• Coming election • Property taxes Coming election While some continue to slur the candidate that served while defending the one that Wandered off, the rest of us should consider the important questions: Where’s Osama? Why did we take our
• Coming election
• Property taxes
Coming election
While some continue to slur the candidate that served while defending the one that Wandered off, the rest of us should consider the important questions:
Where’s Osama? Why did we take our focus off the man Who killed 3000+ of our fellow citizens to invade a country we had contained for a decade?
Where are the Iraqi WMD’s? Where are the links to Al Qaida? Could it be we were given the Wrong information in order to justify a War planned by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle Rumsfeld et al since 1996? Only a PNACer knows for sure.
Why have 800 of our soldiers died in Iraq after the mission was said to be accomplished? Why are they dying at a faster rate this year than last year? Why is our pseudo coalition unraveling as more and more countries pull their troops home? Where are the flowers and candies we were to be greeted with? Why was Gen. Shinseki fired for telling us the truth about how many men we’d need to pacify Iraq?
Why is this war costing us $200 billion plus? We were told Iraq’s oil would pay for reconstruction.
Where are the real conservatives? Our budget deficit is $430 Billion dollars this year and our National Debt is at $7.5 Trillion incurring $300+ billion/yr in interest charges. Could it be that saddling our future generations with debt is easier than following conservative principles? Two thirds of this debt was generated by the Bush and Reagan presidencies. What will you tell your grandkids?
Whose children were left behind when NCLB was under funded? Hope they can still pay for our Social Security and Medicare on lower paying service sector jobs as good jobs go overseas.
Dave Camp
Aliomanu
Property taxes
There are several things about the proposed property tax changes that should be considered by all residents of Kaua‘i.
A Charter, like the Constitution, is a document that should point us in a general direction and is not a place to pass laws. Laws are made to implement a Constitution or a Charter. Therefore putting specific property tax laws into our Charter is a grave mistake and one that Kaua‘i may regret for years to come (as California has). The Ohana Tax Group has proposed doing exactly that – making a Charter change for a specific tax they want rather than passing it as a law. The Ohana Group has proposed a tax change that would benefit one group of residents and have no affect on the inequities that farmers and others face at present.
The County Tax Task Force is proposing a law (not Charter change) to be passed to make sweeping changes to the tax laws. These changes will give tax breaks to any long term residents of Kaua‘i, will simplify the tax system and will particularly help farmers. It will also benefit long-term residents and others who do not develop their land to its “highest and best use.”
I would encourage people to try to understand these differences and back the County Tax Task Forces’ recommendations, which will be passed by the County Council, and not vote for the Ohana Charter Amendment which will be on the ballot in Nov.
Marge Freeman
Kapa‘a
