Population control is the only answer for housing

We know Kama’aina residents (people who were born here or ancestors were born here) have been squeezed out of housing for decades. The people from around the world who have moved here, have second homes here or rent here have made it almost impossible for many Kama’aina to find housing they can afford.

We also need to house all the tourists and military who come here. On top of that, many Americans have discovered that they can get on a HUD list and move or retire here on the cheap.

There are many (millions?) of Americans who would love to move to Maui but can’t afford it. So, they put their names on a HUD housing waiting list and hang out for years waiting for their name to reach the top of the list. This is especially true for HUD senior housing. I live at Hale Mahaolu senior housing and watch people from the Mainland move in all the time. Meanwhile, local Kama’aina are homeless waiting behind them.

Maui County Councilwoman Tamara Paltin is right. “This is a problem we can’t build our way out of.”

The fact is, the more housing we build, the more people move here. Look at Oahu. There is not enough physical land to house all the people who would move here if they could, affordable or not. If we limit housing, the prices will rise to the point that only the wealthy can live here. The same is true of tourism. Because we are an island nation governed by a continental country, we have no say in the matter.

We also know that the only reason so many people can live here is that long line of ships that constantly bring everything to us. If that line stops or slows down because of any man-made or natural reason, we have about two to three weeks before we are fighting to survive.

At some point, reality will catch up to us — and it won’t be pretty. The reality is we are a very small group of isolated islands that need to control our population before it is too late. The Hawaiians knew this, and many of us Kama’aina Kupuna know this.

SANFORD HILL, Lahaina

Make your voices heard on bills that impact business

The 2022 legislative session is winding down with only a few weeks left and bills headed to conference committee. A conference committee is a temporary ad hoc panel composed of House and Senate conferees formed for the purpose of reconciling differences in legislation that has passed both chambers.

With the legislative session adjourning on May 5th, there is one last opportunity to get your voices heard on bills that may affect your business. While there is no public testimony during conference committees, the chamber is happy to help members coordinate correspondence between your company and the legislators that are assigned to the conference committee of interest.

Two of the bills that we anticipate going to conference committee that may affect your business are HB2510 and HB2399.

HB2510 is the minimum wage bill that has been amended throughout the process, but where it currently stands, will increase minimum wage to $12 by October 1st, 2022; $15 by January 1, 2024; and $18 by January 1, 2026.

HB2399 establishes an extended producer responsibility program and requires producers of fast-moving consumer goods to register with the Department of Health and pay an annual fee based on the amount of packaging volume the covered producer places on the market each calendar year. This bill is essentially a tax on businesses that use packaging for their products.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Trevor Abarzua at tabarzua@cochawaii.org.

SHERRY MENOR-McNAMARA, President & CEO, Chamber of Commerce Hawaii

Le Pen is on Putin’s payroll

Formerly failed fascist French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has managed to make her moronic way into the French presidential runoff election scheduled for April 24, 2022, when lunatic Le Pen will assuredly suffer yet another crushing defeat at the feet of France’s incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron, just like Le Pen lost in a landslide in the 2017 presidential runoff to Macron by a whopping 66 to 34 percent margin.

Marine Le Pen (who just received 23 percent of the vote on April 10, 2022) must really be burned by barely beating Moroccan-born member of the French Assembly Jean-Luc Melenchon (22 percent of the vote) for second place in the initial election for the French presidency this year.

President Macron couldn’t possibly be more politically fortunate in having the laughable loser Le Pen as his runoff election opponent again, which will simply ensure Macron’s second five-year term as the president of France, which will be a big win for the U.S.

Le Pen’s latest impending landslide loss will become just one more epic fail headed for the history books by the far-right Russian kleptocracy, the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB), and their bought-and-paid-for political agents like Marine Le Pen, deranged Donald Trump, whack job Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Ron Johnson, pro-Putin Fox “News” traitor Tucker Carlson, etc.

Foolish Fox “News” says Marine Le Pen will win, so you now know for a fact that you can take it to the bank that French President Emmanuel Macron will be re-elected easily on April 24. Fox “News” is almost always wrong, after all. (Except for when Fox “News” correctly called the 2020 American presidential election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. You know what they say… even a stopped clock is right twice a day!)

JAKE PICKERING, Arcata, California