• Good news • No sacred sites? • Building permit considerations • Political party hypocrisy • Vocational school needed Good news First, a big mahalo to the three young men from Kapaa Middle School who have seen needs and acted.
• Good news
• No sacred sites?
• Building permit considerations
• Political party hypocrisy
• Vocational school needed
Good news
First, a big mahalo to the three young men from Kapaa Middle School who have seen needs and acted. They, and all the other young people on Kaua‘i who volunteer in the community make me feel proud of the next generation and comfortable that our future will be in good hands.
And, thank you to The Garden Island for recognizing their contribution as a “current event.” In many places it would be ignored or relegated to a few words in the nether regions of the paper. It is good to see the front page is being used to remind us all what is really important in life.
Merrily Worrell
Lihu‘e
No sacred sites?
The size of Po‘ipu will be more than doubled after all the current developments are completed. I just recently walked Lawai Road from the Lawai Beach Resort to the Kukuiula Harbor and miles and miles of land had been bulldozed and dug up. Are you going to tell me that there is nothing of sacred or archeological significance in all of this dirt? Considering that Hawaiians maintained a presence on the South Shore of Kauai at some point every year, I find it hard to believe there is nothing to preserve. Development should be stopped until the proper authorites can inspect every inch of these sites. I am going to contact every agency that can help, and so should anybody else who feels preserving the culture and heritage of Hawai‘i is more important than rampant development.
Jason Nichols
Koloa
Building permit considerations
I would like to respond to Ron Agor’s letter on Saturday (“Tolerate after the fact permits,” Letters, July 14) about building permits.
Ron Agor is absolutely right.
A building permit is issued as permission to build.
If you do not have one, then you broke the law.
But as Ron Agor points out, some families need to protect their children from the rain, so in these cases, they should be allowed to do so while they wait for their building permit.
In any other case, they should be heavily fined. For example, if you are building shelter for your children, then the house you are building should not be very expensive.
It should be one shelter in total, on one piece of property. One structure per property.
If you are building anything else, any other structures on a single piece of property, you should be heavily fined.
If you are changing an existing house, to make it into several units, to profit yourself, you should be heavily fined.
I agree with Ron Agor, he is right in all of these areas.
The fines should be a percentage of the property’s worth.
I strongly urge, and suggest to the council, that you impose a 10 percent fine (of a property’s worth), if someone builds without a building permit.
So if someone builds additional structures on their million-dollar property, they should be fined $100,000.
If they have a $2 million property, their fine would be $200,000.
And make them tear it down afterwards, and not issue them a permit in the future for their non-compliance.
Because then, and only then, can we keep Kaua‘i beautiful, and law abiding, as Ron Agor suggests.
Dennis Chaquette
Kapa‘a
Political party hypocrisy
The blind hatred and double standard that exists toward anything that doesn’t originate from the Democrats is ludicrous. Two recent examples are “Commuted sentence meaning” in the July 9 Letters, and “Digging deeper into Scooter Libby case” from July 7. Both letters demonize President Bush for his commuting of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. Although, Mr. Libby still has to pay the $250,000 fine. How many Democrats complained when their “savior,” President Clinton, issued full pardons to 367 people? These pardons were for people convicted of drug dealing, car theft, bank robbery, illegal firearm sales, bribery, embezzlement and perjury.
Another example of the double standard is the firing of U.S. attorneys. President Bush fires four because of poor job performance and the Democrats act as if this is an impeachable offence. But when President Clinton fired all 96 U.S. attorneys shortly after entering office, no one thought twice about it.
Whenever Republicans vote for lower taxes the Democrats accuse the Republicans of being racists because according to Democrats, “Tax breaks favor the rich not the poor. The poor being made up of minorities.” What the Democrats don’t mention is that Southern Democrats, including Al Gore Sr., voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that former KKK Klansman Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd tried to block the bill by filibustering for 14 hours.
The best example of the insidious hatred toward any Republican action is the war in Iraq. President Bush had the blessing from the U.S. Congress including all the major Democrats who now want to surrender. He also had the okay from the United Nations and the cooperation of several nations. But when President Clinton decided to bomb a former ally, Kosovo, without United Nations approval that was fine and dandy. Although, he did have the support of the German Luftwaffe who where more then happy to goose-step back into Kosovo and finish off any Serbians they missed in World War II. The Democrats loved it when President Clinton bombed bridges, hospitals, schools, civilian factories and other non-military targets. Where were the cross island peace marches then? I do have to say it was fantastic when we delivered a GPS guided 500 pound “Who’s-Your-Daddy?” to the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Also, if a civilian target is bombed in Iraq the Democrats want to Court Marshal everyone involved. But where was the uproar when President Clinton used Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy terrorist targets in Afghanistan. Targets like an aspirin factory and several civilian neighborhoods.
The “Democrats can do no wrong” attitude is similar to Marxism’s “The end justifies the means.”
Joseph Vrataric
Lihu‘e
Vocational school needed
What we need on Kaua‘i are some television repair people. There isn’t a single one in the yellow pages.
I took a 21-inch flat screen TV that I purchased two years ago from Sears back to see if it could be fixed (the screen turned green). For $29.95 they sent it to California, only to have the repair person there call and tell me it would be $900 to fix. Obviously I’m not going to do that, as I didn’t pay nearly that much for it in the first place.
If there isn’t a vocational school on Kaua‘i there certainly should be.
Our landfills simply will not accommodate things that cannot be fixed and so must be thrown away.
Sheila Honeywell
Lihu‘e
