•Inspection questions •Mahalo, mavericks • Prohibition is the problem Inspection questions We are visitors to Kaua‘i dating from the early 1980s. We love the island and return to the North Shore annually. We book our vacation rental months in advance
•Inspection questions
•Mahalo, mavericks
• Prohibition is the problem
Inspection questions
We are visitors to Kaua‘i dating from the early 1980s. We love the island and return to the North Shore annually.
We book our vacation rental months in advance in order to assure the rental and dates of our choosing. We just received a refund for our July booking. According to the owner, they were compelled to cancel the booking since the property did not pass the Kaua’i Planning Department’s inspection.
This is a clean, well-maintained house. Thus it is difficult to understand under which criteria it could fail an inspection. One month from departure we are unable to find an adequate alternate rental.
With regret, we have canceled our visit to the island and booked in Costa Rica. These are my questions: Did the county consider the negative hardship on visitors when their chosen rental did not pass?
Secondly, in these tough economic times, did the county consider the ramifications of lost revenue on the other businesses as well as those involved in the rentals (gardeners, cleaners, etc.)
This was a $400 booking, with related taxes of $457, some of which would, no doubt, have returned to the county.
Jane Hamilton, Auburn, Calif.
Mahalo, mavericks
For the first time in recent memory, appointed and now even elected members of government have wandered off the reservation and become mavericks insisting the law be obeyed and government be transparent.
Appointed Board of Ethics member Rolf Bieber has filed complaints against fellow board members when he saw a clear violation of black letter law. Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara out of sheer frustration are attempting to rip the Kabuki mask off county council secrecy.
Bieber’s filings against BOE members, and the editorials by Bynum and Kawahara are acts of defiance. The creation by Bynum and Kawahara of the underground Web site kauaiinfo.org indicates this defiance will be ongoing.
I say underground in the sense that kauaiinfo.org is the publishing of government documents without approval from the gatekeepers. It is underground in the sense it directly challenges illegitimate power by doing something those exercising the illegitimate power do not want done — informing the public.
Bieber, Bynum, and Kawahara need vocal and active citizen support in this never-ending battle between secrecy and transparency. Mahalo, mavericks, but beware! They will come after you.
Even an unintentional error will be used to demonize and discredit you. Something as innocent as a sheet feed error when scanning and publishing a government document may result in a raid on your home, the seizure of your computer and photocopying equipment, and a six-month attorney general investigation for altering an official government document.
Citizens should remain alert to these tried and true tactics abusers of power will deploy to maintain secrecy. Perhaps citizens should consider bringing all their hats down to county council and BOE meetings and take three minutes per hat demanding their right to know in a timely manner.
If board and commission members can become different people by changing hats — as at least one BOE member believes — when they address governmental bodies should not citizens be afforded an equal right to change hats and become other people when expressing their mana‘o?
Ed Coll, Puhi
Prohibition is the problem
Police chief Darryl Perry certainly has a right to his opinions about marijuana, but he needs get acquainted with the facts. (“On the Beat No. 29,” The Garden Island, June 7).
He writes, “Drugs destroy families, whether it’s marijuana, crystal methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy, or alcohol.” In fact, scientific research shows it’s not nearly that simple.
All drugs don’t have the same effects. For example, compared to marijuana, alcohol is more addictive, vastly more toxic, and overwhelmingly more likely to cause users to become aggressive or violent when intoxicated.
Indeed, alcohol-fueled violence is the major social cost of alcohol use, but have you ever heard of someone beating his wife in “marijuana-fueled rage”?
Not long ago, The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals, published a study ranking legal and illegal drugs by degree of harmfulness. Marijuana was rated by experts as not only less harmful than most other illegal drugs, but also notably less harmful than tobacco and alcohol.
It is the prohibition of marijuana — which subjects otherwise law-abiding citizens to arrest and jail while consigning the marijuana industry to an unregulated criminal underground — that ruins lives, not marijuana itself.
Bruce Mirken, Director of Communications, Marijuana Policy Project, Washington, D.C.
