Letters to the Editor: 8-31-17

Money, money, money never enough

Question of the day: Don’t you enjoy spending your own money in a manner of your choosing? So why does government keep telling us when and how to spend our money?

Example: In this free country we are also entitled to live in a free state of our choice. In this case Hawaii. Living in Hawaii, one of the many freedoms we have is to fly over to Las Vegas and spend as much of our money frivolously and feverishly gambling it away to our content.

But yet sitting quietly at home here in Hawaii we are not allowed to spend one iota of our own money to purchase a lousy ticket that in one chance out of maybe one million chances you or I may be the winner of some $500 million. How silly. Yet anyone of us, if we are so inclined, can go to a selected corner in Hawaii and buy all the illegal drugs one might want. Tell me, is there justice here that I do not see?

And yet our illustrious state politicians in charge of our Hawaii deny us our right to purchase a simple lottery ticket while in the same breath they wish/want desperately to raise our taxes so as to pay for something, we on the outer islands, have and had nothing to do with (in this case a rail tax).

Please, someone tell me just what the state would have collected from a winning lottery ticket valued at, the latest I heard about was, $700 million. Whatever it is would have given our politicals enough cash for awhile.

I personally would wish to be free to purchase a lottery ticket (as many other states have allowed there constituents to do) by having the freedom to do unto my cash as I see fit.

Hugo von Platen Luder

Holualoa

Remember rail tax votes next election season

I oppose the Oahu rail tax on the Big Island.

It goes without saying that many here in the North and West Hawaii area are not in favor of sending tax money that we pay to help fund the careless and arrogant City and County of Honolulu bid for the most expensive rail per capita ever. Many are now starting to finally feel buyers remorse in electing an all Democratic party governing body.

If the rail is to continue, it needs to be funded by the City and County of Honolulu and not draw funds away from the outer islands.

Bail out after bail out continue and are encouraged by none the less than our current legislative representative representing Waimea, Waikoloa, North Kohala, Puako, and the greater South Kohala area. She is spearheading, not just getting behind, efforts in the state legislature to take funds away from the Big Island and give them as a gift to the Honolulu mayors office for his continued out-of-control spending with no oversight.

Remember, these actions by our representative. Let’s face it. There’s not much we can do to change our current state. We voted these same people into office time and again. We can’t let this happen. We need more people to voice their opposition by voting them out of their temporary office. That’s how this republic works. It’s best when we vote by our convictions rather than loyalty to party.

Jeffrey K. Coakley

Kapaau