• Consider building amphitheater on Westside • Misinformation Consider building amphitheater on Westside The master plan focusing on island-wide plans for the development of parks and recreational venues is forward-thinking, encompassing, and stimulating. While there is still opportunity for further
• Consider building amphitheater on Westside • Misinformation
Consider building amphitheater on Westside
The master plan focusing on island-wide plans for the development of parks and recreational venues is forward-thinking, encompassing, and stimulating.
While there is still opportunity for further input, I humbly suggest the following. If there should ever be an amphitheater built here on Kaua‘i, please consider placing it on the drier side of the island: as far west as somewhere between Kekaha and PMRF.
“Too far out,” many of you may rightfully protest. Yet if you stop and think about weather conditions, and how “out-of-the-way” one would have to travel to get to a performance-presentation, wouldn’t it be best appreciated where the stars are glittering clearly in the blue-velvet sky when the winds have calmed down to a standstill?
It might be well worth the effort.
The leisurely drive to virtually “nowhere” provides all the right extenuating circumstances: remoteness, choice spots to place the venue with enough room to provide all the amenities needed, and ample parking space which can be beautifully landscaped to include gardens and multi-use paths, as well.
The landfill, by this time, may have been relocated elsewhere, so perhaps the hill (which was once a dumpsite) can feature a restaurant which can have a Westside sunset to accompany one’s dinner before the show.
But first, please come and “talk story” with the westsiders, to discuss “if and how” such a proposal may be actualized with the knowledge and approval of the majority of the residents.
Jose Bulatao Jr., Kekaha
Misinformation
My thanks to Ms. Lucas, president of Concerned Citizens of Right to Life on Kaua‘i for her recent letter (Letters: March 21) addressing her concerns that Planned Parenthood is spreading misinformation here on Kaua‘i.
Her letter starts with the inflammatory misinformation that “by conservative estimates, approximately 37 percent of Planned Parenthood revenues are from abortions.”
Why does Ms. Lucas choose to quote anonymous “conservative estimates,” when the non-partisan Government Accounting Office is part of the oversight process which audits all of Planned Parenthood’s income and expenditures?
More than most other federal grant recipients, Planned Parenthood is audited to insure that no public monies are used for any non-authorized purpose, including the 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities involving abortion.
Planned Parenthood does not receive 37 percent of its gross revenues from abortion services, according to published audits.
Ms. Lucas’s misinformation continues with her accounting analysis that in fiscal year 2008 some “11 percent of total Planned Parenthood clients had abortions,” but that “97 percent of all services provided involved killing their children” and “only 2 percent involved pre-natal care or adoption.”
That Ms. Lucas disagrees with the law of our land is evident. Her moral code allows her to libel and slander “indigent” women and their physicians by naming them children killers, which the law does not allow.
Ms. Lucas fails to consider that even “indigent women” who choose to end their pregnancy have already considered their options, including adoption programs.
Ms. Lucas goes on, and on, to express her belief that Planned Parenthood has an agenda to promote pregnancy in “indigent women” creating a commercial market based on the premise that morally incompetent indigent (poor) women simply want to kill their children.
I’m an American. Demonizing fellow citizens is a grand American tradition.
Cultural, religious, and racial bigotry are the true trilogy of American demons.
I do not allow Ms. Lucas to define for me what constitutes being a Christian, an American or to re-interpret the American Constitution.
Women in America have a legal right to choice as part of every citizen’s — male and female — civil rights.
The prohibition against establishing a state religion includes codifying religious beliefs. We are not a “Christian” nation.
What brand of Christianity is the official brand? We are a nation with a multi-denominational majority of Christians well aware of the enormous cultural divides between various faiths.
The signers of the U.S. Constitution and the various colonial legislatures’ debates and approval did not omit the name Jesus as an oversight.
Ratification, in fact, resulted in the various colonies/states repealing their laws criminalizing failure to attend church services and to obey religious ordinances.
In their wisdom, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that women, individually and as a class, have the same civil rights regarding their lives and their bodies as men do.
Women are no longer the chattel of men, nor are they the chattel of any religious or other morality viewpoint, nor the chattel of the government.
Women have the same right to due process as men, and that includes making decisions regarding their physical body.
Ms. Lucas, have you ever even visited a Planned Parenthood clinic?
If you believe that women, indigent or wealthy, are not competent to make a decision to terminate their pregnancy, what other health or life decisions do you believe women are incompetent to make? Birth control? Voting? Divorce? Property rights?
Lonnie Sykos, Kapa‘a
