Use cigarette taxes to lower premiums

In response to the new additional taxes being recommended for cigarettes (Star- Bulletin, March 13), I would like to suggest that it is a great idea, except all of the additional taxes should be earmarked for a trust fund that would be used only to help insurance companies and hospitals cover the expenses of tobacco-related illness.

This is not meant to give the insurance companies a windfall, but to encourage/require them to further reduce the insurance premiums for nonsmokers.

Don't let rail, ferry repeat past errors

Will history repeat itself?

» Remember Pearl Harbor: 2,403 men killed. Can we do something about the past? No!

» Remember rail transit: the possibility of saving 19 million gallons of gas and $1.12 billion a year in wasted pau hana time. (www.lvmonorail.com)

And finally ...

» Remember the Superferry (H-4): the potential to cut your interisland travel cost in half. (www.superferry.com)

What a shame of what happened in the past. But for the last two items, there is still time to fix our future. Get involved, Hawaii! Why pay more?

Keep Punchbowl the way it is

Mufi, don't make me regret I voted for you. My husband is already telling me I should have voted for Duke. We want both beauty and function on the streets. Please don't change the routing on Punchbowl Street ("Mayor uprooting old plan for Punchbowl," Star-Bulletin, March 9). We love it just the way it is. The trees in the median are truly beautiful and two-way driving makes it easy to reach the freeway.

You should not have reversed Mayor Harris' beautification of the makai section of Punchbowl Street. What a waste of money, and it shows you don't have an eye for beauty.

Effort to recycle pays off for everyone

On a recent Sunday, I stood at the University of Hawaii law school parking lot waiting for the mobile "HI 5" redemption center to open. While in the line with my hanai daughter, I heard a young female college student say to someone something to the effect of, "Yeah, I'm here waiting just for a dollar." She had a small plastic grocery store bag with only a few cans. She probably didn't even have enough for a dollar.

I want to thank her and all those others who, even though it may be inconvenient to recycle, choose to recycle anyway. It is disappointing to read and see people in the news complain that standing in line and only receiving 5 of the 6 cents they paid extra is not worth their recycling efforts and they won't come back again. Feel free to give your cans to someone else who will recycle them.

Nobody seems to want a new landfill near their neighborhoods. Interestingly, fewer people are willing to reduce the need for new landfills by reducing their waste. Come on, people! Recycle not for yourselves, but for all of us.

Homeless are living on kingdom land

Regarding the March 14 article on Act 50 : The attorneys for the state and the American Civil Liberties Union both quote the U.S. Constitution. None of them understand (or they refuse to understand) that the so-called public parks the homeless people are squatting on is part of the Crown and Hawaiian kingdom government national land base. If the U.S. Constitution that the attorneys both valiantly uphold as sacred doesn't address the private property rights of the Hawaiian kanaka maoli people, then the U.S. Constitution isn't worth the paper its printed on.

The only people with the inherent right to live on the land are the Hawaiian kanaka maoli people because they have the vested interest and the title to the aina. Before the illegal overthrow of 1893 by the United States, the Hawaiian kingdom had a very sophisticated land tenure system called the mahele, which the U.S. courts in Hawaii still maintain today.