• Para-social behavior • The people’s house • Keep pushing for alternate roads • Laws govern funding Para-social behavior Many of us, including myself, have become victims of para-social behavior. We watch Wheel of Fortune, Hawaii Five-O, Jerry Springer, Jay
• Para-social behavior • The people’s
house • Keep pushing for alternate roads
• Laws govern funding
Para-social behavior
Many of us, including myself, have become victims of para-social behavior.
We watch Wheel of Fortune, Hawaii Five-O, Jerry Springer, Jay Leno, Oprah, and the list goes on.
We become familiar with our favorite TV personalities and feel we know them. We can now follow our favorite celebrities on Facebook, My Space and Twitter, and feel like they are our best friends.
This para-social behavior has created a generation of virtual-reality computer addicts that do not have many friends or much of a social life, not because they are shy but because they feel this is their circle of friendship and social activities.
Just as I feel all of you reading this are my good friends. I know this to be not true, but like many have fallen victim to the para-social phenomenon.
Don’t I know you?
James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa‘a
The people’s house
On Jan. 6, newly appointed House Speaker John Boehner spoke to the American people. For the first time ever, from this “Speaker’s Balcony,” the U.S. Constitution was read from the floor of the Capitol on this same day. Both parties took part in this reading.
Boehner would begin by reading the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide the common defence, promote general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United State of America.”
This newly appointed speaker of the House would finish in expressing that for too long the proper limits imposed by the U.S. Constitution have been ignored.
House Speaker Boehner would state, “The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions. They remind us that everything here is on loan from them. After all, this is the people’s house.”
Deborah Morel, Kapa‘a
Keep pushing for alternate roads
Thank you, Howard Tolbe, for your fine Forum letter Jan. 9, “No to useless bike path.”
Your words, “We need more roads now, not more useless bike/walk paths” were so vividly true. I know that they express the thoughts and wishes of so many other citizens on Kaua‘i who are too busy to write letters to our paper or get involved with this most important issue.
But they will certainly agree that this three-mile path at a cost of $30-50 million and the prospective cost of another $60-plus million for the rest of it will never be used for them to commute, go shopping, or do the multitude of tasks that they use their vehicles for.
It will never solve our traffic problems and that is what we should be concentrating our time, money and efforts on.
Our former senator, Billy Fernandes, had the vision many years ago to open the Power Line Road from the west side to the north side of the island (as you suggest) but narrow-minded thinkers squelched that outstanding idea and horrendous traffic is the consequence.
And yes, we know that the 80 percent of Transportation Enhancement funds from the feds being used for this project cannot be used for other purposes. But 20 percent of that cost and the millions more for maintenance will be our burden so in these depressed times why use finite funds on such a super low project?
Yes, Mr. Tolbe, keep pushing for those alternate roads that we so badly need and I will be right there with you. Wouldn’t it be great if our government was on this same page?
Glenn Mickens, Kapa‘a
Laws govern funding
Mr. Tolbe wants the path funds to be used for a lottery (“No to useless path,” Letters, Jan. 9).
Others have suggested causes that seem more worthy of spending than the path.
Most of the funds Mr. Tolbe cites are federal and designated specifically for paths like ours. Those paths can be for recreation or transportation. By law, the funds (and the percentage we are required to supply) must be spent only on the path or returned.
Those funds would then be used for a different community’s path. Therefore, these (mostly federal) funds cannot be used for a lottery, or for ending furloughs, or for building a new ballpark, or for even a path on the Westside that has gone through the approval process (none has).
It has nothing to do with the worthiness of the cause; it’s simply the laws that govern the funding.
Pete Antonson, Kalaheo
