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Letters to the Editor

Options for fleecing tourists, short-term landlords endless

It is that time of year when the mayor and governor get together to figure out how to extort every last dollar, through taxes and fees, from the tourists and short-term rentals. They can price-gouge the tourists and short-term rentals because these two groups don’t vote, so they can abuse them with impunity. This will start with the short-term rentals with already onerous real estate taxes probably going up a debilitating 30, 40 or 50 percent. They will say this is justified by the Lahaina fire, but they would have done it anyway. Real estate taxes for locals will remain ...

Mysterious causes for history’s darkness?

Looking around in high places and low, one observes the quality of consciousness of enormous numbers of our brothers and sisters. Seeking an answer or cause for what one observes, one might arrive at this conclusion: There has been a derangement and hyperstimulation of human sexuality causing a great number of human souls to reincarnate before they had assimilated and integrated previous experience, knowledge and wisdom. Such people, not just the throwbacks, are simply unprepared for rapidly changing modern life and relationships. As such, some might turn to crime; others might ...

Kind of guy we need running the country

The Trumpies are banging on Joe Biden to do something about illegal immigration. To do the job safely and efficiently and humanely, thousands of new hires will have to be recruited and interviewed and trained. Federal employees will have to be re-assigned from other posts. Each one has to be checked to see what kind of a record he or she has. Then someone has to compute how much of a relocation allowance they will get. Doctors and nurses have to be recruited in adequate numbers and there is a serious shortage of nurses. And probably most of these new hires will be members of a ...

Newspaper’s staffer deserves state-wide honor

Matthew Thayer is a terrific photographer and an excellent writer for The Maui News. The picture of the Lahaina Banyan Tree and the article that accompanied it Feb. 18 was the best photo that I have seen in The Maui News. The Banyan Tree conveys so much warm feelings and meaning, and carries with it the promise of a bright future for Lahaina. As someone who was born and raised in a plantation camp in Lahaina, I learned at an early age how to climb coconut trees, mango trees, avocado trees and papaya trees to pick the fresh and delicious fruits from them. Consequently, it was ...

Homes and condos are for residents, not visitors

Thank you, Gov. Josh Green, for having stood in the face of substantial opposition regarding your decision to re-open West Maui in the wake of the Lahaina fire. To have kept West Maui closed to visitors indefinitely would have added more economic burden to the already disastrous and long-term effects of the cataclysmic fire. It’s both sad and disheartening to see friends born and raised in Maui making the difficult decision to leave their island home. The Lahaina fire made a long-standing workforce housing crisis much worse. The problem can be traced back to the advent ...

Add disposal fee to purchase of all items hard to dispose

Thoughtless and destructive consumerism is running rampant in our country. Our gullible citizens cannot seem to resist any temptations and fear-induced slick advertisements. These manipulative messages are incessantly equating accumulating of material gadgets to happiness and good life. How many of us have now our garages full of junk that we hardly use? We leave our expensive autos to be parked outside in the elements and are even renting storage space since we have run out of storage in our homes. However, the latest controversy on how best to dispose huge toxic waste ...