• Win your war • Mind reading or delusion? Win your war I’m sure it’s with great interest many of us read Anne Punohu of the Kaua‘i Fair Housing Law Coalition’s letter concerning public housing and the unfortunate poor among
• Win your war • Mind reading or delusion?
Win your war
I’m sure it’s with great interest many of us read Anne Punohu of the Kaua‘i Fair Housing Law Coalition’s letter concerning public housing and the unfortunate poor among us (“War against the poor,” Letters, April 11).
The poor indeed are a problem facing not only Kaua‘i, but the entire world as the economic turmoil continues. Every 3.7 seconds a child dies of starvation in our world and that is unacceptable!
Here in the good old U.S.A. many people who would never have dreamed they would require public housing and services are falling into circumstances beyond their immediate control forcing them to ask for government assistance.
As Anne’s letter describes the plight of those already receiving assistance one can’t help but be disappointed in many who have treated government assistance as their “right for life” regardless of their ability to upgrade their circumstances and become a contributing member to our society. Of course there are those who deserve, need, and require the government to take care of them; but are there others who do not deserve or need to live off of the sweat, labor, and sacrifice of others?
Government has no money, Anne. People work for money, and the government confiscates it from those who work to pay for the very services for those who can’t, or won’t.
I hope your view that there is a “war to hurt the poor” is mis-characterized. The war should be to weed out those who have chosen government services as a generational lifestyle from those who, because of physical handicaps or temporary bad luck, have found themselves in need of using other people’s money to live for a short period of time. There is no excuse for one generation to hand over the keys to their publicly supplied house to their next family generation, period! If those are the poor people you claim are being “oppressed and persecuted” then, Oh well!
Your title, Anne, includes membership in the “Fair” Housing Coalition. Perhaps the most important word here is “Fair.” Everyone knows the key to a better life is taking advantage of “free” public education by getting straight A’s, or excelling in sports, to obtain university scholarships and financial aid while the entire family contributes by working hard to break the cycle of government dependence.
One has to ask themselves, in a society where good education is “free” and there are jobs available, no matter how demeaning to one’s pride they may be, if it’s “Fair” to confiscate money from those who are willing to sacrifice and work hard and give it to those who decide it’s easier not to? Are there any poor in public housing, or their children, who have chosen to contribute to the destruction of our society by not taking advantage of their “free” education, but would rather skip class, surf, sit home, drink beer, fight chickens, smoke pot, deal drugs and then go down to the government services offices and take money or food stamps paid for by others who work hard?
How about drug testing every member of a family who requires government assistance? How about monitoring the educational achievements of the children whose parents are living off of others efforts? How about insisting those who are physically able to work are either working, cleaning public facilities, or picking up trash on our beautiful Island?
There’s your war, Anne; and given your position it’s imperative you go out and win it! We’re all pulling for you because that would be your most meaningful contribution to society, and the only logical path to its survival.
Gordon Oswald, Kapa‘a
Mind reading or delusion?
It was reported that, according to the White House, al-Quaida is quietly hunting for an atomic bomb and President Obama will try to persuade world leaders to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands (“US: al-Quaida a new-age nuclear threat,” The Garden Island, April 10).
While this report may induce some hope in the mind of the superficial reader, the statement is rather troublesome and sounds like a spin. Let’s see why.
How can the White House read the mind of the al-Quaida leaders when they don’t even know where they? They never announced this intention; otherwise it would have been super-breaking-news. Didn’t we already have a delusionary mind-reading about weapons of mass destructions before invading Iraq? We are still paying the price.
And where could the terrorists get nuclear weapons? From countries that already possess them: the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, China, France, North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan, and from countries under the NATO nuclear weapons sharing program, which are Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey. These five “sharers” got their nuclear weapons from the United States to deploy and store. The trust is interesting because after 60 years, the U.S.A. still does not have a peace treaty with Germany.
The announcement talks about world leaders. Since when do we consider India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel world leaders? Knowing that weapons in the wrong hands might hurt the source first, how presumptuous is it to even imagine that only the president of the United States is smart enough to safeguard the nuclear arsenal from terrorists, and the leaders of other countries possessing nuclear weapons are not? Or to presume that the citizens of these countries would elect a president who does not have this much common sense?
Since there is no such thing as a defensive nuclear weapon, a nuclear-weapon-free world would be most desirable. These weapons are also very expensive, and we are even giving billions of dollars in aid to countries to spend on weapons. Yes, it comes out of your pocket! It’s an interesting way to promote peace.
I have a suggestion for the summit: remove and destroy all nuclear weapons from the “sharer” countries and stop all U.S. foreign aid to countries that have developed or are developing their own. Perhaps we’ll have a positive side effect too: there will be enough money to keep our libraries open, to eliminate the furlough days in the public sector, and we’ll be a few steps closer to peace.
János Keoni Samu, Kalaheo
