• Numbers and morality • Read the fine print in SB472 • Repeal car registrations • Mahalo Big Save in Waimea Numbers and morality There were two responses to my letter of Feb. 13 (“Denying reality”): one by Bob Bartolo
• Numbers and morality • Read the fine print in SB472 • Repeal car registrations • Mahalo Big Save in Waimea
Numbers and morality
There were two responses to my letter of Feb. 13 (“Denying reality”): one by Bob Bartolo (“Facing reality,” Feb. 18) and another one from John Burns (“Social spending is destroying the nation,” Feb. 19). Both of them quoted numbers and facts with high inaccuracy, but let’s go beyond those. I rather go to the conclusion that affects you and your fellow Americans.
If Mr. Bartolo’s statement, “We are paying billions of dollars every minute in interest” were true, we would have spent the U.S. annual budget in about 5 hours. The true figure, according to the U.S. Treasury for 2012, is $359,796,008,919.49, which amounts to almost one billion dollars for every day. His other statement that “China is lending us huge amounts of money earned by having a cheap labor force and American capitalist corporations investing, creating and buying their products” is accurate, just the conclusion is missing.
The reason American capitalists are buying from and investing in China is to sell the Chinese products here with maybe 200 percent profit instead of being content with 100 percent. Thus, the jobs will go to China and tens of thousands of American workers will be laid off to guarantee a higher profit for the American capitalist, who will then invest part of these profits in China to buy more from there to maintain his profits even at the price of laying off even more American workers.
Mr. Burns, on the other hand, highly inflated the number of people killed by Chairman Mao and Soviet Russia that even right wing estimates like those in http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html shy away from.
These numbers, just like the number of people killed during the Holocaust, are only estimates and the numbers differ depending who writes the history. There is no point to try to verify the unverifiable, but my question is this: Where is the American morality to ask for a loan from a country that still openly follows the footsteps of a leader who is accused of having committed the largest genocide of modern times? And aren’t the politicians who have approved this borrowing the ones you elected? Are there any more scruples left in American politics?
János Keoni Samu, Kalaheo
Read the fine print in SB472
I am writing in regards to SB472, which deals with decriminalization of possession of less than an ounce of cannabis marijuana. As a known “felon” for the heinous victimless crime of growing cannabis I was excited to see this bill coming forward. (Of course I would have preferred legalization across the board, and when the Judicial Committee killed that bill I was wishing I had free time on my hands, so I could have polled all the legislators to see their true intentions).
Anyway, there is a glaring “mistake” in this bill, if you look at Section 8, (HRS § 712-1247(1)(e) dealing with a first degree crime, they are reducing the amount of cannabis possession from “a pound or more” to “more than an ounce.” Which means if they pass this bill as written, it will be making it a first degree offense out of something that was already a second degree offense — possession of one ounce to one pound.
Please write your legislators today. I don’t know if this was a mistake or intentional, but we need to really change our cannabis laws now!
Sara Steiner, Pahoa
Mahalo Big Save in Waimea
The staff — clerks and baggers, as well as manager Sonny Baluro — really went above and beyond the call of duty on Saturday, Feb. 16, when a problem occurred with an incorrect password entry on a purchase.
Although it was the store’s busiest time of the day, Mr. Baluro, a kind cashier, and a very helpful bagging clerk, spent about 45 minutes to help correct the problem.
These folks were so helpful that I was in awe of their compassion and concern for this unfortunate situation, that was in no way their fault.
There are very few places — if any — in the United Staes, I believe, where this type of service is available or offered. Big Save Waimea has the best staff not just in Hawai‘i but in the entire country.
Many mahalos to Big Save.
Sheila Heathcote, Kalaheo
Repeal car registrations
America! Our freedom is in jeopardy! We have a constitutional right to travel, and we have public roads to travel on, but why must we register our cars and trucks every year? The government now knows who owns each car, and may someday decide to take our cars from us.
Why must we be subjected to speed limits, and have to stop for stupid signs and traffic lights? Because cars are dangerous? Remember, cars don’t kill people. Only people kill people. We should have the right to decide for ourselves how to drive our cars.
And what is this requirement, depriving us of our liberty, to make us get a license to drive a car? Another assault on our liberty! I should be able to drive any size car or truck that I want.
The next thing they will want to do, is to limit the number of cars I have. The government shouldn’t tell me what I can drive and what I can’t. It’s time to rise up and tell the government to stay out of our lives.
Repeal car and driving licensing right now! It’s time to have the courts return our constitutional rights to travel.
We need a National Car Association to protect our liberty! Join us, and if there are enough of us, we can throw those government officials out of office if they don’t stand up for our freedom to travel as we wish.
Charles Herbert, Kilauea
