• Donate house as shelter
• Rape at Anahola
• Utility bill tripled
• Focus on the good
• Help save our planet
• Clarifying the dilemma
Donate house as shelter
I was appalled when I read the letter written by Gordon Smith regarding homeless beach dwellers. Mr. Smith, how cruel of you. May I suggest you donate your house to be used as a homeless shelter, and while you are camping in style, take a good long look into the eyes and hearts of the homeless, especially their children.
Rape at Anahola
river mouth
Did you know and do you care? On Friday, July 14, a disturbing rape took place in broad daylight. Many people witnessed the violent rape of the land while several tons of sand were removed from the mouth of the Anahola river. A hired commercial dump truck transferred the valuable sand to the beachfront of a private Aliomanu home owner down the street. This homeowner is using the sand to make sandbags to protect a home which is right on the water.
Why were they allowed to do this without an Environmental Impact Study? Was the DHHL notified? Can the general public do this with just a county permit? Do they realize that the river already overflows the banks under the northern trees and removing more sand will flood the area and threaten the existing homes? Do they know that the river mouth sand always shifts back naturally to the north in the winter to protect all of the other existing beachfront homes?
In the past, county and private bulldozer operators would open up the river from time to time to let the water flow, but never was there any removal of the sand. The Anahola beach residents know how important the sand is to this area, is this fair to them? Auwe, this kind of rape of our ‘aina is not pono. This has to stop! The sand should be returned.
- Aunty Aggie Marti-Kini
Anahola
Utility bill tripled
My utility bill?
It has gone from this time last year … $87 month ’05 to a whopping $207 a month in June of ’06.
Will someone tell me in whose pocket the money is going? I have had all appliances inspected and there were no problems.
Gas prices have not tripled since last year. Why have my utility bills tripled?
Am I paying for some “trustee’s” luxury home?
What are these people being paid? And for what?
We didn’t have trustees under Kauai Electric — we do not need trustees now — unless someone can show me otherwise.
If that is NOT true — if cost have tripled in one year, then please show me … if you can. Please don’t send out some promo leaflet in the mail — just tell us the truth.
Focus on the good
I was recently driving through Hanalei on a very beautiful day and noticed an odd bumper sticker. It read “North Shore: Good Thing Gone Bad.”
It made me think, “How bad could it be?” I realize there are issues that we are dealing with that have had a large impact on Kaua‘i over recent years and some largely the North Shore such as unaffordable housing and increasing amounts of visitors and traffic, but is it really that bad?
People should take a little time to pause and think about how good it actually is. Would you rather have bombs dropping on your head and people shooting at you? How about having to deal with the aftermath of a devastating flood and hurricane? What about an epidemic of some radically contagious disease? Ever tried living in a Third World country with unsafe water? What about issues such as gangs and violence that happen in just about every city on the Mainland?
I realize that things aren’t as they used to be and that is frustrating. But every time I go outside and look at the mountains, swim in the ocean, or just drive to Lihu‘e, I think about how good it still is. Maybe a lot of the people looking for the bad should do the same and think about how good they’ve actually got it.
Help save our planet
I just watched the Tom Brokaw special on the Discovery Channel about global warming, and I am inspired to write to any of you who haven’t seen it. To make a long story short, the earth is warming up very fast, and this is causing the seas to rise, species to go extinct, and severe storms and brush fires to proliferate, among other things. The reason is that we are burning too much fossil fuel, which puts too much carbon dioxide into the air.
It is probably not too late to stop the increasing warming if we all participate, but it is close to the point of no return. What each one of us can do to turn it around now is simple: switch to energy-efficient light bulbs (the spiral kind) and energy-efficient appliances; turn off lights, computers, TVs and other appliances when not in use; switch to an energy-efficient vehicle if possible; and walk, ride a bike or take the bus when you can. It may not seem like much if you think you’re the only one doing these things, but when each of us does at least one of them it adds up to a lot less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and it may help save our planet for our children.
Clarifying the dilemma
Tom Rice’s 10-paragraph column uses three paragraphs to suggest the key turning point for the health care system was Bill Clinton’s Universal Health Care system in 1993. If that were the case, we could just repeal the whole thing. But there’s nothing to repeal; the plan never became law and didn’t change any aspect of health care.
Those three paragraphs could be replaced by this fact and the dilemma would be clear: “According to the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, overall health spending in the U.S. doubled between 1993 and 2004.” Does anyone think nurses or doctors are now making twice as much money as they did in 1993?
