Politicians kill
Politicians kill
Everyone knows ill-advised political decisions can brutally kill people in bad wars, but they also kill them just as brutally in numerous other ways … and I’m not just talking about killing people via legalizing killing by abortion or AIDS!
The front page of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald (Feb. 6) represents just such a case. First we have the headline “Tax relief is brewing,” which tells us all about how our legislators are going to make the production of booze by small producers more profitable for them. Well, that just means you will see more dead bodies at the morgue and more armless, legless and disfigured people amongst our state’s surviving children and adults. They are no less dead, maimed and crippled by their DUI enemies, who were aided and abetted by our politicians, than those we see coming back in body bags and wheel chairs from Iraq and Afghanistan. But let’s add even more political insult to this injury.
We have another headline article on the front page of the same HT-H, this little contradictory piece of poppycock: “CVS is quitting smoking.” Well, besides the fact that Longs is removing a product that doesn’t intoxicate or brutally kill and maim people on our highways, nor does it do half the damage they concoct as per passive smoke, they will not be stopping peddling the same booze that is daily killing and maiming your loved ones across this land. Wow, go figure! (And this is all politically allowed and assisted as well … read on.)
In keeping with the political insanity that’s deliberately, with knowledge aforethought, going to add even more dead people and maimed bodies to this “political war on the population,” these loony legislators are going to legalize another deadly recreational drug: marijuana. … They insist it isn’t as bad as booze, but will more deaths due to “drugged driving” be better for Hawaii? They also insist it will bring in more money to Hawaii. But, of course, this ignores the history of how booze and all recreational drugs take around $6 from us — for death, medical, mental, family, social costs — for every dollar these “sin taxes” bring to the politicians’ piggy banks.
Oh, by the way, your voting record says a lot about how much your children’s lives are worth to you?
Gerald Wright
Pahoa
Give CVS credit
When CVS took over the downtown Longs Drugs, I went in for my familiar purchase, glue mouse traps, little sticky gadgets.
“Nope,” said the clerk. “We no longer carry them because they are cruel.” And he sent me up the street to Ace Hardware, where they still believe in a dog-eat-dog (or metaphorically, man-eat-mice) world.
My feelings were indignation that CVS was deciding for me, a rights-bearing, free-thinking American, that there is a higher good, or better angels, and frankly, it has taken me months to calm down and give CVS credit for trying out a policy based on a loftier idea.
Now I admire their greater vision and wish them well in their efforts to eradicate tobacco from our lives, as my beloved mother used to say, “For your own good.”
Dr. Samuel Paltin
Hilo