Changes confuse city's rail project

As a resident who supports the city rail project, I am quite frustrated by the continuing changes to date.

1) The original budget was $3.6 billion; now it's $5.2 billion.

2) Voters voted for an elevated rail that might now be at ground level.

3) The route was through Salt Lake, but that was deleted and will now run through the airport.

4) The mayor said the start date was November 2009, and now it's April 1.

5) The environmental impact statement is completed—but only now is it being completed.

6) The delay will raise the price by $200 million, yet we save $90 million-plus on the first bid.

7) The transit tax revenue is down so we will borrow $300 million from the bus fund. What will we ride until the rail is built?

Speculation, changes, misinformation and blaming others must end if rail is to proceed. The public is not ignorant, and our leaders should learn from the residents of Massachusetts.

Multiply wealth, don't divide it

Jim Williams, the interim Hawaii State Teachers Association leader, is out to lunch (”;HSTA proposes increase in taxes to fund schools,”; Star-Bulletin, Jan. 28). Adrian Rogers' famous quote in 1931 can be applied here: You cannot legislate Hawaii's public education system into prosperity (acquire more funds due to their inability to work within their budget) by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity (footing the bill). What the public education system receives without living within its means, the wealthier person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them (Hawaii union mentality, Obama mentality, etc.) and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, then that is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Republicans are cause of crisis

Whoopie do! The Republicans were in town. Celebrating! Yes, celebrating their recent win in Massachusetts, celebrating their assertion that the country's problems are somehow of President Barack Obama's making, and hip-slappin' celebrating because it looks like Massachusetts (and maybe the country) believes their spin.

Citizens are justifiably unhappy about the huge mess we've been living through for the past two years. We citizens would do well to remember how we got into the mess: The Republican agenda under George W. Bush, with bad intelligence, led us into the Iraq war. The Republicans also led us into the war in Afghanistan, a justifiable conflict, perhaps inevitable and necessary, since it targeted the mortal enemy that attacked us on 9/11. However, unfortunately, under Bush, we fumbled Afghanistan and it became overshadowed by the difficult, perhaps unnecessary, Iraqi war.

It would have been nice if the Republicans had had some sort of fiscal plan to finance these hugely expensive wars; instead they decreased taxes and gave us increased deficits. Meanwhile, a housing bubble grew while banks lent fake money to people without jobs, and the Republican leadership either ignored or slept through all the danger signs until they suddenly awoke to the Great Recession. They then threw hundreds of billions of dollars at the problem and handed the dirty mess over to us and the good President Obama to fix.

Environment law halting progress

To use our environmental law to require a realistic financial plan to stop rail is wrong—just as using that law to kill the Superferry was wrong. Can we not agree that our environmental law should be rescinded or at least revised? The only other alternative is a continuation of the ridiculous stopping of any growth.

I believe the Superferry was good for our economy, but that the rail is not the best solution for west-end traffic congestion. Still, I believe our environmental law is being abused and not currently used in our best interest. Am I alone?