• Outrage of the week • Cut the pork in KIUC’s diet • Sticking with Charles and Carl • Someone has to respond • Council efforts don’t deserve support Outrage of the week At the County Council meeting of 10/6
• Outrage of the week
• Cut the pork in KIUC’s diet
• Sticking with Charles and Carl
• Someone has to respond
• Council efforts don’t deserve support
Outrage of the week
At the County Council meeting of 10/6 councilman Kaneshiro, who works for the petroleum industry, made the bomb-shell statement that the gasoline tax (local, state, and Federal) we Kauaians pay for each gallon of gas we buy amounts to about $15 million a year. AND get this, the $15 million is supposed to stay on Kaua’i to maintain and upgrade our roads—state and county! When asked, Mr. Kaneshiro said he had no idea!
But since we only have about $1.8 million in our budget to pave our 300 miles of county roads—this amount paves about 20 miles of roads per year—the question that screams for an answer is what happened to rest of the $15 million??
Instead of our Finance department, our Administration and our Council beating up on Chief Lum for using $322 thousand in KPDs overtime budget, why aren’t we demanding that this HUGE amount of money be accounted for? Add up this unaccounted sum of money over the years and the amount would be staggering!!!
Since you were the one to enlighten us about this “lost” money, Councilman Kaneshiro, would you please see if you can find it — ALL OUR ROADS COULD CERTAINLY USE IT!
Cut the pork in KIUC’s diet
As a KIUC member, I recently got my latest electric bill. Stop the insanity! Either I need to get another job or KIUC needs to reduce unnecessary expenses for the benefit of us all. I have a few ideas of expenses I feel need to be trimmed, at least until fuel prices come back down.
First on my chopping block would be the KIUC magazine that gets sent to all its members. I don’t know how much money it costs to publish this fluff but surely we can do without it for awhile. Second, and most importantly, I would stop sending the KIUC Board members on fact-finding trips to the Philippines and Alaska. We all know that these are little more than all-expense-paid vacations and do little to support the concept of having an island-wide utility “cooperative.”
I only hope that KIUC can “cooperate” and find a way to lower my electric bill. After all, don’t all Kaua’i residents deserve to have a KIUC Board of Directors that is doing everything they can to keep our energy bills reasonable?
Sticking with Charles and Carl
Charles Darwin was a British naturalist. He carefully avoided discussions about religion. He was a reserved hardworking scholar concerned about the feelings and emotions of others. His Theory of Evolution is a fact. A proven scientific fact; and not one of these facts even borders upon how the universe was created.
We are involved, in this country today, with what Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow, called the Great Turning Away. Religious fundamentalists — those who speak directly to God and a president, who is not too bright, who claims to be an instrument of God — are leading us back into a scientific dark age.
For example, some science museums in the south feel a need to shield visitors from films that give the true age of volcanoes. Goodness knows what they make of the 250 million years, 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs reigned.
A statement was made in this forum not too long ago … “if Genesis is not scientifically accurate then it is not spiritually accurate,” and that … “if there is an ape in our ancestry, then mankind makes the rules.”
Intelligent, sane people are asked to believe that some “intelligent designer” created the heaven and the earth in six days. That he created two people—Adam and Eve—in his image. That he punished them for eating an apple … here a talking snake gets in the act … boots them out of paradise where they have two sons, one of whom kills the other, and these three people—Adam and Eve and their son Cain—went on to create all the rest of us. The advocates of intelligent design tell us that is intelligent and logical.
Thank you, I think I’ll stick with Charles Darwin and Carl Sagan.
Someone has to respond
I don’t know how I became the spokesperson for Intelligent Design? But someone needs to respond to these inquiries, so here I go again.
Dr. Clark asks the question. Where is the intelligence in intelligent design?
Logic tells us that information, coded information, and a sophisticated decoding language all require intelligence purposefully and with free will cognition to create. All languages require an agreement between at least two people. The letter sequence C.A.T. means a small hairy animal with claws only to those people who already have the English language and have knowingly or unknowingly agreed to its meaning. All of the above types of information are found in the cells of all living things in a self replicating, self repairing molecule known as DNA and its sophisticated decoding language partner RNA. I find it ironic and perhaps absurd that brilliant men and women have been trying and failing miserably for many years to duplicate these chemicals just to prove that no intelligence was required to create them in the first place. No one here on earth was there for the origin of life, but the known laws of science seem to support the biblical account of creation.
Council efforts don’t deserve support
The article by a Kalaheo resident purporting to respond to the thoughtful Oct. 6 Forum viewpoint by Ray Chuan was both futile and vindictive.
A principal point in the Chuan commentary was that the Asingchaired Council initiated its regime by adopting a measure that was illegal in its nature and illegally enacted. The Bill introduced by Ron Kouchi called for a cap on property tax assessments. The County Charter provides that no bill shall be amended to change its original purpose. Despite this clear language, the bill was changed to provide tax relief for a small number of taxpayers based on their income. Not only did this fundamentally change the original purpose of the bill, it is likely to be deemed an illegal attempt by the County to derive revenue based on the taxpayer’s income when the County is not authorized to have an income tax.
The Kalaheo writer completely ignored this point, misquoted Dr. Chuan, made nasty insinuations about his profiting from a California tax measure, and then implied Chuan was a liar.
The tax reforms endorsed by Dr. Chuan were those presented by a citizens task force and those adopted by a large majority of the Kaua’i voters. The writer says he supports the Council which has studiously ignored the task force recommendations and sued to prevent implementation of the reforms publicly chosen. The efforts to date of the County Council have not deserved support, even from someone as spiteful and ill-informed as the Kalaheo critic.
