• Forget the multi-use path and fix roads • Because we can • Where does it end? • Those terrible Bush tax cuts • Silent screen
Change in online commenting policy
Starting July 1, The Garden Island has changed how it monitors the online commenting portion of thegardenisland.com. All comments will go through an approval process. Not all comments will be approved. Priority will be given to those that are topical, remain within our comment policies and contain the author’s full name and hometown.
We encourage continued use of our online comment feature as well as the Letters to the Editor in our print edition. The Garden Island values reader input and encourages thoughtful debate.
Forget the multi-use path and fix roads
I understand that to all of you who use the multi-use path, you feel there is a lot of you on it. However, you all are only a handful versus the people who drive cars on the highways and roads to get to our destination of travel. In fact, you all drive on the highways and roads, too.
The multi-use path is just a luxury for a handful of people. We should put a lid on this multi-use path and start asking for road and highway repairs.
A lot of our roads on the island are getting dangerous to drive on. We have potholes and cracks in the roads that need to be repaired. These problems can cause accidents and cause costly repairs to our vehicles. Most of all these problems (potholes and cracks) can cause a lost of life while driving on the roads.
Like the multi-use path, you say it is for the safety of our younger generation to come. The same goes for our highways and roads.
Forget the luxuries of the multi-use path and fix our roads.
Howard Tolbe
‘Ele‘ele
Because we can
May I ask what sense it made for a random traffic stop in Waimea with 10,000 people on the road heading home from, what I consider, one of the finest and well organized events on island? The Kaua‘i Police Department should have put up Porta-Pottys along with their special event. Not only did we not move most of the way home, but when we did move, it was six inches at a time.
Thirty minutes to get to PMRF and two-and-a-half hours back to Kalaheo! After two long hours, we saw the blue lights and three police cars but no emergency, no accidents — just one small pick-up truck pulled over. What was the thinking here? About 10,000 people on the road and the world comes to a stop! I understand this was called a traffic safety check. Why Waimea? Why bring 10,000 people to a stop?
We need to question the sense or politics behind this stop so far from PMRF. Or is this just a case of no common sense? Maybe.
Lawence Dolan
Kalaheo
Where does it end?
The idea that secondhand tobacco smoke, drifting in a 15 mph trade wind, would be a hazard to someone down wind is rather ludicrous.
Much more obnoxious are the smoldering logs left on the beach after someone’s evening bon fire, or the carcinogen filled smoke from the family BBQ.
So, I guess we need to ban those also, if this is really a health-related law.
If the issue is the butts left by inconsiderate slobs, tell it as it is.
But, lets be fair. I would rather step on an old cigarette butt than a pop top can or bottle top that will cut my foot and get infected.
So, we need to ban all bottles and cans from the parks.
The plastic lunch baggies and rolled up plastic wrap left around picnic tables is also an eyesore, so we need to ban those also. In fact, lets keep the parks pristine and ban people!
Once again, politicians are trying to regulate every aspect of our life. Where does it stop?
Ban smoking outside your home, say on your lawn, where it might drift to your neighbors property?
Besides, one has to simply step on to the state-owned beach and light up. How about we try to educate rather than legislate ?
If this is the most important matter the council has to address, they have way too much time on their hands.
Barry Dittler
Wailua
Those terrible Bush tax cuts
Progressive wisdom has it that the economy and government revenue suffered as a result of bumbling George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Bad Bush tax cuts had the effect of making the rich richer, the poor poorer and that beastly Bush reduced the federal government’s much needed revenue. The general mood was crabgrass and thorns.
Clever, cute and competent Bill Clinton on the other hand, raised taxes and had a great economy; the poor prospered, the rich paid up and the general mood was radiant sunshine and roses.
Why is it, then, under charismatic Clinton’s eight years with tax increases, federal government revenue was 11.8 trillion dollars, while under boorish Bush’s eight years with tax cuts, Federal Government revenue increased to 17.1 trillion dollars?
Will our current leader, President Obama, the omniscient and the omnipresent figure it out? Being a progressive, it’s doubtful.
Russell Boyer
Hanalei
Silent screen
In The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is written that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes opinion without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontier.”
In the United States of America, the Supreme Court — in a prevailing decision and to quite a full extent — blanketed the protection of the First Amendment to the Internet in the overturning of case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union. The courts decision regarded materials published on the Internet due equal Constitutional protection given to books, magazines, films and spoken expressions.
Excluded under such First Amendment protection was the shielding of children from impacting Internet materials.
Overridden were any crimes, including incitement to immediate violence, defamation, obstruction of justice and cover-up crimes. As one author in the “Letters to the Editor” in The Garden Island notes, some innocent citizens on Kaua’i — who have exercised their rights to freedom of speech in the newspaper forum — “had experienced or were afraid of being retaliated.”
In an extreme, this fact has risen to some innocent citizens finding themselves in court due to cover-up crimes and perjury by a false accuser.
Another published writer in the “Letters to the Editor” refers to Kaua‘i’s coconut wireless. I believe this “wireless” communication is crucial in such a community as Kaua‘i, where we often share information in a very organized fashion, and which serves the community as a whole, and to a degree of helping keep one another safe.
It is my experience that The Garden Island news forum acted as a reliable “nervous center” for the community.
Has this viable “nervous center” now been severed due to some recent changes to policies in anonymous opinions?
I hope further equitable changes to such policies may be introduced so that readers, and writers, do not find themselves before a “silent screen,” but protected and with opportunity to exercise the freedom of speech responsibly.
Deborah Morel
British Columbia, Canada
