• Were cookies for co-op members? • Letter missed the point • Appreciates West Hongwanji • Bury Darwin?! • What’s the controversy? Were cookies for co-op members? I have followed, with great interest, the recent news articles and letters regarding
• Were cookies for co-op members?
• Letter missed the point
• Appreciates West Hongwanji
• Bury Darwin?!
• What’s the controversy?
Were cookies for co-op members?
I have followed, with great interest, the recent news articles and letters regarding our cooperatively owned electric utility, KIUC.
A distinctly adversarial tone has emerged.
The Garden Island reporter Andy Gross revealed numerous apparently extravagant expenses of our Co-op Board members including:
Nearly $800,000 for a house to attract a qualified CEO.
$112,000 in travel expenses.
Nearly $250,000 for new trucks for managers.
Not to mention thousands of other incidentals like boardroom chairs, barbecues, home furnishings, etc.
The KIUC Chairman, Gregg Gardiner, and CEO Dutch Achenbach respond explaining that high rates are due to increased fuel costs. That sidesteps the issue. During a time when the high cost of electricity is making it extremely difficult for the average person to afford basic service, why aren’t our board members setting an example by holding down expenses instead of spending money on unnecessary items like homes, trucks, furniture, grills, and trips to Japan and Alaska?
What is the real reason Andy Gross no longer works at The Garden Island?
It appears to me the KIUC board and CEO treat these embarrassing revelations with disdain and by extension the Co-op owners as well.
This type of arrogance in our leadership is unacceptable.
The KIUC board under the leadership of Gregg Gardiner has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar and like as small child confronted with their guilt has responded like a small child, “I was getting it for you.”
Letter missed the point
Ms. Dux’s indignation with the Starr investigation misses the point. Clinton was in trouble with the court because he had exposed himself to Paula Jones (one of his less egregious sexual assaults, in fact). The matter ended up in Starr’s lap and he had no choice but to pursue the case to its conclusion.
This matter wasn’t about sex. It was about the serious felony of lying under oath. We now know that Clinton committed multiple perjuries, suborned perjury and filed a false affidavit. He remembered having pizza with Monica but couldn’t recall having had sex with her. For this, he received a slap on the wrist. Considered the two women who testified in the runup to impeachment. Both did a year in prison for SINGLE acts of perjury, both of which were about sex.
As for Susan McDougal, she didn’t go to jail for her refusal to lie, as the writer asserts. McDougal elected not to answer a simple yes or no question on the stand. Apparently it was safer to go to jail for refusing to cooperate than to answer truthfully, thus provoking the Clintons’ wrath. Had she answered to protect Clinton, she would have been subject to the charge of perjury herself.
As to comparisons of the two prosecutors, Starr was able to produce conclusive evidence of multiple felonies committed by a sitting president. Fitzgerald may or may not be successful in his pursuit of Scooter Libby. It won’t, however, have anything to do with the crime of “outing” a CIA covert operative. That charge wasn’t even in the indictment — in spite of Fitzgerald’s blathering about the seriousness of “outings” at his press conference.
It’s now apparent this whole CIA “outing” matter was a waste of time and money. Liberal press icon Bob Woodward has apologized to his employer, The Washington Post, admitting all along that he knew the status of the CIA employee in question.
Appreciates West Hongwanji
Your Nov. 23 edition had an article that described how volunteers from the West Hongwanji Mission led by Takeshi Fujita “have been decorating grave sites at Kauai Veteran’s Cemetery in Hanapepe each Veterans Day so there will be ‘no lonesome graves.’ “
As a retired military person with a loved one buried there, I would li ke to express publicly my appreciation and thanks for their commitment and respect to America’s veterans. In that someday I, too, will be buried there, it is comforting to know that my grave will not be lonesome.
Again, my deepest thanks go out to the Mission’s members.
Bury Darwin?!
Darwin would turn in his grave if he knew that Dr. Saker wants to “bury Darwin again along with his theory of evolution.” How mean and disrespectful!
Is the Christian movement so insecure that it has to try to recruit new believers from young minds at public schools pretending to use science which it so adamantly puts down in order to infiltrate its message on a massive scale? Or do they have an ego so large that wants to dominate and indoctrinate everyone into one religion?
There are many religions on this planet with different versions of whom or what has created us or watches over us. Faith is in our hearts and minds and is differently felt in every individual, even those within a particular religion. Religions are taught and passed on among families. There are designated places to learn and worship as one pleases. But religion should be left out of public school science classes. It scares me that this zealous evangelical mentality is so prevalent in the U.S. in this day and age. It has been too long that scientists were suppressed so that religious powers could control the people. Didn’t we come out of the Dark Ages?
If we look at history and the present day, many wars and innumerable deaths have been caused by fights over which religion should prevail. Ignorance and narrow-mindedness are an epidemic among the egotistical religions. Aren’t they losing sight of love, forgiveness and acceptance? We need to live our religion and let others live theirs. Stop this contest for who has the best religion, God, or interpretation of sacred writings. Stop it right now or we will surely destroy ourselves.
- Debbie Friedman and the Marine Iguana
Galapagos Islands
What’s the controversy?
I am a little at a loss to understand the controversy over Intelligent Design. I believe God made the world and that it certainly would have the best of Intelligent Design. Isn’t it a fact that man had often interfered with this Intelligent Design by permitting enviornmental hazardous waste etc.?
