Disabled veteran benefits an issue of national security
I am asking Congress to compensate our grossly underpaid disabled veterans fairly this year. This must be corrected by appropriate legislation now.
In 2022 a totally disabled veteran with no dependents is compensated at the ridiculous rate of $39,984.72 annually. The National Average Wage Index (NAWI) for 2020 was $55,628.60 per annum, and the median income for 2020 was $67,521. The per capita GDP (gross domestic product) in 2020 was $63,416, among the highest in the world. This low rate of compensation to disabled veterans is deliberate and cruel.
Disabled veterans are only compensated for projected lost wages not to include a “loss-of-quality-of-life” payment which is now the norm in the court system involving personal-injury cases. This is done specifically to keep taxes low on our elites, i.e., the investor class, who pay next to nothing in federal taxes every year.
And there is a national-security aspect to this travesty of justice.
Once our youth realize that serious injury or sickness received in the armed forces will mean a lifetime of near-poverty due to artificially low compensation as disabled veterans, the armed forces will collapse. In fact, this has already started to happen. Enlistments are growing precariously sparse.
A young person would have to be unbalanced to accept this social contract as reasonable between an enlistee and the government. No clear-thinking young person would agree to this lopsided arrangement.
This is a danger to all of us. Congress must end this injustice now.
Thomas Bee, Hilo
Students dress code unnecessarily strict
It is my understanding that the company that prints school uniforms on the Westside has been closed for a while.
Point is, some of these Westside school students don’t have the uniform tees to use to go to school. With that said, why are these students who don’t have uniform tees getting written up? It’s anybody’s fault. Let the students use a T-shirt that is presentable for school until they can get uniform tees printed for them.
Isn’t it ridiculous that a student cannot enter school without being harassed? Borrowing uniform tees from other students is hygienically not healthy. Would you as teachers borrow clothes from your co-worker to get to school to teach?
Howard Tolbe, ‘Ele‘ele
Monitoring of pregnant women is wrong
Elected Republicans have made the political calculation that forcing women to give birth to their rapists’ babies is a winning strategy.
In some states, Republicans are moving to restrict interstate travel for pregnant women — just in case they plan to have an abortion elsewhere — and monitor the delivery of their mail, just in case they hope to receive abortion drugs.
Because the laws regarding how doctors can be prosecuted in cases of abortion are so poorly written and vague, chemotherapy is being withheld from women with cancer because the drugs may affect the pregnancy.
What is being proposed is the largest expansion of government in history — the surveillance and monitoring of every pregnancy in their states, from conception to forced delivery.
The degree to which elected Republicans disrespect and hate women is remarkable. No man would ever put up with this kind of government control over his body. But elected Republicans find it easy to subjugate and disrespect women.
Based on the fantasy musings of Justice Thomas, other Republican governors and attorneys general are planning on how to end same-sex marriage and consensual same-sex relationships; end contraception; and restrict and control in-vitro-fertilization procedures.
This is part of the long history of ridiculous overreach by Republican governors that results in them being unable to govern. Justice Thomas didn’t specifically mention or target interracial marriage, probably because his traitorous wife Virginia is white.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was recently questioned about why rape victims in Texas will be forced to give birth to children fathered by rapists. The brilliant answer from Abbott (never accused of being particularly bright) is that he plans to eliminate all rapists from Texas. Problem solved!
Of course, Abbott didn’t explain how those rapists will be “eliminated” prior to committing their crimes, but those are minor details. Considering the fact that Texas suffered the most forcible rapes of any state, the question might be asked why Mr. Abbott waited until Roe v. Wade was struck down to do anything about his disgraceful record on crime.
One piece of good news in this miserable time for women is that — at least for the time being — women in Republican states still have the right to vote. Women by the hundreds of thousands are registering to vote with a furious resolve, for the express purpose of turning out every single elected Republican. That cannot happen soon enough. Politicians in Kansas just received a reality check on this, and other states are not far behind.
Kurt Last, Anahola
