Hawaii U.S. Senator Dan Akaka wrote an editorial in the Honolulu Advertiser 2/28/10 “Sovereign immunity key for Hawaiians”. In it he justified the changes engineered in back room meetings out of sight of the Governor or OHA. However he failed to explain how “sovereign immunity” was just now important as opposed to its absence from the bill over the last 10 years.
But just as telling was his next to last paragraph in which he laments that the state stands to lose the millions of federal dollars it receives for native Hawaiian programs. These dollars, taken from the people of the USA, are given to programs which supposedly benefit native Hawaiians.
But why should these particular people get such benefits? Are they inherently inferior in ability and capacity? I do not think so and darn few of our people in Hawaii believe that. So why raid the US Treasury?
Here is the answer in the Senators own words: ” We know these programs inject money into our economy and create jobs for Natives and non-Natives alike”. It is thus revealed that the real purpose is to have jobs for the people running the programs, not the programs themselves.
Oh my, may we call this discrimination against the taxpayers of the USA? Or, perhaps we need to look to George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” where it is discovered that the slogan “all pigs are equal” actually results in some pigs being more equal than the others. Is Hawaii more equal than Nebraska or 48 other states?
You decide.
‘Richard O Rowland is President Emeritus of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Reach him at mailto:dick@grassrootinstitute.org’