Immediate investigation is needed of United Public Workers' (UPW) State Director Gary Rodrigues for blacklisting UPW members who asked for a refund of dues for "union political action." The workers were singled out by the UPW leadership, by name and place of work, and branded as "freeloaders" for making statements of conscience.

Immediate investigation and appropriate action of UPW leaders who have violated state and federal laws were requested in a letter addressed to Attorney General Margery Bronster. The law prohibits the use of bullying tactics to coerce any person in civil service to be obliged to contribute to any political fund or to render any political service.

It is the right of any union member to choose not to contribute to the political actions of the union. To call them "freeloaders" borders on libelous, when these hard working individuals contribute union dues for the legitimate union role of collective bargaining.

The role of the union should be the protection of all its members. Obviously Rodrigues only wants to protect those who share his political leanings, even though they pay the full freight of union dues for the non-political aspects of their union.

I believe that it is morally abhorrent and apparently illegal to blacklist hard working men and women who merely choose to exercise their Constitutional right to freedom of speech and association. In Hawaii, the powerful UPW's intimidation tactics have squelched most dissent. I do not believe it is right when citizens of any state in the nation should, for fear of losing their job, be intimidated into making political contributions and I respectively urge the Attorney General to take meaningful action.

The Nanny State Blowing Smoke?

By Ken Schoolland, Schoolland International Partnership Congress is now reviewing a landmark deal between the tobacco companies and numerous state governments that will result in hundreds of billions of dollars in fines and strict new controls on the tobacco industry in America. Good deal, huh? The authorities are finally cracking down on those evil tobacco companies that profited for years as merchants of death!

Who are we kidding? Government authorities knew better than most the harmful effects of tobacco, yet the government itself promoted and profited by tobacco sales. And now the government will "innocently" claim huge dividends from the tobacco industry.

How did the government promote tobacco at the expense of both smoking and nonsmoking taxpayers? For decades the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs have subsidized tobacco farmers, including the family of Vice President Al Gore. The department offered bundles of money, guaranteed minimum prices, and paid for crop insurance.

When the World Health Organization declared that smoking-related diseases rival malnutrition as the major cause of death in Third World nations, the USDA spent millions of dollars sending tobacco abroad under the Food for Peace foreign aid program--presumably for peace pipes. And U.S. trade representatives have threatened sanctions against nations that didn't allow the importation of American tobacco. If President Clinton is eager to apologize for something, the list could start with these aid and trade policies.

The U.S. military has always been helpful in introducing young servicemen to the weed at bargain rates. Meanwhile federal, state, and local governments have earned billions in revenues from cigarette taxes that helped impoverish addicted smokers. Such revenues were easy--no production or marketing costs, just pure profit, especially from low-income consumers. And with it came the justification for a bureaucracy that grew by leaps and bounds. Ironically, various government health programs have long made it easier for smokers to behave irresponsibly by shifting the cost of their ill health to others. It was not a kindness to shield people from folly if it led to more folly.

The recently announced deal will now charge tobacco companies for the Medicare costs of smoking-related diseases. These fines will ultimately be passed along to smokers through higher cigarette prices. So if smokers are finally to be charged for the costs of their own health care, who needs government and industry middlemen to handle the money? It would be a lot simpler if the government just got out of the smokers' health care business altogether and let smokers pay directly for their own health bills and insurance.

This won't be done because the government only entertains solutions that increase, rather than diminish, its power and influence. It will extract more from smokers in order to pay more for smoking illness--and the necessary bureaucratic budget and staff increases. And if it leads to a bigger black market in cigarettes, so much the better for an increase in law enforcement budgets as well.

The fact is, this deal over tobacco doesn't end with tobacco. It will be used as another precedent for controlling any product or activity that might burden the tax-funded health care system. Next, it'll be beer, Spam, and surfboards. Anything you do might cost the health care system, so the government has an excuse to control anything you do. As one friend of mine quipped, "The food police will conduct warrentless searches of citizens' refrigerators, looking for high cholesterol, low-fiber foods and fining the miscreants for politically incorrect diets."

This huge deal to punish the tobacco companies completely avoids the issue of personal responsibility. If, as claimed, corporate executives and stockholders committed fraud by deceiving the public about the product, then this deal does nothing to hold them personally liable. Not a single politician will be held personally accountable for collaboration. And, the personal responsibility of consumers is not addressed, despite the presence of ominous warning labels for decades. Indeed, this deal will be used to absolve people from individual accountability. This is one reason that the culprits are so willing to embrace this settlement.

My father died of cancer, probably from his smoking. His father knew from personal experience that smoking was risky and offered my dad a hundred dollars if he didn't take up smoking until he was 21 years of age. My dad didn't make it. He started smoking at age 20, probably under pressure from his Air Force buddies in World War II when there were other risks to worry about.

Later, he offered me the same $100 deal and I won‹I never took up the habit. As a crusader in the 1960's I urged my father to quit smoking, handing him weekly news reports about smoking and disease, but he made it clear that I should mind my own business. On his death bed in the 1990's, I never heard him blame the tobacco companies. That made me proud of him.

Since my dad didn't blame others, since he took responsibility for his own actions, I respect him all the more and I take more seriously all the lessons of his life. He knew his real master. That's one thing he fought for in that war‹the right and responsibilty for his own choices.

Are We Mad?

By Orson Swindle, Empower America

Insanity has been defined as repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...like when we re-elect the same politicians time after time. Something's badly wrong:

* Hawaiian citizens vote to hold a Constitutional Convention. The State Supreme Court, agreeing with their government employee union pals, says no you can't.

* Our mediocre State Legislature still doesn't comprehend that it is driving small businesses out of Hawaii and with them our children, friends, hope and opportunity.

* The State Supreme Court, again agreeing with its union pals, says we can't privatize government work. The Court says only government employees can do it, meaning of course, greater cost and more taxes...and more union members.

* Senate President Norman Mizuguchi promotes union leader Gary Rodrigues to become one of the elite that selects the judges, although it appears as if Rodrigues is already in control.

* Almost every day, we hear more negative revelations about what a lousy situation we have economically, in education, in taxes, in real estate values, jobs, bankruptcies, stagnant income growth, etc., etc., etc. Our leaders' solutions: More of the same, of course.

* Government employee union boss, Rodrigues, takes a bit of deserved flak for his arrogance from brave citizens in Letter to the Editor. The "Great Enabler of the Status Quo," The Honolulu Advertiser, gives him several pages of free advertising (propaganda) to boost his image. The Soviet Union had Pravda. Hawaii unions and democrats have The Advertiser.

* Bishop Estate's elite, the Trustees, refuse to meet with students, faculty and families of Kamehameha Schools to resolve grievances.

* Punks prey on our visitors.

* Forbes Magazine writes a factual account of what's happening in Hawaii. Governor Cayetano, The Advertiser and others in power have predictable fits of denial. Traditional political thinking is quickly evoked: "Hey, what do those Mainland guys...bunch of conservatives...know about Hawaii, huh?

* And, to make it all rational, a Democrat senator during the legislative session reportedly blamed Ronald Reagan for our woes.

The words and thoughts of great thinkers and leaders in other times and places can enlighten us today.

Our unions once bragged about Hawaii having the highest paid agricultural workers in the world, and now we have significantly less agriculture. Union leaders demand lock-step discipline supporting the Democrat party and the status quo, yet they deliver only failing businesses and high unemployment in private sector unions while government employee unions grow. American General Omar Bradley's remarks about the Athenians deserves some thought:

"...in the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all - security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

Hawaii's Democrat party and our Congressional delegation are well known for their socialist tendencies. They might heed the words of Sir Winston Churchill of Great Britain.

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

And all of us potential voters might think about Russian philosopher, Ayn Rand's suggestion that "To reverse the current political and economic trend in America, we must reverse men's fundamental philosophy."

We conservatives worry that the people will not understand. Liberals, on the other hand, live in mortal fear that they will. In Hawaii, we deliver mediocre schools and tell the people those guys on the Mainland don't know anything.

So much to learn from others. But, how foolish of me...for a moment there, I was being rational.

I'm forgetting that this is Hawaii..."we're different." The Great Enabler of the Status Quo (The Advertiser) and our leaders tell us this is so. And, I know I made bad choices for quoting...Bradley, Churchill and Rand are not from here and are haoles, too.

I don't worry too much about being struck down by the unknown, but I am appalled at the thought of being destroyed by the obvious...and there's a lot of "obvious" strangling Hawaii today. The wisdom and experience of others can help us to understand and to act...if we'd just be willing to learn from them.

But, what could those "outsiders" know about Hawaii? We know what's best for us says the Enabler, the Governor and friends. After all, Governor Cayetano once told us that "everything we are today, the Democrat party and the unions made us what we are."

To paraphrase Nobel economist Milton Friedman's comments about the federal government, "If you put the Hawaii Democrat party, the the union leadership and the state government in charge of the Pacific Ocean, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of water."

Susan Chandler: Welfare Queen on Horseback

By Richard O. Rowland, CLU,CFC, Rowland & Alameida

The State Director of the Department of Social Services and Housing (DSSH), Susan Chandler, is complaining that her "clients" are going to be deprived of "sufficient" funds because the legislature is not budgeting enough money.

It seems that the number of persons on public assistance is up 20% in the State of Hawaii in contrast to the mainland USA which is down 20%. Wow, that's a 50% difference. What if your business overhead was 50% higher than your competitor?

Ms. Chandler claims that the problem is directly related to the depressed economic climate in Hawaii. But the depressed economic climate in Hawaii is directly related to the excessive tax and regulatory burden placed on small businesses and entrepreneurs to pay for the costs of maintaining non-productive persons at a defined standard of living.

Thus, we have a circular problem which is compounded by the self evident fact that the more money DSSH has available, the less are the incentives for those on public assistance to seek out ways to be productive. And, of course, the minimum wage eliminates major opportunities of the unskilled to learn to become effective.

Worse yet, of all the total budget money devoted to DSSH for these unfortunate persons, only about 35% actually gets to the intended recipients. Instead it is spent before it gets to them on administration and salaries etc. Thus we have a bizarre situation. The employees of DSSH are the principal beneficiaries of the "public assistance" or "welfare" programs. But, when cuts in limited resources come, who gets less money? Most assuredly not Susan Chandler or her staff.

Some years ago the prominent black economist, Walter Williams, observed that the American "welfare" system was similar to the following: An ignorant farmer, wishing to feed the hungry sparrows flocking around his farm, decides to give his horses a rich diet of corn and grain, some of which passes though the horses' digestive tract and is contained in their droppings. The sparrows flock around the rear of the horses every time they dump, and peck away at the droppings with great enthusiasm. The horses get fatter and fatter, the sparrows get more and more hungry and numerous, coming from miles around. So, they proceed to get very dependent upon the farmer continuing to feed his horses. Dr. Williams thus observes that the welfare system is like "feeding sparrows through horses."

Picture this: You are at the Kamehameha Day Parade. Susan Chandler representing the best the State of Hawaii has to offer, is riding sidesaddle on a beautiful white Clydesdale horse. She is bedecked in leis, wearing a beautiful muumuu and a crown on her head. She is waving happily to the crowd as the Clydesdale clonks along. Behind the Clydesdale are the birds--thousands of them - crying, calling and diving into the horse droppings.

Quite a scene, don't you think? By the way, what do you think Susan Chandler is paid? Compare that with your net income. But Susan wants to use more of your money. Does that make sense to you? Why isn't she paid on the basis of how many persons are not on public assistance? We had better start asking some real probing questions of our legislators--quickly--before it's too late.