Dear President Obama;

There are two years left in your Presidency. Are you with us? Can we, as you like to put it, count on you?

I represent a coalition of good folks, left and right, fiscally and socially, who banded together in November of 2008 in the hope of restoring the Constitution of the United States, in the hope of restoring America’s standing in the world, and in the hope of re-enfranchising the American voter. I write this to you in that spirit.

I would like to give you our holiday wish list for 2015. I have 12 wishes, but I assure you I won’t be asking for the partridge, the pear tree, or the mynah bird.

Iolani Palace gates with view of the palace along King Street.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

1) Do not leave office with President Clinton having done more for Native Hawaiians than you, the first President from Hawaii who happens to be a Black American.

You see, Mr. President, some of us live here.

While I sincerely respect the Clinton family (I went to school with the best thing Bill and Hillary ever did), I can’t bear the thought of you leaving office with President Clinton having done more for the Hawaiian community than you. It would be inconsistent for a man who sees himself as carrying on the legacy of the civil rights tradition. The two of us are not descended from the generation of African-Americans who fought and bled for civil rights, but we are from here.

The suggestion I would give is this: an executive action declaring funds given to OHA as neither federal nor state funds as soon as they pass into OHA’s possession. This would spare everyone the indignity of non-Hawaiians voting in elections regarding the Native Hawaiian largess due to laws that specify that any recipient of federal funds cannot discriminate on the basis of race.

A short examination of the history surrounding OHA and ceded lands will show there is no justification for treating the proceeds from ceded lands, which fund OHA, as federal dollars or state money. That money doesn’t belong to the federal government or the state of Hawaii to begin with.

You may think that such an action would have no chance of surviving the Judiciary branch, but it would lead to a situation where those that may oppose such fiscal autonomy would have to choose between letting your executive action remain unchallenged, or opening a huge legal can of worms that would lead to Native Hawaiians having their day in court regarding this issue. (Your executive action could specify that OHA still has to obey certain laws.)

Anecdotal evidence suggests, to my pleasant surprise, that there seems to be a consensus among all of us local folks in Hawaii that non-Hawaiians should not be voting in an OHA election. We saw a similar mindset when Kamehameha was almost forced to change its admissions policy, and many folks who are ambivalent about Native Hawaiian organizations and their platforms, marched to preserve the policy as it had stood.

Please Mr. President, some of us live here. Do not leave office with President Clinton having done more than you.

2) Either by executive action or vigorous request of Congress, press for the use of independent counsel in an open grand jury proceeding when law enforcement stands accused.

Anyone who has watched “Law and Order” or “The Wire” knows that most of the time enforcement and prosecution work as a team. How can it be legal for the prosecutor to be in charge of presenting evidence against a fellow member of the law enforcement team? This system has given us blatant failures to indict: Mr. Garner’s choking death in New York, captured on video, and a cover-up of a domestic assault by fellow police officers, also captured on video in Honolulu.

3) Beseech Congress to institute a national law for body cameras on law enforcement along with penalties for not wearing them in the line of duty.

4) Restore the right to privacy, implicit in the Constitution.

The right to privacy has been a victim to policies born in post 9-11 paranoia, consumer data mining, and the ambitions of Mark Zuckerburg.

How did you become the enemy of our constitutional right to privacy? Why did you not include the post-2008 citizenry in the debate about domestic surveillance, an industry of over 10 million people? Should I be skeptical of the next Con Law professor who runs for office? We need some flop to add to your flip, from your days as Senator Obama.

5) Give the press immunity in your war on whistle blowers, and censure or admonish any one in elected office who equates the press doing its job with treason.

6) Restore Due Process.

Release the notes on the internal deliberations that deemed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki an imminent threat to the country. Don’t play word games with the word “imminent.” And after you do that, please explain why his teenage son was assassinated without trial. If this was done without your approval, explain that to the American people and what has been done or can be done to prevent such a thing from happening again.

7) Fire John Brennan and clean house.

You just have to. Our clandestine services spying on Congress is a critical blow to our democracy.

8) Stop providing cover when members of the executive branch or our intelligence services knowingly lie to Congress under oath.

One of your major points during the debates of 2008 was that the problem was not that we were fighting wars, but fighting the wrong ones. Well, Mr. President, how did that happen? The evidence that Iraq was involved in 9-11 and had a current weapons of mass destruction program varied between misleading and false. The reliance on said evidence by Bush administration officials varied between negligent and criminal. How can you purport that we need to look forward and not back? Compromising on such an issue leaves our democracy and your administration compromised.

9) Release the findings of the probe into the previous administration’s use of torture/EITs to the American Public.

Recently, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson who was Colin Powell’s chief aide stated that torture was knowingly used to manufacture false connections between 9-11 and Iraq so that the war in Iraq could be sold to congress and the American public. Col. Wilkerson. Not exactly a left-wing conspiracy theorist, but a high-ranking member of the State Department during the previous administration. By the way, he also thinks that John Brennan should have already been fired.

10) Have the next Attorney General aggressively prosecute and penalize individual actors for committing the financial fraud that led to the 2008 financial crisis, and the fraud that is going to lead to the next one.

Okay, maybe some companies are too big to jail, but no individual is. Maybe penalizing a company for, say, laundering billions in violent drug cartel proceeds, or, for fixing a global interest rate that in effect robs thousands of municipalities, is too disruptive to the US and global financial system. But, no individual is systemically important, and no individual or set of individuals who creates so much harm and hazard to so many, should be above the law.

As a candidate, you addressed the “moral hazard” of bailing out our citizens from bad housing loans. It seems to me that an even bigger moral hazard has resulted from the pattern of settlements with large financial institutions where individual actors escape jail time even in cases of provable fraud/criminal negligence.

11) Help us reform our campaign finance system by pushing the FCC to offer free broadcast time to all presidential and congressional candidates.

The only winners in our current campaign finance system are Wall Street, the two major parties that control the terms of messaging and debates, and the traditional networks that receive a massive influx of campaign cash during Presidential elections. Why are the networks deserving of such good fortune; they don’t even make the good shows anymore!

12) Grab the third rail.

If I swore an oath to become the American President, I would understand that I would have made an implicit promise to use our treasure and soldiers in the defense of Israel’s existence, by lethal force if necessary, and as President I would honor that promise, or not take office in the first place.

But the relationship needs to be fixed.

Often, the outsized influence of present-day threats to Israel and the historically based assumption that the state of Israel and the Diaspora cannot depend on the goodwill of others for their survival, has a detrimental effect on the decision-making process regarding the national self-interest of the people of Israel. It should be our role as ally to compensate for blind spots caused by this, not to aid, abet and compound. Fix it, Mr. President.

Our Secretaries of State and Presidents should not be disrespected, blustered, bluffed, and bullied into U.S. interest continually taking a back seat to the Netanyahu government’s interests in the region.

Even Avigdor Leiberman, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and founder of the right wing “Israel Home” party, acknowledges that Israel cannot go on by alienating and insulting its closest ally, furthering his country’s isolation.

The creation of Israel is justified on two fronts, a refuge from genocide and human rights abuses, and as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. But a secular Israeli should not use the Torah to justify gentrification by lethal force, if not fully committed to the Torah. An observant member of the Diaspora is bound by the Tenth Commandment not to appropriate the land of his neighbor, nor engage in systematic assault. Fix it, Mr. President.

American values are not consistent with the policies referred to within the Netanyahu government as “mowing the lawn,” (regular military incursions into Gaza resulting in thousands of civilian deaths).

I do not ask this naively. I have witnessed and respected the commitment of Jews and Israelis to the defense of their homeland on a national level, and on a personal level. I have a dear friend who happens to be an Ashkenozic American, who recently united his Chicago family with a family from Tel Aviv through marriage and an expected child. Rocket fire from Gaza could kill my friend, his dear in-laws, or my future niece. I respect the right of Israelis to exist in safety, on a personal level as well as in theory.

It will cost you political capital in your presidential and post-presidential life, but no one has ever been better equipped to do so.

I wish you and your family well for 2015. I sincerely hope that after your presidency the world is safer for future generations, and that our commitment to the Bill of Rights was made stronger, not weaker, by the First President from Hawaii, who also happens to be African-American.

Respectfully,

Konti Pellegrin