• Substitute teacher wakes up to giant tax increase • Whole Foods is nice, but not worth the drive • Cell phone citations don’t add up Substitute teacher wakes up to giant tax increase Have you checked your first 2013
• Substitute teacher wakes up to giant tax increase • Whole Foods is nice, but not worth the drive • Cell phone citations don’t add up
Substitute teacher wakes up to giant tax increase
Have you checked your first 2013 Obama tax increase for billionaires and millionaires that was suppose to affect the mighty wealthy?
Every working person needs to check the increase in their social security tax increase in your first pay check, not just substitutes. I mention substitutes since I am one who also is waiting for back pay that the Department of Education (DOE) withheld (embezzled) from substitute and part time teacher’s salaries for nine years-plus; totaling in the range of $50 million or more which has yet to be paid after 2 1/2 years of court battles up to the Appeals Court final decision refusing more DOE appeals.
Having just received my first 2013 payroll check on Jan. 4, 2013, I discovered my social security (SS) withholding tax increased 47.6 percent.
In December 2012, there was an automatic deduction of $12.36 from my paycheck for two days of subbing during November 2012. For a same two-day teaching period my first 2013 automatic deduction was $18.24; a $5.88 tax increase for a senior who was told by our president that senior social security recipients would not be affected by tax raises.
Of course, the more days one subs the more dollars will be pulled out of senior’s pockets. A 47.6 percent is a huge increase for any taxable item. Any amount is too much for many seniors.
Did everyone’s SS taxes go up as much? I am just curious to see if there are any special groups that may have been given exemptions to this 47.6 percent increase in rates?
Check your pay checks and see if your SS cost has risen 47.6 percent and let the paper know about it. Maybe they will print the results?
John Hoff
Lawa‘i
Whole Foods is nice, but not worth the drive
The comments, written in “Kaua‘i needs a Whole Foods” (Jan. 6), although thought provoking, I disagree.
I shop at Living Foods (LF), every Wednesday after the Gourmet Farmers Market. LF is great for lunch, nice people, unique products, but limited, especially with produce. Not everything is local.
With Whole Foods, I’d still frequent LF due to location.
Kaua‘i doesn’t have Staff of Life, Trader Joe’s, or Shoppers Corner. If Whole Foods came to Kaua‘i, and the honeymoon ended, what store will you go back to? Kaua‘i shouldn’t be compared to Santa Cruz, or other places offering healthy competition.
Whole Foods does have high-end goods, along with a range of prices and a variety of goods, quality produce at reasonable prices, hires local people, and conducts business with local entrepreneurs. Current local partners are Honolulu Coffee Roasters, Surfing Goat Dairy, and Tropical Dreams. It’s a good company with moral sustainable business practices.
Whole Foods can be more expensive. But it’s expensive to buy products or produce, drive home to find out it’s stale or rotten, then return for a refund.
It’s expensive to hit three different stores fulfilling a grocery list. It’s expensive to buy unneeded bulk items.
The anticipated Lihu‘e grocer is not locally owned and doesn’t work with local vendors. It may be an improvement over “one and only,” but will have to step it up for me to drive to Lihu‘e.
I drive a fuel economy car, frequent farmers markets, and shop Koloa’s locally owned stores. This wouldn’t change with Whole Foods. Only my shopping in Lihu‘e will change.
Patricia Cooper
Koloa
Cell phone citations don’t add up
Chief Perry, while I appreciate that you took the time to respond to my letter about illegal handheld cellphone usage, I had to shake my head in somewhat stunned disbelief at the information conveyed. I didn’t realize that the situation was quite so bad. Perhaps there was a digit missing in the number of citations given out since the law was enacted? There have been nearly 1000 days since the law was enacted, and if 2,500 citations have been written in that time, that translates to an average citation rate of 2.5 per day “across the entire island.” With that citation rate, there can be no wonder as to why so many people are still using handheld electronics while driving — the chances of them getting caught doing so are extremely small. So they might as well be invisible, as my letter sarcastically pointed out.
On the drive into Lihu‘e from the Westside today, I counted three people with a handheld cellphone to their ear and one person using both hands to text while simultaneously steering (hands perched on top of the steering wheel).
The only reason I couldn’t count more was because when I got to halfway bridge, the rain was coming down so hard I couldn’t see what other drivers were doing.
This is pretty much what I see every time I drive, and it is the reason I wrote that letter.
I can’t make any apologies about the sarcasm —it was definitely intentional.
So, even though you say we have the lowest vehicular accident rates in the state, there is still a problem with people not obeying this law.
If the law isn’t enforced consistently and evenly, people will just stop paying attention to it.
Telling everyone what the actual rate is was about the worst thing you could possibly do.
And don’t you think it indicates a problem when you feel the need to tell everybody not to follow my obviously sarcastic suggestion?
Michael Mann
Lihu‘e
