The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin have made it obvious that they favor full government funding of candidates for election.

The key reason they say, is to combat special interests from influencing with money, etc., our elections and therefore public policy and law. But both papers themselves are special interests that maintain much of their information and sales ability through government access.

From this perspective, the largest special interest group is the government itself-and its interest is to decrease your personal freedom. Most of the people and organizations that so intensely support government funding of elections want a more and more intrusive, all-powerful government, because they live off of it. Pleasing and manipulating one government system is easier than researching and pursuing many private people or organizations.

Government funded elections, if they took over the country, would eventually destroy freedom of the press, which the newspapers profess to venerate.

To quote P. J. O'Rourke's rule of happy living, "Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people."

Thus, if you want your children to become mindless serfs, support government funding of elections.

Richard O. Rowland is president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached via email at: mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com