Good reply. Here is an additional thought. HI is and has been a one-party Dem state for a long time. I lived in a similar state, MA, for two-plus decades. The word ‘corruption’ doesn’t begin to describe it. Both parties in such a state, along with everyone else on the public payroll, is either a lying hack or else has a very, very short career. Integrity is nonexistent, literally. You have to live in that type of cesspool to truly grasp how bad it is; nothing less can give you the full gist of it.
Anyway, the idea that these HI officials told the truth is simply not credible to anyone who knows how these situations work. I.e.: as in MA, the fact that a public official said it is almost inevitably the first indication that it is a lie.
People who post the words of these hacks et al as if they resolve anything are either inexcusably naive or aggressively dishonest. We are not in the mess we’re in due to the integrity of the taxpayer-parasite class. We got here via the lies and political expediency that have become the norm. Period.
And that is also a good reply.