Letters for March 9, 2016

Letters for March 9, 2016

Tax increases stress seniors

Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura’s proposal to increase the gas tax will negatively impact our most vulnerable, and most often, low income citizens — our seniors.

Living on very meager fixed incomes with no Social Security increases and rising Medicare costs, our seniors suffer the most from any proposal to raise taxes.

Seniors often have to do chores for family members who are working during the day, so they cannot use public transportation, especially if there are several stops the driver must make.

Let’s get a dose of reality here. Most folks are not going to take public transportation or ride a bike to do errands around our island. Yes, many county roads are in need of repair, but many of our most heavily traveled corridors are state roads such as the Wailua-Kapaa corridor, Kuhio Highway.

As I see it, the only “painless” way to improve our county’s aging transportation is for those who are gobbling up our county funds through increased pay raises, excessive overtime costs and other bloated bureaucratic county proposals, i.e. the bike path-have their budgets reduced.

Seniors and others on Kauai cannot just vote themselves a “pay raise” as there’s no salary commission advocating for us. If you have had enough of the county council’s proposals to tax us into poverty and possibly out of our homes, I hope to see you at the meeting on Wednesday. Seniors have to live within their means, it’s time for Kauai’s leaders do the same!

Deborah Nantais

Kapaa

Trump willing to take stands for America

I am so tired of the anti Trump rhetoric it makes me sick. Then to refer to him dumbing down America is flat out insulting.

I went to the University of Michigan and about 87 percent of this country is not qualified to get accepted. Trump is a red-blooded American who stands for something. America has gone down the toilet since World War II, and now we have a chance to put a man in the White House who can bring us back to glory.

If you don’t like Trump it’s because you have never done anything but go to work and get a paycheck. Open your own business and see what the government does to you. We are going to put the man in office and in one year you will realize what a fool you were for not voting for him, because you will be better off.

Joseph Lavery

Kapaa

Trump followers hard to figure

I’ve been very baffled by the Trump phenomenon during this presidential campaign.

Despite all his stinging insults and incendiary statements, despite his refusal to disavow his endorsement by former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke and despite his professed admiration of a quote by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Donald Trump still remains immensely popular.

Lately, I encountered two statements he made that explain everything. In a campaign speech, he bragged, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I won’t lose any voters.” Then in his victory speech after the Nevada caucus, he declared, “I love the poorly educated.”

The personality cult of Donald Trump is so powerful that he can insult his own followers and they will still blindly vote for him.

Ben K. Azman

Lahaina