Letters for Sept. 17, 2015

Letters for Sept. 17, 2015

Workers deserve living wages

Raising the minimum wage was before the County Council. The existing minimum wage, $7.75/hour, puts thousands of Kauai households near federal guideline poverty levels. Consequently, they are forced to rely on government medical assistance and EBT cards to buy food.

These families haven’t the means to provide for post high school education for their children, predisposing a continuing cycle of living on the margins.

Lower wage lobbyists on the council, Joanne Yukimura and Ross Kagawa, have a problem; the data doesn’t support them. One report, by CNN, shows Washington, with the highest minimum wage of any state, is the state where small businesses are adding jobs faster than any other. San Francisco and San Jose raised minimum wages and more businesses have opened than closed and unemployment is down.

Kagawa and Yukimura are in an untenable position; grasping for a problem for their solution to solve. Their “solution” denies thousands on Kauai a decent wage for a day’s work.

Their made up “problem,” that businesses will go out of business, has no factual data to support it. Voter suppression laws are another example of a solution chasing a problem. Instances of someone impersonating someone else at the ballot box are extremely rare, yet laws to prevent this “menace to democracy” have disenfranchised millions of non-European descent and working class voters.

This is the “logic” of Kagawa and Yukimura’s position. Wages have been stagnant for decades. For the council to wait for the “hidden hand of the market” to provide a living wage is foolish and unconscionable.

Kip Goodwin

Wailua

Better not to make changes at Haena park

With regards to the problems that are currently plaguing the “end of the road” at Kee Beach, there may not be a viable fix for it.

You may remember some years back, when the parking lot extended into the unpaved area to the right of the present parking lot. It was usually a muddy quagmire and would sometimes trap unsuspecting people. I don’t know why it was shut off to traffic, but I seem to remember that some artifacts were found (?) or something of that nature. Whatever the reason, it took away a lot of parking spaces.

The way it is now with so few spots to leave your car, lots of “No Parking” signs that people seem to completely ignore and the wet cave now blocked from parking, what is available fills up rapidly.

But, most of the ideas that have been put forth as “solutions” to the problem may be anything but that.

When government/state gets involved, they invariably want to find a way to make money on it. It never turns out like we expect and often exacerbate the problem instead of fixing it. I hope everybody realizes that when restrictions are imposed, such as limiting the amount of people allowed to visit the park, that in itself creates desire.

Any of the ideas proposed as of this date may only make things worse.

Telling people they can’t have something only makes them want it more. Trying to control the current situation might only make it worse.

Solution: Just leave it alone.

Jack Custer

Kalaheo

Crazy stories in the Bible

Do people like Kim Davis (the Kentucky clerk refusing to issue marriage licenses) pretend to believe in God, or do they merely believe in the craziest books of the Bible?

We reveal ourselves by what we either support or deny. Maybe that’s the point of having accepted some of the crazier books into the canonization of the Bible. If you look at the Old and New Testament, you see patterns of evil, but let’s just look at the first five books in the OT.

What does it teach us?

1) Genesis: That woman is tainted and devious, getting man kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Women cannot be trusted, they were made from man, they are inferior.

2) Noah: God will grant you life over everyone else, even if you become a drunk and disgrace yourself sexually, then curse your grandchild instead of taking responsibility.

3) Abraham: It’s OK to marry your sister, and then sell her for gold, property and slaves.

4) Lott: Only righteous man in Sodom, he impregnates his two daughter’s right after wife killed by God.

5) Moses: commands the murder of 3,000 while holding the 10 commandments in his hands, then goes on to murder hundreds of thousands. Killing everyone in cities except for young female children, who are taken “for their own use.”

Paul in the New Testament, who claims to have met Jesus after he arose, has a lot of crazy things to say. Paul persecuted Christians before he realized he could profit off of pretending to be one.

Jesus warned us many times of these types of people. Jesus called them hypocrites.

Dennis Chaquette

Keaau