• Welfare workers to become recipients • State has money for special election • Management to blame Welfare workers to become recipients The irony. There are plans in action to close statewide over 50 Department of Human Services and Med-Quest
• Welfare workers to become recipients • State has money for special election • Management to blame
Welfare workers to become recipients
The irony.
There are plans in action to close statewide over 50 Department of Human Services and Med-Quest locations and to cut the staff by more than half.
How ironic that many of the workers that work with so many people in need, now will become the people in need themselves. The welfare worker may soon become the recipient.
This is a time that human services are needed more than ever in our state’s history.
People are hungry, food banks are being depleted as quick as food comes in, and every week there is a new list of foreclosures that the banks do not want to deal with.
Food stamps and Medicaid are in more demand now than ever, people losing jobs means they lose their medical insurance, people being furloughed means they may need EBT (food stamps).
This is all planned to take place this coming July. During these recessed times we need all 50 Department of Human Services (offices) to stay open, the department is already on a furloughed scheduled as is.
I feel in lieu of downsizing human services at a time when human services are needed more than ever, that state workers with six-figure or more incomes need to take pay cuts.
The first state pay cut should come at the coaching position of University of Hawai‘i head football Coach Greg McMackin, since he is the highest paid employee in the state, he makes approximately one million dollars a year. If the state cut his salary in half, he would still be one of the highest-paid employees in the state of Hawai‘i.
First school furloughs, now 50 Med-Quest and human services offices will be shut down.
For the welfare of the Aloha state it’s time for those with abundance of wealth to become heroes and the obvious be done by all of us to contact our elected officials and plead to get priorities straight.
James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa‘a
State has money for special election
Your March 12 story over the cost of a special election to fill Neil Abercrombie’s seat in Congress has a misleading heading (Kaua‘i school funds to be used for O‘ahu special election).
The money being used to pay for this election will have no impact on any Neighbor Island school repair and maintenance projects.
The story said that, it’s unfortunate the headline says otherwise.
The story also didn’t address the fact that the state has the money to pay for the special election. An audit of the state Elections Office found $1.3 million in October 2009 that was misplaced due to an accounting error by the Lingle administration.
Neil Abercrombie resigned from Congress to devote all his time to becoming our next governor. He is only doing it to help the people of Hawai‘i. Despite the fact that funds exist to pay for a special election, some are using the occasion, fueled by misleading headlines like the one in The Garden Island, to politicize and sensationalize stories about this election.
Dennis Esaki, Kapa‘a
Management to blame
Unions are not at the heart of the problem, management is. Who inappropriately managed tax revenues? Who mismanaged corporate revenues? Why did so few companies prepare for anything other than rosy conditions? We need good wages and a healthy savings rate to save for downturns. Someone has got to be counter-cyclical, and right now that’s the government. So why choose now to bash people’s wages? Why now to say union workers do not deserve what they make?
I also want to dispel the myth that if you are a union member that you don’t want health reform. I can tell you that these institutions that we hold responsible for the collective welfare of its members and our communities are facing the same disparity between contributors and beneficiaries.
The unions have seen the writing on the wall when it comes to the costs of healthcare. Why do you think that they take $5.25 an hour out of an apprentice’s wage? The system is burdened with the likes of my parents. I am an Echo-Boomer, 32-year-old journeyman carpenter, entering the highest grossing years of my life, and I say ‘tax me!’
Too many of my years have seen boom and bust in the construction industry. I have absolutely no idea when I will have insurance coverage or not in a given month. Well, I say to you, healthcare is Social Security.
Another little-known fact is that in Hawai‘i you get health insurance after 30 to 59 days on the job, unless you are a union member, in which case it can be 90 to 119 days, all the while you are paying $5.25 an hour. I was a paperboy when Hillary tried to help us get healthcare. The lobbyists smeared endlessly. Here we go again. Will my daughter be writing her local newspaper (blog?) about the need for healthcare when her son is a paperboy? Tax me now, take care of me later!
Hopeful healthcare will pass.
Ryan Robbins, Lihu‘e
