GMO Bill anti-Science

Dear Editor,

I am quite concerned that the anti-science GMO Bill 361 passed unopposed in the final Hawai`i County Council vote, but hopeful that Mayor Kim’s thoughtful veto will not be overridden. Passage will be highly detrimental to agricultural research and to farming in Hawai`i County and to Hawai`i in general. It sends the wrong message to public and private funding groups that might be interested in investing in science-based research and development in Hawai`i County and the State.

Getting the reputation of being the “Anti Science County” may even affect appropriations and investment for the world class astronomy and alterative energy interests centered on Hawai`i Island, in addition to any agricultural or biological research projects. Funding agencies and corporations will be concerned that the Council or the State Legislature might pass additional restrictive legislation following Bill 361, should it pass into law. In my opinion, limiting the growing of GMO crops by farmers is inadvisable but the restriction on research has even larger ramifications for Hawai`i which counts the $140 million seed industry as its largest agricultural business.

Overriding Mayor Kim’s veto of bill 361 will receive world-wide attention and reflect negatively on Hawai`i Island and the State.

Robert Osgood

Vice President, retired

Hawai`i Agriculture Research Center

Turning government over to the crooks

Dear Editor,

The financial meltdown is a scary mess but it is not a reason to throw reason to the winds. If we get an all Democratic government, President and Congress, we will be turning over our lives to some of the main people who caused this crisis. The push to give mortgages to people who did not have the money to pay for them, came from the Democrats. Wall Street is more Democratic than Republican. Blaming the Republicans for deregulation is guff.

Carter passed the Community Investment Act, under Clinton the IBBEA of 1994 which repeals the interstate provisions of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 that regulated the actions of bank holding companies. By dropping regulations this ended up being the biggest contributing factor to this subprime problem, by dropping all regulations that limited low income people and small business from OVER borrowing.

Again in 1995 under Clinton: New Community Reinvestment Act regulations break down home loan data by neighborhood, income, and race; encourage community groups to complain to banks and regulators by allowing community groups that marketed loans to collect a brokers fee; Fannie Mae began receiving affordable housing credit for buying subprime securities FROM Community groups like Rainbow PUSH, ACORN, LaRaza, and other activist groups across the USA.

Again under Clinton in 1997: Fannie Mae eased the credit requirements to encourage banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Illegal Aliens were allowed to partake in what was originally only for low wage American citizens. It is estimated that 5 million subprime loans were approved for non-citizens. Most of these loans went into default. The latest culprits are Democratic Rep Barney Franks and Senator Chris Dodd.

Sandra Gray

Kapa`au, Hawai`i

Was race all about race?

Dear Editor,

I, and many other conservatives, are being accused of being racists because we did not believe Barack Obama is remotely qualified to be America’s next President. Not so!

Most conservatives wouldn’t vote for Obama regardless of whether he was white, black or any color in between. Personally, I have a dozen reasons why I believe Obama is either not qualified or has disqualified himself from the presidency. A few will suffice for now: He was a full blown, confessed “socialist” who thus does not support the “republican” form of government demanded in our founding documents. He is a security threat because of his alliances with known terrorists like Bill Ayers. Because of this, Obama probably couldn’t even get a high security job in our military or other national security departments; so why to be President?

Obama’s recent action in Iraq – telling a high official Iraq should not engage in any troop reduction policy while our weak and confused Bush is President -- was seditious and unworthy of any high office in our government.

I can name several much more qualified black leaders – Alan Keyes, JC Watts, et al – whom I and most conservatives would have voted for over John McCain.

Many liberals are going to vote for Obama because he is black, most liberals would vote for liberal Obama if he were as white and wouldn’t vote for John McCain if he was black. Historically, 95% of blacks have voted for liberal white Democrats.

Gerald Wright

Pahoa, Hawai`i

Why I rejected Obama

Dear Editor,

The best way to summarize my rejection of Barack Obama is not with historical events or philosophy, but with a line spoken by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.

Sam Spade loved the girl but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to trust her. He wanted to believe, and even tried to reason it through because each piece of evidence, in and of itself, did not provide definitive proof. But in the end, he had to rely on common sense because there were so many pieces of evidence, and they all pointed in the same direction.

Mrs. Obama, highly successful and 44 years old, stood up and announced to the world that for the first time, she was proud to be an American. There’s a chance that if Mrs. McCain said it, she would be greeted with divorce papers rather than hugs, kisses, and longing gazes and this, more than anything else, sums up the mindsets of our candidates.

No one person or institution is to blame for the economy because it was a triparatisan failure, and it will correct itself regardless of who is president because the same entities that caused it will fix it, and they will do so by learning from their mistakes. But our enemy is to blame for the war since they started it, and this must be our top priority because if we lose even one major battle, nothing else will matter.

I have looked into the eyes of stereotype liberals, and all I see is bubble gum. I would welcome their leaders in a world at peace and I might even have voted for them, but not today.

America’s greatness is in its past, and all we need to do is learn from its virtues as well as its mistakes. Conversely, it would be easier to fail because all we’d have to do is reject our past and wallow in self-loathing.

Fred Bilello, Pahoa, Hawai`i

Killing the Golden Goose?

Dear Editor,

Humans are born of infinite variety in potential talent and potential fortune. If this variety and potential is not suppressed, it produces a wide range of benefits to all. There is hardly a better illustration than The United States of America. Born of frustration over taxation without representation, the 13 original British colonies successfully rebelled and went on to create a society where individual competitiveness, ambition, integrity, and hard work counted as much or more than social or economic position artificially supported by autocracy.

The form of democratic republic we devised unleashed the greatest explosion of inventiveness, resource development and continental expansion ever witnessed. People of various backgrounds were for once freed to be self-reliant. It was far from easy.

Mistakes were made, fortunes won and lost, wars declared, promises broken, land taken from natives, land purchased from foreign countries, lands developed under great danger and sacrifice. There was piracy, murder, and all the usual skullduggery of flawed human beings.

But there were also a significant number of not-so-flawed citizens of more honest and compassionate character who risked all to expand industry in the East and build new societies out West. These were the hard working farmers, ranchers and private entrepreneurs that utilized the free competition of capitalism not as a tool for suppression but as a tool to uplift and improve the health and freedom of all.

That is what gave this nation the courage and strength to survive two world wars and many smaller wars and expand from 13 colonies to 50 states of industrial and scientific capacity never accomplished before in so short a time as 230 years.

Our general standard of living became the envy of the world. Our generosity was felt in many less fortunate countries. We were even willing to share our gift of freedom and prosperity with legal immigrants.

So why would anyone want to kill this golden goose?

Some are so convinced that America in its current form is evil enough that they would want to destroy it or drastically change it. These “social progressives” view self-reliance and rugged individualism as “dangerous”. They view laziness as a “misfortune” worthy of recompense out of the public treasury, and most particularly they view stultifying government bureaucracies as more qualified to run peoples’ lives than the people themselves. In short, they believe in a form of bureaucratic tyranny. They would confiscate the golden eggs and then choke the productive goose to death with taxes and blame everyone but themselves for the ensuing economic disaster.

Robert Williams,

Na`alehu, Hawai`i