Obama Staying in Kailua Beach

As reported in today's Honolulu Advertiser (Dec. 20), President-elect Obama and his family will be spending their Christmas vacation at a beachfront property on Kailuana Place, not far from L'Orange Place -- Ground Zero in the battle for beach access.

Longtime Kailua residents still simmer over the gate that was put up on Kailuana Loop in the early 1990s. Surfers and kids used to have easy access to Castles, a popular surf spot at that end of the beach. Then the Kailuana homeowners put up a spiked gate on a private easement they controlled.

However, those same Kailuana homeowners reap the publicly-financed benefits of living on a public street that our tax dollars maintain for them! If they want their own private beach access, let them pay for the upkeep on their own damn road.

I hope someone will ask Obama if he approves of this kind of "elitist" attitude among the Kailuana Place grinches, who deny beach access to their own neighbors.