All parties feel tax inequities

John Witeck complains about tax inequities of the wealthy and of people in same-sex relationships (Star-Bulletin Letters, April 22). He fails to acknowledge that people who have a higher income pay a lot more for the same services everyone gets from government. Is that fair? Then he complains that people in same-sex relationships pay $1,000 more in taxes than those filing joint returns because they are married.

He should just think that those people with children have to spend ten times more a year to raise and educate each child who will eventually pay for his Social Security paychecks. Who's losing out from the tax inequities?

Russel Noguchi
Pearl City

Tax credits essential for film, tech jobs

Legislators must keep Act 221 (high-tech tax incentives) and Act 88 (film tax credits).

It is frustrating to see the people in charge of our economy getting rid of the golden egg.

Now that “;Lost”; and “;You May Not Kiss the Bride”; productions are wrapped, it's adding up more than 500 people on the unemployment numbers until a new production lands on our islands.

What kind of formula don't you understand?

Do I need to give you flash cards to practice your percentages and fractions at home with your kids, or just a list of all the economic failures that you are responsible for?

Please do your homework.

Guy Belegaud
Honolulu

Raiding election pot bad for democracy

The Legislature is trying to kill publicly funded elections on the Big Island by raiding the Hawaii Election Campaign Fund.

My husband and I contribute to this fund every year when we file our income tax return. We want that money to fund this pilot program on the Big Island next year.

This is a matter of challenging the “;powers that be.”; Fair elections allows qualified candidates who have trust in their communities to run a legitimate campaign to at least get their ideas onto the table for debate. In general, this makes sitting legislators uncomfortable because it allows more people to participate in a game that right now is only open to people who have connections to money.

Pearl Johnson
Honolulu

Big Island teacher blames the DOE

How terribly sad that Hana high school teacher Joseph Nielsen has been duped into believing it is the state government that “;is not filtering the money sent from the federal government down to the needy schools”; (Star-Bulletin Letters, April 18) .

In fact, the source of the problem is much closer than he might suppose: It is his very own state Department of Education — now awash in billions of dollars every year for which it refuses to account — that is letting only a trickle of the torrent of money dumped into this malignant bureaucratic snake pit seep down to the classroom level.

However I do sympathize with him: Our entire small rural outer island middle school (which serves a community deemed politically unimportant by the perfumed courtiers in DOE) is about to be eliminated to “;save money.”;

These actions are not the fault of either the governor or the federal government.

Locked into a bitter struggle with the governor for funds at a time of falling tax revenues, the DOE is attempting to revive the old bureaucratic shell game: threatening to cut muscle (schools, teachers) to preserve fat (bureaucratic careers of the upwardly mobile “;important”; people in DOE who drive desks, attend meetings, and create Power Point presentations, but who would never stoop to the dreadfully distasteful tasks of a mere classroom teacher).

By threatening schools and teachers DOE hopes to put enough pressure on the governor so she will cave in and dump even MORE money into the DOE with, as usual, no questions asked.

Thomas E. Stuart
Kohala teacher