Letters | 7-3-14

Laws, lawyers and a burgeoning police state

With more than 15 million lawsuits filed annually, it’s no mistake that 80 percent of the world’s lawyers work in the U.S. — that’s where the business is. And our government is only too happy to feed the beast by churning out endless laws, rules and regulations. Despite the fact that our Constitution clearly intended for a separation of powers with three distinct branches of government, the federal, unelected bureaucracy has become a fourth branch of government.

One case in point is the Environmental Protection Agency, which has grown into an unwieldy monstrosity and a very dangerous weapon of the federal government virtually turning us into a police state where agencies and divisions of the government and their endless paper-pushing bureaucrats have near total control of our lives. Under Barack Obama, the EPA has issues 2,827 new final regulations equaling 19 times as many pages as the Bible.

Declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant is ludicrous. Tell it to the bazillion plants that need CO2 to live. And if it were true, tell it to the Chinese or the overpopulated subcontinent of India, but no, it is decided fact and we are reduced to subjects of the state at the mercy of an ever-centralized federal government that can in a flash destroy your business, fine you into ruin, render your personal property worthless and make you miserable for all eternity, not to mention kill jobs and growth.

The Hawaii state government is no different. Of nearly 250 bills submitted to Gov. Neil Abercrombie this past session something like 121 so far have been signed into law this year alone.

One very upsetting bill updating Hawaii’s emergency management statutes (105 pages and loaded with vague language, unlikely to have been read by most who voted to pass it) gives the governor or mayor, or those delegated by the governor or mayor, extreme powers such as the right to enter our homes without permission and seize items to prevent hoarding, waste or destruction of material commodities, to effectuate equitable distribution thereof. The usual social justice and inequality meme again. Such unlimited power of government is an outrage. Sen. Sam Slom often referred to as the “Slom Ranger,” warned his Senate colleagues of the dangers of this bill, yet it passed 24-1 in barely a blink of an eye and was signed into law for the protection of the people don’t you know, on June 20 by Abercrombie.

Is it too much to ask that our representatives actually look out for our interests, read the bills they vote on with an eye to preserving our liberties instead of always diminishing them? And how about for every law passed an equal number of existing laws being repealed? Most laws on the books are indiscriminately enforced anyway.

Michelle “Mike” Kerr

Waikoloa