If you vote to approve the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, you will be approving a "pig in a poke." Because no one can predict what the consequences of this Bill's passage will be for the State of Hawaii and its citizens. The Bill contains few specifics. It only authorizes "negotiations" between yet unnamed bureaucrats in the Department of the Interior, unnamed politicians in Hawaii, and unnamed native Hawaiians, as to how the lands and other assets of the State will be carved up and handed to a new, racially discriminatory, native Hawaiian Government, which will then write its own laws and regulations for its newly-created "citizens."

Vital and basic governmental matters, including criminal jurisdiction civil jurisdiction, and who will be subject to which state and local taxes, will be decided in these negotiations, but non-native-Hawaiian citizens of the State of Hawaii, who are a majority of the population, will not be allowed to vote for or against the outcome of the negotiations.

The U. S. Civil Rights Commission in 2006 recommended against passage of an earlier, but nearly identical, version of this Bill, or "any other legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege."

The Committee should be aware that due to widespread racial and ethnic intermarriage over several generations, most of the "native Hawaiians" who would be benefited by the Bill have less than 25% Hawaiian blood, and many have less than 1% Hawaiian blood. People who are only 1/128 Hawaiian qualify under this Bill as "native Hawaiians" and will receive preference in receiving government benefits over non-native Hawaiians who have much greater needs.

This Bill is un-American, unfair, and unconstitutional.

This matter should not have reached the Congress before all of its specific provisions were "negotiated" and could be evaluated on their merits. As it is, the Congress is being asked to sign a blank check that will lead to endless litigation, violent racial strife, and ultimately destroy the paradise that is the State of Hawaii.

Tom Macdonald, retired President/CEO of Hawaiian Trust Company, lives in Kaneohe.