while Chinatown burns.
The city won’t keep Chinatown safe and clean. Slumlords don’t care about their tenants; they run down their buildings and neighborhoods and then buy up the surrounding ones when the tenants flee and prices drop. Then they make even more slums.
That’s how the city runs Chinatown, like a slumlord.
Enough already.
Oren Schlieman
Chinatown
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Court rules against ordinary people
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Janus v. AFSCME case is yet another strike for big money and a blow against the common citizen. It amazes me that so many ordinary people buy into the “conservative” ideals that tilt the playing field to those who already have wealth and power.
Recent years have seen the Citizens United ruling, which enables corporations to exert unlimited influence on our elections.
Last year saw Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to ban class-action lawsuits against banks and force consumers into binding arbitration. This May, the Supreme Court ruled employers can ban class-action lawsuits and require arbitration. The current administration continues to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Environmental Protection Agency, all for the sake of big business. Where is the little guy in all of these issues?
If workers don’t want to pay dues to a union to protect their interests, then they should bargain for and sign employment contracts on their own. When things get bad enough, maybe unions won’t be taken for granted anymore.
Paul Campbell
Waipahu
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Children separated from parents here
The media is awash with sensationalism regarding immigrant children separated from parents. In the U.S. at any time, 765,000 children are tearfully separated from sometimes single parents because of military duty, 2.7 million because of parental incarceration, millions because of divorces — with a mere 65 per day at the border.
Data show that of the 12,000 children separated at the border, parents voluntarily paid smugglers to transport 10,000 of them.
The real forgotten crisis, however, is the access of Hawaii’s children to their incarcerated parents. Currently there are more than 1,300 Hawaii inmates housed in Arizona and visitation is frequently denied at Halawa Correctional Facility because of inadequate staff or poor funding.
Hawaii’s politicians proudly grandstand regarding embracing even illegal immigrants, but where is their outrage regarding our own keiki’s tears? I haven’t seen any.
Gary R. Johnson
Kaneohe
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Congress ignores climate change
I read that Congress passed a $686 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2019, while allocating nothing to combat the effects of climate change.
Oh, I get it. We’ll deploy the new ships and aircraft to fight off drought, rising temperatures, severe storms, rising sea levels and climate-causing migrations.
How sad, how stupid, how shortsighted.
William Metzger
Manoa
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Russia looks good for summit talks
The Trump-Putin meeting in July will be a good thing.
My recent trip to beautiful Moscow, St. Petersburg and Volgograd convinces me. The Russian people were courteous, friendly, well-groomed and well-dressed. A young Russian man gave up his seat for me on the crowded Moscow Metro.
In St. Petersburg, a young Russian sailor eagerly took a selfie with me on the Cruiser Aurora on the Neva River. I saw few homeless, little graffiti and well-paved roads.
In Volgograd, a 279-foot-high “Mother Russia” statue and a huge, circular room housing an eternal flame memorialize the thousands of Russian casualties of the bloody 200-day World War II battle of Stalingrad.
Russia has shopping centers rivaling Ala Moana; they have McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and T.G.I. Fridays, Uber, smart phones, great internet connectivity and modern hotels. And both countries’ flags are red, white and blue.
So, I say: “Go Trump. Let’s make friends with Russia!”
Ray Graham
Waikiki
