Isn’t it ironic that those espousing stronger ethics and transparency are often the least ethical and transparent? One of the many promises Barack Obama made while campaigning was to have the most transparent administration ever and yet we’ve been witness to fib after fib for the last six years. And don’t you love the politically correct acronyms for lying; misspoken, misrepresented and misunderstood, etc.?
It’s become so bad, the rule of thumb these days is to believe the exact opposite of what our public leaders say. That way we know the Affordable Health Care Act really means your premiums will be higher and your coverage will be less and your deductibles will be through the roof. Investments on behalf of the middle class really mean higher taxes for everyone paying taxes. Promises that property taxes next year have not gone up leave out the part that valuations are higher, and so will your taxes be higher.
Mayor Billy Kenoi has been pushing tougher ethics standards in the county for the last two terms saying “the ethics reform is not targeted at a single county employee as much as it is just good public policy.” I imagine he was all in favor for the strict rules against using county-issued credit cards for personal purposes and especially not for the purchase of alcohol in Korean bars. But hey, what’s a little slip in judgment? He’s only human. And he takes “full responsibility for the purchases on his card,” whatever that means.
Let’s face it. If you or I behaved the way, which sadly many of our public officials do, we’d be in jail. Seriously, do you think if you owed more than $4 million in back taxes you’d have an open door to the White House and your own talk show? Not for an instant. Deliberately circumvent State Department laws regarding government documents? No problem. You could be our next president.
Kenoi reimbursed the county and has taken full responsibility for any error in judgment; so really, what difference does it make? I’ll tell you what difference it makes. To quote John Adams, America used to be a nation and “government of laws and not of men,” and that’s what sets us apart from every other country in the world, the shining city on the hill, as it were. It’s the reason why people are busting down our borders to get here. That and carte blanche to all entitlements, but in a few more years, in the absence of the rule of law and ethics, we won’t even know this country. And what’s true today is that we’ve become a nation of badly written laws, randomly enforced to favor those in power and their special interests.
Michelle “Mikie” Kerr is a resident of Waikoloa.
Viewpoint articles are the opinion of the writer and not necessarily the opinion of West Hawaii Today.