Life in Hawaii is just
a plague of suffering

Frustrating traffic gets closer and closer to total gridlock every day and yet those knuckleheads at the state Capitol have given the OK to raise taxes so that Honolulu can build a rail transit system that will cost heaps of money forever and won't make a bit of difference in clearing the roads.

Most motorists won't get out of their cars to ride the rails, though they really shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel anyway because people in Hawaii don't know the first thing about navigating freeways, having never had to steer a car on I-5 through Los Angeles or the Cross Bronx Expressway. That inability wouldn't be as critical if road engineers in Hawaii knew how to design onramps and offramps or even included some, like on the H-3.

In Hawaii, everything from toothpicks to two-by-fours, from corned beef to foie gras and from blue jeans to blueberries goes for a zillion times more than the same stuff in Ohio or Arkansas.

Houses squeezed one on top of another in banal cookie-cutter subdivisions are priced so high a middle-income family has to forfeit nights at the movies and overnight vacations on the neighbor islands -- kamaaina discounts notwithstanding -- to stay this side of financial solvency.

Homes wouldn't be as expensive if acres of weedy agricultural land, left fallow when sugar and pineapple companies abandoned Hawaii for cheaper operational digs elsewhere, were released for new development. No sense in leaving them vacant; if natural resources can't be used by humans, what good are they?

Then there's the weather, especially in leeward areas where air conditioners are must-haves if residents are to survive sweltering summers. Of course, they'll pay through the nose to run the thermostat at 65 degrees because everyone knows Hawaii has the highest electricity rates in the nation. There's no one to blame for that, except those vexing environmental activists who whine about sustainable energy and object to oil companies drilling in wildlife refuges where only mangy caribou and weird birds hang out.

Public schools here stink. Chronic teacher shortages, a pump-up bureaucracy of paper-pushers and a multilayered system of authority have produced stagnancy and low expectations. Not that it matters since the best and the brightest of Hawaii flee the state for opportunities elsewhere, leaving behind the second tier who remain simply because they can't make it in a bigger pond and can't communicate except in pidgin English.

In any event, these people don't have much ambition. They'd rather pine nostalgic for the past with their so-last-century plantation mentality and live in blue-tarp compounds on the beaches, just to mar the tourist experience and annoy the visitor industry and Senate presidents.

Meanwhile, culturally challenged rich people build tasteless faux-Mediterranean villas behind pretentious gates, blocking shorelines to deny righteously indignant Hawaiians their legacy to fish, gather limu and swim in the ocean.

Peaceniks opposed to further militarization of the islands pull an occupation of their own, hoping to bar research for the Navy at the University of Hawaii. Never mind that the work would fetch the university money to fund studies that could help safeguard our blessed nation from uncivilized terrorists. Besides, Hawaii has little to contribute to the U.S. of A. but strategic location, location, location.

Hawaii's beautiful, but looks are deceptive. Its mountains -- mere foothills by the Rocky Mountains' purple-majesty standards -- its fertile plains and rain forests were formed by dangerous volcanoes, two of which still seethe as threats to the population. Its wimpy flora and wildlife are unable to hold off invasion of non-native environment snatchers.

Such an unpleasant place. It's a wonder rational people don't pull up stakes. Oh, if you're going, would you please shut the door behind you?