A need for a free people
Today, Wednesday, Feb. 19, marks the 78th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing into law Executive Order 9066.
It allowed the United States, the bastion of freedom for the entire world, to lock up and send over 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were U.S. citizens, to confinement camps spread across many states, including our own.
And what was their crime? They were Japanese — a proud people. It was an ugly chapter in our country’s history, and it was made uglier when the U.S. Supreme Court said it was OK.
On Monday, West Hawaii Today ran an editorial about the absolute need for a free press. I would argue that there is an absolute need in these crazy times for a free people … a people free to express their opinions without backlash or punishment and a people free to peacefully protest for the protection of their way of life and their religion. Think Maunakea.
Sean Gallagher
Waikoloa
Make it easy to do the right thing
Please help me understand. We all want to protect our environment from pollution, and most of us want to do the right thing. Then why is is so difficult for residents and visitors to recycle their plastic bottles and containers when they’re finished with them?
I was at a community festival and there were no recycle bins anywhere — and trash bins were full of recyclable bottles, bags, wrappers and food containers.
The same pattern is repeated along our busy streets and at shopping centers — plenty of trash cans but no recycle bins
Why not make it easy to do the right thing, reduce pollution and clean up our towns? Surely this is easy to do and costs little.
Joe LaCugna
Kailua-Kona
What’s the compromise?
Mayor Harry Kim is asking TMT for another two-month extension in hopes of a compromise. For what? TMT wants to build, which it has a legal right to do, and the protesters don’t want anything built. What possible compromise could there be? Ridiculous.
Jim Lomonaco
Kailua-Kona
We should be grateful
to President Trump
Although I am in no way a Donald Trump supporter, there are certain things for which we should be grateful to the president.
Before the Trump administration, we were not aware that:
1. The absolute power of clemency and pardon is susceptible to use for obviously guilty criminals and cronies.
2. Much of the Constitution’s power to restrain abuses rests solely on the exercise of good faith by all parties.
3. The absence of any sense of shame by an officeholder makes us all vulnerable to whim and fiat.
4. Rules against nepotism no longer apply to the executive branch.
5. When the Senate majority is of the same party as the president, the threat of possible impeachment can be nil.
6. The idea of presidential decorum is now simply quaint.
7. The president and his cabinet can function as a conspiracy.
8. Politics is too important in this republic to be left to the politicians.
9. Money cannot buy decency.
10. Rage and chaos can completely disrupt our public discourse.
11. Presidential immunity to lawsuits can be used to shield arrogant and self-righteous behavior.
12. Four years is too long in this fast-moving world for the voters to correct an obvious and egregious error.
Without Trump, we all thought so much better of ourselves and our government. Now we can see the bottom.
John Sucke
Waimea
