IS HAWAI'I BETTER OFF WITH OR WITHOUT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ?
Hawai'i - The Dark Side Of Paradise
By William Starr Moake
After three decades of economic growth and prosperity, Hawai'i took a downturn 15 years ago and the Aloha state has never fully recovered. In most respects things are getting worse every year. The effects have been devastating to those living on the margins of island society, particularly native Hawaiians.
Other ethnic minorities have also been forced to bear the burden. At the same time, however, many hotels and other big businesses in Hawai'i are reaping record-level profits today.
The statistics tell a story the Hawai'i Visitors Bureau would rather not see in print:
In a state that has the most expensive cost of living in the US, one-in-10 residents lives under the federal poverty level. A conservative estimate is that 30,000 people are homeless, but the actual number is likely to be far higher.
Hawai'i has one of the worst hard drug problems of any state. The state and federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on three decades of helicopter raids on rural marijuana growers and doled out prison sentences equal to murder convictions in some cases.
Marijuana is now scarce and prohibitively expensive. The drug of choice is the much-cheaper crystal methamphetamine, a highly-addictive stimulant that causes violent behavior.
The meth epidemic and widespread poverty has resulted in a state prison system that is bursting at the seams, corrupt and inhumane.
Unable to afford the cost of building new prisons, Hawai'i at first assigned three or four prisoners to cells built for two with the extra inmates sleeping on floors besides the toilet.
Later the state shipped several hundred inmates to mainland prisons where incarceration expenses were cheaper.
The Conclusion Tomorrow...
