• Anahola bids farewell to another living treasure •Confusion is the root of absurdities •Take the time to inform yourself Anahola bids farewell to another living treasure Aunty Loke Perreira, one of the many living treasures, has gone on to
• Anahola bids farewell to another living treasure
•Confusion is the root of absurdities
•Take the time to inform yourself
Anahola bids farewell to another living treasure
Aunty Loke Perreira, one of the many living treasures, has gone on to be with the Lord. Her life was that of humbleness, love, compassion for others. This was evident as hundreds of well-wishers came to Anahola to say aloha.
We should all take a look at ourselves and ask whose lives have we touched or how many people have been affected by what we’ve done in our lifetime.
It was so very wonderful to feel the mana, the spirit, the light, and the love as people kept coming and going. We would all do well if we mirror our lives like Aunty Loke who was and is a true woman after God’s heart.
To Uncle Charlie, mahalo nui for sharing Aunty Loke with us. May we all begin to show genuine love to one another.
Marie Torio, Anahola
Confusion is the root of absurdities
Speaking of absurdities, as Sunday’s editorial did (“Theater of the absurd”), the absurdities associated with the handling of 20.02D are rooted in confusion and the absurdities will continue until the confusion is cleared up. The first step in clearing up the confusion is to understand a few basic facts.
1. The role of the Board of Ethics is to administer the Code of Ethics, which involves responding to requests for advisory opinions and to ethical complaints. In each case the board must determine if the code applies to a particular set of circumstances.
The board and county attorney have not addressed the question of whether 20.02D prohibits the activities referenced in several requests for advisory opinions and complaints received by the board. (To be fair, the board has not asked the attorney to answer this question.)
Instead, they have focused exclusively on trying to prove that upholding the plain meaning of 20.02D would lead to absurd results. They have indeed adduced absurd examples — like applying for a driver’s license or a water meter — but the board has never been asked to rule on any of these red herrings and would dismiss them as frivolous if they were asked.
2. The strict language in all six subsections of 20.02 may on occasion require the board to determine the “metes and bounds” of a provision as distinct from applying it automatically to every conceivable circumstance.
But it defies logic to claim, for example, that 20.02D cannot apply to an attorney appearing before county agencies in behalf of a client because one can imagine truly absurd ways of applying 20.02D that the board will never be asked to rule on.
3. Adopting ordinances to supplement 20.02D, which the charter permits, may have limited value, but the confusions and absurdities cannot be eliminated by ordinance because ordinances can only supplement, not change the language or meaning, of charter provisions. Besides, the board already has the authority to make credible judgments based on the facts about the circumstances to which 20.02D applies.
4. The county attorney’s attempts to whittle down 20.02D so that it disappears inside County Code 3-1.7 are simply wrong-headed at every turn. For starters, the County Code links 3-1.7 to Charter 20.01, not to 20.02D, and 20.02D and 3-1.7 address fundamentally different ethical issues — two facts conveniently ignored in both legal opinions received by the board.
I remain optimistic that the board will find its way to a principled resolution of issues connected with 20.02D and I see the current confusions in part as an outbreak of democratic processes.
If we take at face value the testimony of members of the board and county attorney’s office — and I do not question their sincerity or their commitment to serving the public interest — there are grounds for such optimism.
Horace Stoessel, Kapa‘a
Take the time to inform yourself
It is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attack on our nation and this is an example of what the mainstream corporate-controlled media headlines are reporting!
“New Book Reveals the Real Reason Women Have Sex” — Fox News, Sept. 8
The truth is, in the aftermath of 9/11, hundreds of firefighters, first responders and rescue workers — our heroes — have died from cancer and thousands more are sick due to the fact that on Sept. 18, 2001, the EPA told the New York City residents and the brave recovery workers that “the air was safe to breathe.”
Approximately 50,000 people were exposed to the toxic dust. Pray for these brave men and women, the American people are not being informed of their plight and the government is not helping them.
Lori Patch. Kilauea
