I disagree with Mr. Greg Goodwin of Hanalei in his letter to the Forum of June 21 about the people of Kaua’i and that they have a plantation mentality. Maybe sixty to seventy years ago this would be correct. But
I disagree with Mr. Greg Goodwin of Hanalei in his letter to the Forum of June
21 about the people of Kaua’i and that they have a plantation mentality. Maybe
sixty to seventy years ago this would be correct. But time changes things. He
states that most people on Kaua’i exhibit a complaisant subservience coupled
with an inborn inferiority complex. No wonder he never won an election in the
last two decades, if he feels this way about the people that were born and
raised on Kaua’i, like myself.
Since Mr. Goodwin is so smart, why did he
not form a co-op or corporation with his friends from Hanalei, Chuan &
Neil, and buy the Kaua’i Electric from Citizens Utility? Then they would be
able to use the $9 million a year that KE was sending to Citizens’ stock
holders on the mainland per year in their pockets. This way he would be bidding
against larger electric companies that would love to come to Kaua’i and reap
that large profits they saw that KE was making. The price would have three fold
from what it is now, and again we would see these profits go to the
mainland.
He states that the plantation mentality will prevail on Kaua’i as
long as the plantation owners/managers wish it to be so, since there does not
seem to be in the hearts and souls of their servants either a will or desire to
do more than serve and satisfy the seemingly unassailable right of their
masters.
Well, Mr. Goodwin, the plantations are now down to two on this
island, not to many people now work for these two that are left. The two that
are left do not swing much weight economically for the island of Kaua’i or, for
that matter, politically for the island.
No one at the KIUC is possessed of
fatally flawed ideals which are founded upon shameless hypocrisy and deception,
and the only people on this island that have these flawed ideals are you, Mr.
Goodwin, Chuan and Neil.
People should read the letter after Mr. Goodwin’s
in the same paper from another person born and raised on this island, Mr. Keith
Sakai.
There is a saying by Margaret Thatcher “Consensus politics is the
process of trying to satisfy people who have many opinions, few thoughts, no
facts and an unshakable belief in their own importance.”
Bill Bertrand
Lihu’e
