• Healthcare funding for communities •
Where’s the outrage? • Hydroelectric or
hydrobrains? • Mass consumption
Healthcare funding for communities
There was an interesting juxtaposition between two of Monday’s Letters to the Editor.
Mr. Zwiebel questioned if Speaker of the House Boehner thinks America “too stupid, too illiterate, too lazy to make it in today’s world,” and lacking the ingenuity to grow itself out of debt.
Mr Oswald’s letter, challenging an earlier one by Mr. Zwiebel, posits a regard for American entrepreneurship as pessimistic as Mr. Boehner’s, in this case regarding healthcare.
Dozens of countries have lower healthcare costs and a healthier, longer living population than the U.S. Mr. Oswald says that unique among developed nations, the U.S. is incapable of solution.
The most crucial but unheralded aspect of the Affordable Care Act is funding to communities across the country to devise pilot programs among their doctors, hospitals, etc to resolve this cost/benefit dilemma.
The irony is that Republicans insist ObamaCare (their word) allows the federal government to dictate health care decisions when in fact it will be these locally created solutions that will make or break health care reform.
No two countries that have adopted universal health care have used the same formula, but they all start from the premise that health care is a right.
Kip Goodwin, Kapa‘a
Where’s the outrage?
Surely Patty Allen and I aren’t the only ones on Kaua‘i to be completely outraged by the heinous crime committed on the defenseless pregnant goat named Kaitlyn?
Do you residents on this relatively small island realize that there’s a totally maniacal person living among us who gets his kicks from taking a surgically sharp knife and slitting a sweet, loving and innocent pet goat from throat to crotch, removing her soon to be born kids, strewing her intestines on the ground and then just to complete his job beheading her.
Who’s next is the question we all should be asking ourselves? Will this insane maniac come into our yards, crawl through our windows in the dead of night, grab one of our sleeping children or our mothers or ourselves, muffle our screams with his hand held tightly over our mouths while the glistening sharp knife held in his other hand begins to pierce our skin and slice down the length our bodies, gutting us and finally cutting our heads off?
Someone on this island knows this person and is responsible for telling the authorities where he is so they may capture and lock him up in a very secure place.
He must go to trial and be found guilty of this crime and if his lawyer pleads him innocent due to insanity he then must be committed to an asylum for treatment.
Upon leaving the asylum he must be put behind bars for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole. This person can never be rehabilitated and live in a normal society.
Please, please whoever knows him I beg you to turn him over to the Kaua‘i Police Department as soon as possible. None of us are safe while he is out there walking among us.
Virginia Scott, Kapa‘a
Hydroelectric or hydrobrains?
Residents speaking during the series of Kauai Island Utility Cooperative meetings indicated that they want KIUC to:
1. Stop using fossil fuel (oil) to produce electricity.
2. Use a source of sustainable energy confined to the Garden Island.
3. Use a source of energy that is cheaper than oil to produce electricity. David Bissel, CEO of KIUC, suggested a method of producing electricity that fulfills all three criteria: hydroelectric.
So the vocal residents should be ecstatic. Right?
Wrong! They objected to water being diverted to produce electricity.
The water they drink is diverted.
The local crops they eat are produced from diverted water. The water on their brains has been diverted.
All water that is used by human beings, other animals, insects, microbes, and plants is water that is diverted.
Jack Stephens, Lihu‘e
Mass consumption
It is estimated that if the whole world were consuming as much as the wealthy countries are consuming, we would have to use up five Earths.
To increase the world’s sustainability, the wealthy need to shift to smaller more efficient homes, i.e. multi-family units.
Also, we should make sure that range-fed meat isn’t from animals over-grazing.
Alex Sokolow, Santa Monica, Calif.
