No dogs in restaurants This is in response to the article in The Garden Island Jan. 31 regarding Senate Bill 3032, which would allow dogs inside Hawai‘i’s restaurants. My response: Why? What possible reason is there to bring a dog
No dogs in restaurants
This is in response to the article in The Garden Island Jan. 31 regarding Senate Bill 3032, which would allow dogs inside Hawai‘i’s restaurants.
My response: Why? What possible reason is there to bring a dog to a restaurant if the owner is not in need of a service dog?
Can’t a pet owner be parted from their furry friend for a few hours to go out and enjoy a meal without them?
With all of the problems we have in this state, who in their right mind would bother our politicians to consider a bill like this?
What happens when the dog defecates, or lifts its leg to urinate on the booth someone is sitting in?
In addition, many people are allergic to animals. Will that be taken into consideration? How about fleas infesting the restaurant? Wouldn’t pets be in the way of the wait help when they are trying to work?
What if the pet decides to bite the server? What about pet cats, birds or pigs? Are they going to be allowed, too?
The article states, “The owner would be financially responsible for any damages caused by the dog, including property damage and personal injuries.”
Obviously the legislation is already anticipating problems.
If you read current events in the paper, you know that the restaurant owner will be sued the first time someone is bitten, because the manager of the restaurant didn’t “screen” the dog properly before allowing it inside.
Besides these issues, aren’t there Department of Health codes to be met in every restaurant? What is the possible up-side of this legislation? Does this legislation sound ridiculous to anyone else out there?
Kris Van Dahm, Kapa‘a
On entitlements
I’ve been taking issue with David Thorp’s letters and I must apologize, as I know David’s heart is true.
That we need to come together to solve the problems we’ve created is the only way we can grow as individuals, communities and nations.
I’ve come to realize that our entitlements are one of the limiting elements to our synergistic potential. These entitlements are power and money.
Examples of these entitlements are the authority the Legislature has over the budget, the retirement benefits dictated by union contracts, the retiree income from Social Security, and other “rights” we have become accustomed to as Americans. Entitlements have also become the “rights” of “illegals.”
We continue to mandate the concentration of authority over our lives to humans who now regulate our lives.
We continue to allow the growth of taxes to pay for the growing bureaucracy of regulation and entitlement.
David Thorp is right in suggesting that we need to work together to solve our growing dilemmas.
The biggest dilemma is our national Congress, whose antagonists have further burdened us with ineffective leadership.
It’s human nature to be selfish, where power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In this New Age, we have come to realize that our ego is the first thing humans have to surrender, to allow growth.
At a higher organizational level, to grow, the first thing we will have to risk is our entitlement. In nature, we are entitled to life, and nothing beyond that. Survival is through the effort of family, community and our individual exertion.
In our bureaucratic malaise, we will have to be willing to give up our entitlement to progress.
The recent educational debate is an example that we need to consider.
In the debate between the Legislative funding, the HSTA contract, the Board of Education authority and the governor’s influence, I haven’t heard one word about the benefit to our students.
In negotiations, one of the rules is, you have to give to get. To regain the vitality of a working society, consider what entitlement you’re holding onto that is limiting progress.
Mike Curtis, Koloa
Obama’s spending orgy
Mr. Laureta’s (Letters: Jan. 30) critique of Mitch Daniels’ response to Obama’s State of the Union speech parrots the Big Media spin that the president can always rely upon.
Daniels, by the way, is one of the two or three most successful governors in the country, turning Indiana’s debt-ridden mess into a surplus, along with a growing, healthy private sector.
The writer claims that it’s Republican “obstructionism” and “failure to compromise” that doomed the president’s plan to fix the economy. But he fails to mention that Obama owned the federal government when he was inaugurated. The Dems controlled both houses of Congress and the executive for the first two years of his tenure, losing only the House in the last midterm election.
Obama got everything he wanted when he oversaw the biggest spending orgy in our history, adding more debt than the total of all previous administrations, proving for the umpteenth time we can’t spend our way out of the poor house.
The result has been the highest unemployment for the longest stretch since the Great Depression. The Republicans bear no responsibility for this at all. The minority party is in no position to “compromise” or “obstruct.”
Since taking over the House, the GOP “obstructionism” has, thankfully, been to block more “hair of the dog that bit us.”
It is Obama and the Dems who have blocked the opening of the big (nonunion) Boeing plant in South Carolina, the Keystone Pipeline, the reduction of job-killing estate, capital gains and corporate taxes, and forced the shutdown of domestic drilling in the Gulf of Mexico,and on and on. “Compromise” to the Left apparently means “like it or lump it.”
John Burns, Princeville
