Hawaii is back to union control

Kudos to the Star-Advertiser’s editorial board for successfully persuading Hawaii voters to accept its suggested election choices.

As a result, the state government — both the executive and legislative branches — has been returned to union control and we’ve sent a meaningless voice to Washington to join the minority party in the House of Representatives.

A single-party system promotes arrogance in office and invites abuse of power.

Election reeked of negativity

Hooray! It’s over and I can rest my TV remote, which I overused because I changed the channel when those nasty, dirty, trash-talking, mud-slinging commercials for our top four candidates in the gubernatorial and congressional races came on.

I have lived here for 47 years and this has been by far the worst I’ve ever seen. The behavior of the top candidates was immature and childish.

Now it’s over and they will all hug each other and vow to work together as a team to improve our state.

It’s all bull. I have lost any respect I ever had for those four people, the so-called leaders of our beautiful island paradise.

Election day off is quite a perk

It should come as no surprise that a resounding 79 percent of respondents to the Star-Advertiser’s Big Q disagreed with giving state and city workers election day off ("Do you agree that city and state workers should have election day off so they can vote?" Star-Advertiser, Nov. 2).

What is surprising is that 21 percent actually agreed.

One can only surmise that most of the 21 percent were state and city workers themselves or people who benefit indirectly and who don’t want the government gravy train to end.

It’s amazing that it takes a government worker all day to vote while one from the private sector can vote before or after work or even by mail-in ballot.

Let’s hope we get real change

Now that Neil Abercrombie has been declared the winner of the gubernatorial race, is he really ready for the responsibility?

Hawaii needs action, and I’m looking forward to seeing how many of his plans will be put into effect.

It’s shocking to see that there was a huge gap between Abercrombie and Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona. The Democrats will be controlling Hawaii again.

Are we going to see real and visible change or another status quo?

Appeal to values is rightist ruse

David Brooks’ recent counsel to President Barack Obama centers on Obama’s need to respect what Brooks calls "the old-fashioned bourgeois values [of] order, self-discipline, punctuality and personal responsibility," and to heal "the venomous rift between the White House and business" ("Obama needs to fashion a centrist identity …" Star-Advertiser, Nov. 1).

However, some very prominent names should remind us as to who violates Brooks’ call for "old-fashioned bourgeois values": Enron, AIG, Lehman Bros., Arthur Anderson, Moody’s Bear Stearns, Tyco, GMC, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide.

Brooks’ celebration of small-business values and small government masks both the real economic power in this country and the real political agenda of the political right. 

Lingle did little to help Aloha Air

I want to set the record straight about Gov. Linda Lingle’s recent comments about Aloha Airlines ("Lingle decries ‘smear’ ad against Aiona," Star-Advertiser, Oct. 29).

Aloha Airlines executives met personally with Lingle on several occasions to seek support for Aloha Airlines and its 3,000 Hawaii employees. She was hardly interested in what we had to say, and was, in fact, supporting the entry of go! Airlines into the market, which proceeded to destabilize the local market with below-cost pricing. The clear intent of go!’s predatory pricing was to put Aloha, a 60-year-old Honolulu-based company, out of business.

The Lingle administration said it was unaware of the dire condition of Aloha, even though we had warned Lingle for several years about the disastrous results of an Aloha shutdown and its impact on the local economy and jobs.

For Lingle to say she helped Aloha by going to court — at the last minute — to argue against a shutdown, without having offered the slightest bit of financial assistance, was disingenuous at the least.