• Cost-effective compassion • Comments getting rough • Done deal • Solution for the economic woes Cost-effective compassion We have a bad habit of forgetting the high price of short-sightedness. We forget the real costs of neglecting future needs. The Republican Party
• Cost-effective compassion • Comments getting rough • Done deal • Solution for the economic woes
Cost-effective compassion
We have a bad habit of forgetting the high price of short-sightedness. We forget the real costs of neglecting future needs. The Republican Party wants to pay for the continued prosperity of the ultra-wealthy on the backs of the poor. We need to remember what the long-term consequences of their proposed cuts to social services will be.
Cutting funding for food and medical care to poor children, and all the poor, will create developmental and health problems that will cost us all much more than the cuts’ “savings.” Denying them medical care only results in worse chronic health conditions that we will all end up having to pay for. Prevention is cheaper than amelioration. Cutting funding to education and student loans ends up costing us big-time when our young people don’t have the skills needed by 21st-century industries.
Not providing assistance to people with underwater mortgages ends up dragging down the home prices for everyone. This is not a question of fairness, it’s one of equity and making the investments needed to create a better future for everyone.
There is a clear choice in the upcoming presidential election. Take the long-term view of creating a sustainable economy where everyone has a chance to prosper, or go backwards to trickle-down policies that enrich only the 1 percent. Using the characters from the show Gilligan’s Island, who do you want to be steering the ship of state — the Professor or Thurston Howell III? Move forward, not backward.
David Thorp, Koloa
Comments getting rough
I used to read the comments section of this newspaper, but have quit commenting and reading the comments since most hide behind screen names saying things they would never say if their real name was attached to their comments.
Letters to the editor cannot be signed with a screen name or moniker and must include your legal name, address and phone should the editors need to verify your writings. Commenters need to be held accountable too.
I think The Garden Island newspaper has one of the best editorial sections of any periodical; however, the commenters should be held to the same scrutiny as letter-writers.
Either shut down the comments section or require commenters to use their real names before major liabilities occur.
James ‘Kimo’ Rosen, Kapa‘a
Done deal
Famous is the fake state/Kaua‘i County for filling administrative places with folks undereducated to manage. In the case of Blingle, her appointing SHPD’s Aiu was an error. Because of this error, SHPD is about to lose federal funding. Their five-year plan is half-completed, and there has been little to no activity. When questioned, Aiu dummied down with her responses. Blingle should have been incarcerated for many of her activities as governor. Primarily, the audacity of her visit to Kaua‘i to assert shoving the Superferry down our throats, while at the same time upping more military presence, practicing for martial law, and positioning herself towards VP of America. Secondly, the power of politics where it relates to SHPD, has been more of the same. Really? Absolutely. Our government and courts are seriously flawed, broken, and corrupt. Our status because of this has placed this fake state solidly under America’s “ownership,” and especially with federal support that only gets a deeper hold on the ways of the host culture. It’s a done deal, Hawaiians. You have been manipulated to the point of no return. The saying, “you can’t fight city hall” has been hammered into place.
Debra Kekaualua, Wailua
Solution for the economic woes
About three-fourths of the U.S. population is worried about the public debt of their country. They have all the reasons to be. According to public records as of March 22, 2012, the U.S. public debt was over 15.5 trillion dollars. Most people don’t even know how big this amount is. Well, here it is in a very simple form: If all the creditors of the U.S. government wanted to collect suddenly, every resident in the U.S.would have to pay back $47,568.00. This includes you and every member of your family.
To make things more interesting, although the term “interesting” might be considered very subjective here, foreign governments like China — which many Americans shy away from calling by its official name, People’s Republic of China — Japan, Brazil and even Russia lent the U.S. trillions of dollars. Neither the economists nor the presidential candidates nor the politicians have the slightest clue how we will pay it back. Their only hope is that these countries won’t decide to collect. There were even some who voiced military options as a way “to pay it back”.
Is there a solution? Perhaps there is. According to Forbes Magazine, there are presently 397 billionaires in the United States. My question is: Why is it that the U.S. government is not borrowing the money from the U.S. billionaires and they go instead to China, Japan, Russia, etc.? Doesn’t it trust them? Or is it the billionaires who do not trust their own government, the one that allowed or maybe even helped them to become billionaires?
Does anyone have the answer?
János Keoni Samu, Kalaheo
