• An ode for a dear, departed friend • Taxing the rich is the only option • Kauai citizens unite An ode for a dear, departed friend A friend, a relative, an acquaintance, or merely knowing him, we shall miss him greatly. I speak of Arthur
• An ode for a dear, departed friend • Taxing the rich is the only option • Kauai citizens unite
An ode for a dear, departed friend
A friend, a relative, an acquaintance, or merely knowing him, we shall miss him greatly. I speak of Arthur Riola, whose funeral was Saturday, Sept. 13.
For those of us who knew him, I am confident that we shall miss him greatly. No longer will we see his smiling face at the Lihue Bowling Center. No longer will we be able to hold conversations with him. I know of nothing about the man that is negative. Let me be clear, with all persons, we all have our faults, but with Art, he did not show that side of him to us, his friends.
On behalf of his friends, may I just say to his family that we all share in the loss of him. Aloha and may God bless you and, of course, I am confident that Art is now in heaven having a conversation with God. With much aloha to the family,
Cayetano Sonny Gerardo, Lihue
Taxing the rich is the only option
To the editor,
Reading your editorial clarifying your opinion that we should not increase taxes on the rich, and an article in the Huffington Post describing an Oxfam study that concludes that the 85 richest individuals in the world own the same amount as the bottom half of the entire global population, and hearing a report on TV that a government study shows that all of our increased income in the years 2000-2013 went to the top 3 percent, I have to conclude that your opinion is practically, morally and ethically wrong.
And please don’t get me wrong. Rich people are not bad people. They are just the few that the rest of us have somehow chosen as the beneficiaries and/or victims of a completely out of balance system.
Of course, we should take from the rich, and right here, and right now, via the county’s taxing authority, for the sake of the rich as well as for the sake of the rest of us.
There really is no other solution, no other way forward, no really logical argument against it, and all that stands in our way is our own silly and childish reverence for wealth, because in these modern and radical times, most of us have lost track of any other idea that we could imagine so easily making us happy, even while every single one of us knows that money can’t buy love.
Marty Mills, Kapaa
Kauai citizens unite
Dear mayor,
I am calling you out. We need action!
We need a covered bus stop for working people and our senior kupuna at the Kapaa town ball park and the bus stop across from the Shell Station on the highway in Kapaa in front of the Buddhist Church.
This area is particularly dangerous with traffic whizzing by and the only shade to hide in is that of a telephone pole. This is an outrage and please tell me again why such bus stops cost $50,000? The rich town of Princeville has one covered bus stop for their gentry – so why not islandwide? Why do they get special treatment?
How many times have I driven by the Kapaa ball park to see our kupuna sitting on the ground in the rain or the sun in such an uncomfortable way? How many times have I seen people who have worked all day forced to stand in terrible exhaustion and in the sun during rush hour after work getting sick? Where is the humanity? Why does this seem like class warfare on the poor?
In the very poor nation of Fiji, every bus stop has a covered bench from the sun and rain, albeit, homemade by the people from the area with cost of material help from the local village government. Our local “village” government should be doing the same thing to ease the pain and suffering of our people. If we can’t stop GMO companies from poisoning us, at least we can have a safe seat out of the path of traffic and sun and rain while waiting on the bus. Surely we can do this now.
Kauai citizens unite!
Mark Booker, Kilauea
