• Guns on Christmas? • Visit Iraq, not Hawai‘i! • Our hybrid experiment • Heinous and cowardly Guns on Christmas? On Dec. 25, Christmas Day, the private security contractor at PMRF decided to close the beach to fire guns and
• Guns on Christmas?
• Visit Iraq, not Hawai‘i!
• Our hybrid experiment
• Heinous and cowardly
Guns on Christmas?
On Dec. 25, Christmas Day, the private security contractor at PMRF decided to close the beach to fire guns and other killing weapons.
Christmas Day is not the time to close the beach for weapon firing and it is amazing to me that they would require their personnel to fire weapons on this holiday.
The beaches on the Westside are shrinking and there were too many people on too little beach in Kekaha with many users needing their space. Surfers were not allowed to access the water on the biggest day of the year and fishermen were forced into a small area with hundreds of others on a holiday.
This is a day of peace and someone messed up and became very insensitive to the island’s residents. We need to consider this firing range off limits during weekends and holidays because the beaches are gone between Davidsons and Intersections.
Everywhere is becoming off limits without some kind of permission. The PMRF is restricted to people with passes and Polihale is too dangerous for many families in the winter months.
There is just something very wrong about shooting guns and closing beaches on Christmas Day or any holiday. Come on, let’s get a little peace at least on Christmas Day.
Greg Holzman, Kekaha
Visit Iraq, not Hawai‘i!
I have one question for Mr. B. Hussein Obama. I know you have an extremely busy national security travel schedule, i.e. Nobel Peace Prize acceptance, global warming conferences, Olympic games begging and vacationing in Hawai‘i, but why have you not visited the troops in Afghanistan or Iraq during the holidays?
Alice Monaghan, Princeville
Our hybrid experiment
I was glad to read in Mark Beeksma’s recent letter (“No more gas tax, please,” Jan. 9) that my wife has been making her daily commute to Lihu‘e for nine years in an “experimental, green, expensive, status symbol.”
I knew her 2001 Toyota Prius was light green, but otherwise I just thought it was a peppy, roomy, neat little car that got great gas mileage.
Mark states that “hybrids do not make much sense for a place like Kaua‘i.” After nine years of our hybrid experiment, I wonder.
Let’s start with the economics. We bought the car for $22,000 and outside of replacing numerous low profile tires that were destroyed by our roads, we have had only routine maintenance bills.
After nine years the original battery pack is still going strong (so much for experimental). My wife has driven almost 50,000 miles and realized about 50 mpg.
Now, if she had driven my Toyota 4-Runner (cost of $30,500 in 2002), which gets maybe 20 mpg, she would have spent $4,500 more on gas (average $3 per gallon).
Of course at some point the hybrid battery pack will need to be replaced (cost $8,000?) but after over 10 years most of us buy a new car anyway. In our case we may someday buy a new Prius, which is even more fuel efficient (now over $25,000).
I offer the 4-Runner comparison because that vehicle is typical of what I observe many people commuting in. In that case the “expensive hybrid” argument is meaningless.
If we had bought a small “econo-car” instead of the Prius the long-term economics might be comparable. However, we did not see a similarly priced small car that offered all of the features of the Prius (such as safety items).
But the statistic that means the most to me is this: The difference in fuel consumption between the Prius and the 4-Runner over a 50,000 mile stretch is 1,500 gallons of gasoline! If even a relatively small proportion of U.S. drivers attained that kind of reduction, either by driving a more fuel-efficient car, hybrid or not, or by driving less, we would have the Arab petro-sheiks groveling in the sand.
Which brings me full-circle to the 50-cent gas tax. I don’t see this happening on Kaua‘i, but an even higher tax is long overdue on the national level. We Americans pay 2 to 3 times less than in other countries (in Europe for example) which only fuels our gas guzzling habits.
In fact, we could easily achieve oil independence through reduced consumption if we willed it. Unfortunately, the only mechanism shown to achieve this in the U.S. is an increase in the price of fuel.
On Kaua‘i, increased gas tax revenue could be used for better public transportation, or to streamline our decaying highways. Hybrid vehicle purchase might be better left to personal choice.
Robin Clark, Kalaheo
Heinous and cowardly
I felt it was extremely distasteful for you to publish the picture of the smiling hunter with a dead cougar in Friday’s paper. (“Kaua‘i hunter kills cougar — in Arizona,” The Garden Island, Jan. 8)
If there really are people on Kaua‘i that are ignorant enough to believe that there might be cougars here, a simple two-line statement confirming so on Page 7 would have sufficed.
By publishing the photo on the front page, you seem to be condoning and glorifying a heinous and cowardly act.
Paul Jacobs, Lihu‘e
