We have so many questions for Gordon Fowler (“Progressives Opens in a new tab feeling what rest of us Opens in a new tabfelt Opens in a new tab,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Dec. 20).
After the 2008 and 2012 elections, did he really experience the dread that many of us — particularly people of color, women, and LGBTQ individuals — felt after the election of Donald Trump? Let’s be real: Whatever your politics, you can’t deny that Barack Obama is a serious intellectual who ran two inclusive and positive campaigns.
Meanwhile, Trump called Mexicans rapists, repeatedly maligned a Gold Star family, proudly admitted to sexual assault, and recklessly stoked Islamophobia, racism and sexism.
How can Fowler be hopeful about a president who feuds with television shows, treats women like objects, staffs the White House with billionaires and white nationalists, still refuses to release his tax returns, dismisses climate change as a hoax, knows very little of the world and does not care to learn?
And which version of the Constitution does Fowler aspire to resurrect, exactly? The one that enshrined slavery and allowed states to deny the vote to everyone except white, land-owning men? We’ll pass.
Lindsay Wilhelm
Marcy Wilhelm
Waipahu
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Benghazi, health care cost Clinton
There were many reasons why we elected Donald Trump, but I will note just two (“Figure Opens in a new tab out why we elected Opens in a new tabTrump Opens in a new tab,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, Nov. 17).
For the people affected by Obamacare, how would you like to look at your monthly bank statement and see that you’re paying more for your health care premiums than your mortgage? President Barack Obama said you need to clean the windshield to see what’s ahead. They did, and it was higher premiums.
The second reason was Benghazi. As a Marine recruit in boot camp and throughout my career, it was embedded in my mind and my soul: “Leave nobody behind.” Unfortunately, that’s what happened at Benghazi. Obama and Hillary Clinton left four Americans behind. That was my reason for not voting for Clinton to be our commander in chief. Her response was, “What difference does it make … ?”
It has been dim for eight years. The only good thing was the stock market, but how many of us are in the stock market?
Think positive and good things will happen.
Albert Miral
Ewa Beach
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Change bus routes to avoid homeless
The City and County of Honolulu can easily make the city more presentable to tourists arriving or leaving by bus.
Bus routes 19 and 20 (Airport/Waikiki Beach hotels) go right on Iwilei Road, thus putting on display all the homeless people camped out on the sidewalks surrounding the area. Why not switch the bus route to Alakawa Street, which allows for stops at the same destinations on the current routes, while eliminating the eyesore of the homeless and their makeshift tents?
Don Ching
Kapaa, Kauai
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Keep Hawaiian blood quantum rule
I am not in favor of reducing the Hawaiian blood quantum requirement to 1/32 Hawaiian for the transfer of leases to relatives. I am in favor of the current requirement of 25 percent Hawaiian.
To qualify for Hawaiian Homes land, a person needs to be at least 50 percent Hawaiian. There are 27,000 qualified applicants on the wait list. These people have waited many years to obtain a lease and may not get a lease during their lifetime because Native Hawaiians on the wait list have died while waiting.
They deserve priority before land is transferred to someone who is only 1/32 Hawaiian.
Those who are objecting to the current 25 percent transfer requirement should be extremely grateful for all the years they lived on Hawaiian Homes property.
I am three-eighths Hawaiian. My late mother, Hannah Bailey Pang, was three-fourths Hawaiian. My grandmother Hannah Kaholowaa Kamahele Bailey was pure Hawaiian.
I do not qualify for Hawaiian Homes property, but I am very concerned about those who qualify, are not given a fair chance to obtain such property, and are on the wait list of 27,000.
Bertha Pang Drayson
Wailuku, Maui
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Rail funds belong to us, not the state
State Rep. Sylvia Luke’s comment regarding rail funding is outrageous (“New Opens in a new tab federal deadline for rail is a curveball for the Opens in a new tabcity Opens in a new tab,” Star-Advertiser, Dec. 19).
She said it’s “wishful thinking” if the city thinks that “the state is just willing to give them $4 billion more.”
The state is not giving us anything. It is returning our own tax money to us (minus the 10 percent theft of the tax by the Legislature).
The Legislature must extend the rail tax on ourselves and return to us the funds to complete the rail.
Stephen A. Ugelow
Hawaii Kai
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Addiction to phones hurts conversation
Having young people on buses, sidewalks, restaurants and classrooms locked into ear buds and cell phones, playing games or listening to music, seems a harbinger of the dismal future.
While it may be cute that a 5-year-old can work a cellphone better than my technologically challenged self, too many kids are addicted to ear buds and cell phones, and merely postponing the inevitable hearing loss.
How ironic that students know how to work all that techno stuff, but still struggle to write an essay, and fear reading a book or just plain conversing with their families.
Communication hasn’t improved. The perception is that we talk more, but qualitatively, something more than hearing loss will be lost, never to return.
Peter Tali Coleman Jr.
Makiki
