• Money, money, money • We can’t afford the Jones Act • No justice for James Alalem • Fourth of July no time to celebrate Change in online commenting policy Starting July 1, The Garden Island has changed how it
• Money, money, money • We can’t afford the Jones Act • No justice for James Alalem • Fourth of July no time to celebrate
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.
Money, money, money
Our politicians continue to spend like there is no tomorrow. The latest in our $16 trillion debt is the Farm Bill. Congress wants to dump another trillion into it when they have almost doubled spending on it since 2008. Then, after they bloat the bill with spending, they cut a little bit out and claim deficit reduction. Are you kidding me?
Then I see that 80 percent of the funding for the Farm Bill went to programs like food stamps. And while Congress pats themselves on the back for ending the direct payment program, they create a massive new entitlement program where big agricultural businesses are guaranteed revenues will never fall below 90 percent of their last 5-year average. The taxpayer will be there to make up the difference. What?
We need fresh blood in the administration. People who stand for us, for the right thing, and who don’t pander to special interests. We can do that by asking the candidates to go through the GOOOH process and document where they stand on the issues. It is available online in every state and district at www.goooh.com.
Cecilia Rice, Texas City, TX
We can’t afford the Jones Act
I am so with you, Al Aragona, regarding all your comments in response to the lengthy commentary regarding the Jones Act published recently.
I didn’t appreciate being called a union basher either. I assumed that anyone that has read my letters, and yours, would realize that Mr. Roversi had missed both our points entirely. Obviously I was naive on that point.
While your objection is the political, mine is primarily the fact of how much this act is costing all of us here in Hawaii each year. I’ll say it again, 14 years ago the number of dollars spent per household per year was estimated at $3,000. Anyone care to calculate what that amount would be now? Conservatively we’re talking about $500 a month in 2012.
And other U.S. territories are exempt from the Jones Act. Mr. Roversi calls that a “narrow short-term concern for cheaper stuff supplied by “free trade.” My calculations suggest that the cheaper stuff would have amounted to $40,000 in the last 10 years. And the short term he’s referring to is what he thinks is my complaint about paying too much for a cruise? Which I never mentioned and isn’t true … just that cruise routes are governed by the Jones Act and the resulting rules are just plain stupid.
I’m doing what I can to stop this robbery. We simply can’t afford it.
Gayle Hughes, Kalaheo
No justice for James Alalem
American justice: Judge and jury, again, in which a kanaka maoli trying to keep a foreign government from desecrating a sacred burial ground by spreading raw sewage amongst ancestral bones.
United States of America: Go ahead and continue to ignore international law, constitutional law and United Nations conventions.
L.S. Nalani Pudwill, Kapa‘a
Fourth of July no time to celebrate
Tony Elliot’s letter to the editor on July 4 is the historical one-sided celebration of American freedom and it remains dishonest still. It did not mention the victims of the forefathers, most recently the anniversary of the indigenous peoples of North America at Wounded Knee and the 1,000-mile Trail of Tears and many other events toward freedom as a result of theft and genocide, most importantly the theft and destruction of the Hawaiian culture and wahi pana and the subjection of the Kanaka Maoli to assault, false arrest and incarceration, as recent as 11/8/11 for me. He failed to mention the slaughter of innocent sleeping children and women in Afghanistan also.
What is it about this truth that any group of people would be encouraged to shout “Yay!” and display fireworks. For me and from within my Hawaiian culture I would be hard driven into ho‘oponopono, making the wrongs right.
The descendants of Lewis and Clark decided to do this. Ho‘omau. To visit a peoples home and leave it as you found it is respect. To steal it from him and his family is theft.
Aloha.
Jerry Ferro, Hilo
