Wrong decision made on Kauai Springs
On July 18 I was asked to participate in a special session of the Kauai County Council. This meeting allowed many people, including myself, to voice their support for Kauai Springs.
The amount of spring water that this small company bottles and serves its customers within one year is equal to the amount of water produced by the springs in one day. Close to 99 percent of the water produced by this spring runs off into the ocean each and every day.
I have been a customer of Kauai Springs since they started more than a decade ago. I also live with the auto-immune disease known as multiple sclerosis, and in turn I know the importance of good water.
The issue of the Planning Department not issuing the necessary permits for this company to continue its vital service is ridiculous. Kauai Springs has been serving our community for many years now. This company helps Kauai people live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle on this beautiful island that has no shortage of water.
This council meeting was my first and it really opened my eyes to the workings of our government. The Planning Commission representative was unprepared and unable to produce the requested documents that led to the decision in question.
We should ask ourselves this question: How can six volunteer public servants have the right to shut down service to hundreds of families that depend on the health benefits of this water?
These people are not attorneys and how can they go against the county attorney and the hearing officer’s recommendation to allow Kauai Springs to continue their service?
Lana Lopez-Lono, Koloa
TGI should have joined united front for democracy
I read the editorial in Friday’s paper, explaining why The Garden Island did not want to participate in defense of the free press. Here is what this reader thinks:
The editorial made some excellent points. Unfortunately, it also completely missed the mark. The two primary and crucial reasons to have participated in the united front in which approximately 350 other newspapers participated are: democracy and the Capital Gazette.
Most journalists do have thick skins. But they care about democracy. That’s why they do what they do; they dig out the truth, so people will have the facts they need to make an informed decision when they choose their government representatives to make the big decisions that affect their lives. Our lives.
However, nearly every day now we hear the terms “fake news” or “enemy of the people.” Historically, we have seen that this is straight out of the playbook of tyrants, fascists and dictators. It’s a phrase Hitler and Stalin depended on to delegitimize people and institutions in order to take away their power and credibility.
If journalists don’t have the trust of their readers (in other words, they don’t have credibility), it doesn’t matter if they “get the story right, and are fair.” If they are seen as the enemy of the people they will be ignored and shunned, and, as in the case of the Capital Gazette staff, actually gunned down. (Yes, the shooter had a disagreement with the paper, but we’ll never know if he would have done what he did had he not heard his president tell him the news media is the enemy of the people.)
My primary disappointment in your editorial is that you did exactly what you said you didn’t want to do: You made it personal to yourself. This isn’t about whether you or other journalists are seen as “whiners, like we can’t handle what’s going on, like we’re losing a fight and are calling for help,” as you seem to believe. It isn’t even about “standing up to him (Trump).”
It is about preserving the inalienable essence of facts and the truth. It is about preserving the credibility of an institution that is crucial to democracy.
Vera Benedek, Kilauea
What a bunch of baloney. . . The mainstream media is nothing but the propaganda arm of the left. The left that continues to raise taxes while acquiring a record amount of tax dollars! Stalin and Hitler were both leftists. Same with every other communist government
Hitler was a right wing fascist. How about you?
Thank you for taking the time to write your letter, Vera. It offered a perspective which, I am sure, many other TGI readers felt. I was very disappointed in Mr. Buley—he completely missed the point.
mAhalo Lana, we all are seeing the same thing. cannot hide that planning moguls are volunteers. That, all by itself tells an encyclopedia about these corporations and the employees that have no idea, similar to mccrackerheaded hui o fake peeps on a once amazing island we called Home.
BTW, Debra, congratulations on the 171 votes you garnered in the mayoral primary.
So Vera thinks the “Press” “cares about Democracy” and “digs to find the truth”? Either the letter writer has been asleep for several years, has no idea how to recognize “truth”, lacks common sense, or is mentally deficient! The Press has morphed into power hungry, ratings addicted mutts, and liberal worshipping dingbats, who are no more connected to a quest for the truth than an ameba.
Gordon, let me help you out on your own “quest for truth”: ameba is spelled a-m-o-e-b-a.
You have to consider the mindset for this world view: Journalists are professionals. Professionals have associations that insist on codes of ethics and licensing and standards. They can make or break you. Professionals give out awards and prizes for meeting those standards.
Oswald is a businessman. Businessmen also have associations. In the 1920’s it was called Boosterism. It’s all about getting more business. Businessmen tend to view ethics, licensing, standards, and regulations as a hindrance to getting more business. Businessmen give out awards and prizes to those who get the most business. Getting more business is only wrong if you get caught doing it illegally! Now, in the vile, orange, babysnatcher, they have one of their own at the top hacking at those hated regs and laws. It really doesn’t matter to them if dumping coal ash in rivers killed people; it was getting in the way of business!
So businessmen will continue to repeat lies like “The media is the enemy of the people” and cheer when trump shoots someone on 5th Avenue, as long as it helps perpetuate trump and doesn’t hurt business!
Just Saying…seems irony escapes your patently anti-business, herd mentality. You curse the entities that developed and produced the computer, smartphone, operating systems you use to grace the GI forum; you curse the entities that provide you, food, clothing, transportation, the amenities of life…and critically a job. (That is if you work). Shameful.
RG DeSoto
Just so you know, I spent a third of my life working and living in Silicon Valley and it is famously void of the kind of right wing fascists you’re kneeling before now!
Thanks to Vera Benedek for a making all the correct points on this problematic potus calling the free press the enemy of the people. He is a disgrace in so many ways.
Joining the Fake News Club? Bubba needs to get a Life?
Give a documented example of a single (Just One!) significant piece of fake news that everyone (except FOX) reported and nobody retracted.
Can you do it? I think not!
Posting photos of children being held in cages from the Obama era to incite outrage against the wrong president isn’t fake news?. . . Where is the outrage against Obama for these policies? in Hawaii he’s hailed a hero. Fact is, if separating children from their families is such an outrage, why aren’t you angry that illegals are dumping young children across the border with signs around their necks. . . Imagine how scared a 3-4 year old is being left in the dessert by themselves with a sign. With the hope that border patrol picks them up? Yup 0 outrage from the hypocrites 90% of children being held by DHS were found alone
Your two examples (first and last sentences) are not documented or fact checked. You have not listed those who reported such things in error or submitted any evidence of error. You have simply forwarded opinion.
You have failed!
Just google it angry lib. Liberals always do angry about everything lol. Fact is Trump won so actually you failed. His policies are helping regular Americans across the country. As long as the economy continues as it has he will be re-elected. No angry libs can’t stop it
trump is, like his supporters, nothing more than white trash. He will be impeached and he will be pardoned or jailed afterwards.
and BTW…The children detained alone before trump, all crossed unaccompanied. Only trump started routinely splitting up families.
Before the trump viciousness, in June of 2015, the majority of the Senate Democratic caucus — 33 senators — along with 178 House Democrats sent a letter to the Homeland Security Secretary urging an end to family detention. So shut your mouth about hypocrisy and go back to counting your oh so precious money like every other republican ever hatched!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-immigration-children-cages-photos-obama-administration-us-president-twitter-a8373926.html%3famp
Where the outrage against the parents who abandoned their children across the border alone and scared?
Where’s the outrage that Obama was putting them in cages??
Come on condemn him for placing those children in cages or your just a typical angry liberal hypocrite
Your “Independent” UK Newspaper article is about what some people have tweeted, NOT an example of CNN, NBC, CBS, NY TImes etc., making fake news. YOU HAVE FAILED AGAIN!
My democratic reps expressed my outrage for me in the reference I clearly documented.
Here try this on for size:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/msm-finally-concedes-defeat-on-yemen-ceases-blackout-of-coverage-1b774266dbfe
Do you really believe that under reporting trump’s complicity with his Saudi pals in Yemen is what he means by “fake news?” Really? That’s really what “fake news” means to trump and his army of white trash?
Kauai council? Hillbillies?
Go to Costco and buy the Jumbo box of VERBs!