Letters to the editor: 05-25-18

Guard your wallets, taxpayers

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported on a subject that should alarm all of us overburdened taxpayers, “Housing boom then a volcanic eruption.”

Hawaii’s Legislature creates a perverse incentive to live in high-risk lava zones. This article shows that in 1991, Hawaii state government created a nonprofit Hawaii Property Insurance Association to provide policies to people who could not afford to buy them on the open market. There was a very good reason that the open market had priced people out! Hello, state government! Did you forget Kalapana?

Hawaii forced private insurers to join the HPIA or they could no longer do business in Hawaii, and then required insurers to pool their resources to subsidize policies in lava zones 1 and 2. Bang, housing boom right in the middle of a rift zone.

Our state Legislature was morally bankrupt to put all these people in harm’s way with a false narrative that they were safe. Short-term gain in tax receipts! This is a heartbreaking economic disaster for the people directly impacted by the evolving eruption that should have and could have been avoided.

As you read in the West Hawaii paper on May 23, please look at Ms. Sako’s comment on finding $7 million to pay for the lost tax revenue because of all the destroyed homes. Do any of our elected officials ever wonder why the taxpayers have had enough?

The greed and incompetence of our public officials is almost as bad as those of California. I sometimes think our elected officials call California to get instructions on what stupid thing to do next. Maybe we can ask them for some help with our homeless situation that just got a whole lot worse.

Guard your wallets everyone, because, well, you know the rest. No one in government will lose a job and they will not avoid raising your taxes, because that is what they do!

Bob Johnson

Kailua-Kona

Faith Americans won’t fall for lies

The political commentary that I read and hear is quite explicit that President Trump’s accusations of “spying” by the FBI and of a deep state anti-Trump presence in the Justice Department are examples of a so-called big lie technique, which uses unsupported accusations loudly and frequently repeated.

This same commentary also says this technique is having successful results to some degree with Republican congressmen and the president’s voting base. I was at first dismayed over this estimate of the president’s propagandistic success. However, it occurred to me that opinion polls concerning the president’s character have continued to yield negative results.

For example, in the latest poll that I have seen (an SSRS poll of March 22-25), 59 percent of respondents thought that President Trump was not honest and trustworthy, and 58 percent thought that he did not respect the rule of law. These results give me some confidence that even if the president continues to succeed in sowing public distrust of the FBI and DOJ, the public will not reject the incriminating reporting that is bound eventually to emerge from the Mueller investigation regarding the president’s collusion with the Russians during the election campaign and his attempts at obstruction of justice.

I have some confidence that basically the public simply will not believe the denials of a person it believes to be dishonest, untrustworthy, and contemptuous of the law.

Mike Keller

Kailua-Kona