• Reality-based Obama • Poor practices • Scamming you Reality-based Obama This is for those who do not get their news from the Fox propaganda machine. President Obama’s administration has been in charge for 19 months now. In that time
• Reality-based Obama • Poor practices
• Scamming you
Reality-based Obama
This is for those who do not get their news from the Fox propaganda machine.
President Obama’s administration has been in charge for 19 months now. In that time we: 1) Did not have a second depression thanks to the stimulus (whose impact on job creation would have been greater except for the concessions made to Republican just-say-no-ers); 2) Have regulation of the finance industry so the meltdown that happened at the end of the Bush Administration cannot happen again; 3) Have real health care reform so that in a few years Americans don’t have to decide between seeing a doctor or getting the medicine they need, or paying for food or electricity; 4) Have seen the last combat troops leave Iraq and a timetable set for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan; 5) Have seen the renewed respect for America among the world’s nations; 6) Have seen the fight against global terrorism refocused back onto real threats.
And we need to turn over national political power to the Republicans why? We can move forward and deal positively with the challenges before us — like creating a Green Energy economy — if we give the Democratic Party the chance to renew America and heal the damage from eight years of Republican misrule.
Let’s keep breathing fresh air — and preserving civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, minority rights. Stand up for truth, justice, real freedom and human progress. Vote Democratic. Just say no to the party of no.
David Thorp, Koloa
Poor practices
This is a difficult letter that I feel must be written. My 97-year-old beloved father fell ill and passed away this summer. His final weeks were made more tolerable by the wonderful compassionate care that he received from the caring staff at Wilcox Memorial Hospital.
Sadly, his memorial and internment was not pleasant. In the early 1990s, my parents bought a burial contract from a Lihu‘e funeral home. This contract was supposed to include all costs for the arrangements and it was so stated in the written document. However, on the final day of arrangements, an additional $600 was demanded because the funeral was planned for a Saturday by the family.
This was a an unexpected shock to my grieving mother and the family because the contract clearly stated that no other charges would be included when the sad day would finally came.
We had no choice at this point other than to pay. When I returned to Kaua‘i about a month later, I went to visit the owner of the funeral home and was treated with the utmost disrespect. It was condescending, arrogant and hostile.
I was told that even if this extra charge was not stated in the contract, we should have known because it is implied and people on the Island know these sorts of things. In an aggressive manner, she told me that the islanders talk to each other and it shouldn’t be a surprise.
It wasn’t in the contract and was a shock to us. A poor practice indeed.
Diana Palin, University Place, Wash.
Scamming you
Another op-ed piece from Lowell Kalapa of the Tax Foundation of Hawai‘i on how Social Security is going broke. Mr. Kalapa’s basic facts are not in question, but his conclusions are.
If we accept his hypothesis that the special Treasury Notes held by the Social Security Trust Fund are worthless, then we must conclude that those who earn less than $106,000 pay a larger, regressive percentage in taxes than those who make more. It would only be fair to eliminate the FICA tax cap.
The “shell game” that uses FICA taxes for general budget obligations rather than Social Security Insurance payments was started by Ronald Reagan in 1983.
Consider that “Dollar-Bill” McGuire made $125M in 2005, but was not required to pay FICA tax on income over $106,000, so the social security trust fund was cheated out of $9.5M dollars.
Using only those households that made over $106,000 in 2007 and applying FICA taxes to their full income would generate another $156 billion, about 16 percent of the 2010 SS budget — more than enough to cover the FICA deficit, with some left over to start retiring the special Social Security Treasury Notes.
Social Security is not going broke. The US government is misallocating its tax revenue. Stealing from Social Security — at least committing fraud. Social Security is like an annuity insurance policy. Would it be right if your insurance company refused to pay?
Those who insist retirement must rise to age 70 are scamming you.
John Zwiebel, Kalaheo
