Hawaii Politicians Push Con Job on Oahu Taxpayers

MARISSA CAPELOUTO – You deserve to know when a con job is taking place.  That con job is Oahu’s increasingly unpopular and overpriced heavy rail project.  To obtain approval for the rail project in 2008, the Mufi Hannemann’s administration’s rail advocates used City and State tax dollars to lie to commuters with dishonest advertising that promised rail would deliver a reduction in traffic congestion.  Polls of Oahu residents in 2008 showed that those who favored rail transit were only doing so because they believed these lies about traffic congestion being reduced after billions would be spent building a rail system from the fields of East Kapolei to the Ala Moana Shopping Center, and then millions and millions of dollars more each year to operate the system.

Nowadays, most people understand the truth that Honolulu’s rail project will provide no such illusory and fictional improvement to gridlock.  Ignored by dishonest politicians, the City’s own studies show that traffic congestion will be nearly 60% worse during morning and afternoon rush hour than it is now.

Here is one of those radio commercials played over and over thousands of times in the months prior to the 2008 election in order to con Oahu voters about the rail project:

Only lying politicians will tell you that rail will improve traffic.  Sharon Har is one such politician who repeatedly lies to her own constituents and doesn’t mind the fact that your tax dollars funded advertising about rail which flat out lied in order to con a bare majority of us into voting for rail.  In fact, just two years ago, Sharon Har wrote to then Governor Lingle demanding that the environmental review of the rail project be rushed.  HERE is that very telling letter so you can see it for yourself.

Sharon Har justified rushing the environmental review by repeating the extremely false promise that rail would reduce traffic congestion.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As well all know, rushing the environmental process for rail has led to the complete shutdown of the rail project by the State Supreme Court.  And actual traffic congestion will be MUCH WORSE with the rail system than traffic is right now.  That is NOT an improvement.  That is a total waste of money . . . YOUR money.

Do we really want this kind of dishonesty and bad judgement in the State Legislature?  Of course not.  No wonder we have so many problems.  Sharon Har hasn’t even warned you that the more than $5 billion will only make a part of the system, as it would cost billions and billions more to extend the system from the fields of East Kapolei into Downtown Kapolei, as well as to extend from the Ala Moana Center to U.H. Manoa and possibly Waikiki.  Naturally, once the additional billions have been spent extending the system, it will cost millions and millions more to operate the enlarged rail system.  To commit generations of future Oahu residents to a rail transit system which we already know will fail to help alleviate traffic congestion is immoral.  Just as it is immoral to rush the environmental processes which protect our aina, our iwi kupuna, and our way of life.

Rail is a long term burden to Hawaii’s economic prosperity and a con job to those who have to experience the frustration of poor highway planning each workday.  Moreoever, Sharon Har is insensitive and disrespectful to Hawaiians and other people that came before us in this land.  Har’s insistence on rushing environmental processes puts Har clearly in favor of the desecration of Iwi and on the side of the irreversible destruction of our farmlands, our skyline, and our island’s natural beauty so that special interest groups can make a quick buck.

We need new, honest leadership right away.  The 2012 election is the opportunity to change direction.

If elected, I will work to get the solutions that we really need and can truly afford.  I support Governor Cayetano’s very flexible and far cheaper plan to beef up our island’s bus service while improving our system of highways and encouraging public and provide employers to flexibly schedule workers so that their commutes occur when H-1 and other major thoroughfares are less utilized.  These are solutions we can afford and which will work.

To learn more about the REAL costs of the heavy rail project, this video of Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi (the chairwoman of the council’s budget committee) will truly shock you with information you have NOT been getting from the media or the lying politicians.  Follow the money by clicking the video below.

Please join with me in pursuing policies which affordably improve our lives . . . or we can continue to elect dishonest absentee leaders like Sharon Har whose idea of ‘representation’ is to do the bidding of well-funded special interest groups that fund her re-election campaigns while looking the other way at her atrocious record of missing dozens and dozens of key votes and being completely absent from the State Capitol for dozens of days since she was first elected.

Knowing that traffic congestion will NOT be improved, but get much much worse with rail, Sharon Har had the audacity to say the following:  “The people of West of Oahu have waited far too long for meaningful traffic relief.  The only way to alleviate traffic is to get people out of their cars.”

Like most absentee leaders, Sharon Har does not ride the bus each day to and from work.  Nor does she ever intend to walk to a bus stop, wait for a bus, ride that bus to a train station, transfer to a train, stand up all the way to town, transfer from the train to another bus to get to where she works, then walk the rest of the way to her office, then do it all over again in reverse at the end of the workday – 5 days a week.  If so, she would already be riding the express bus to and from Kapolei right now using a monthly bus pass.  But she doesn’t.  She expects the ‘peasants’ of West Oahu to give up their cars and ride public transportation.

My friends, you deserve better representation in the State House of Representatives.  You deserve a representative who doesn’t lie to you or help con you out of your hard-earned dollars.  You deserve someone in the House who cares about your cost of living, your quality of life, and about policies and solutions which really work to your benefit rather than the benefit to special interest groups.

With so many broken promises, so many unexcused absences from the Legislature, and so much harm done to families and businesses in Kapolei and Makakilo, the time has come to give Sharon Har the pink slip and let her go.

I humbly ask for your support in 2012 because I will work each day to provide the representation and leadership that you deserve.

Mahalo for considering my candidacy and for caring about our community.

Sincerely yours,

MARISSA CAPELOUTO
Candidate, State House of Representatives (Kapolei/Makakilo)

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