‘Mad scheme’
On April 2, I read on page one of the Tribune-Herald that the public defenders and prosecutors are planning to release 197 prisoners. On page five I read that local police arrested nine people for violating the “stay-at-home” order. Those people face a fine of up to $5,000, a year in prison, or both.
What is wrong with this picture?
Did our public servants consult the people who pay their salaries before concocting this mad scheme?
I know of no one who advocates for the early release of prisoners at this time. Will it be sex offenders and child rapists, as Monroe County, New York, has done under orders from the Department of Corrections and Community Services?
These criminals will now be put up at the local Holiday Inn, paid for by taxpayers.
I guess they are releasing criminals now to make room for the hard-working taxpayers they are picking up and charging with violating these authoritarian new laws.
Vicki Vierra
Keaau
No to RIMPAC
From late June until early August, every two years since the early 1970s, other countries have come to Hawaii to join the U.S. military in conducting war games — bombing air, land and sea.
In 2018, more than two dozen countries — including some 47 surface ships, five submarines, 18 national land forces, and more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel participated in RIMPAC.
The war games include the bombing and shelling of the 133,000-acre military Pohakuloa Training Area, located in the center of Hawaii island.
We say: Enough, already! We say “No” to RIMPAC 2020. We say stop the bombing of Pohakuloa and conducting war games in the air, on land and the sea around Hawaii.
This is not aloha and malama honua (taking care of the Earth). Wage peace, not war! End the illegal U.S. military occupation of Hawaii that has been ongoing since 1893, when the U.S. military assisted foreign business interests in the illegal overthrow of the lawful government of the independent nation of Hawaii.
Given the COVID-19 virus, military personnel arriving in Hawaii for RIMPAC 2020 will endanger residents of Hawaii — on some of the most isolated islands in the world.
Jim Albertini
Kurtistown