• There are better ways to govern than raising taxes • Research on atrazine worth repeating • Don’t be in the dark about GMOs There are better ways to govern than raising taxes Through the actions of the mayor and the council, we
• There are better ways to govern than raising taxes • Research on atrazine worth repeating • Don’t be in the dark about GMOs
There are better ways to govern than raising taxes
Through the actions of the mayor and the council, we read many letters and comments of resistance to the higher property taxes and fees imposed on our citizens.
Doing research of the resulting financial pressures found in many counties, local leaders have begun to find ways of rethinking the inherited assumptions about how local governments should be conducting their affairs of providing the services to their citizens.
Privatization is a revolution in economic thinking. A return to principles we once adhered to, but from which we have strayed. They are principles of individual freedom and private enterprise that has changed the world more in the last 200 years than all the changes in the last 2,000 years.
Many local governments across our nation through strong leadership skills have proven that cheaper, more efficient public services thoughtfully conceived can be achieved best by moving away from traditional monopoly of government employment, opting instead for service delivery in competitive, often all private sector environments. It is a fact that by privatizing most of all public services, we can achieve a smaller tax bill for property owners, a far more manageable budget, greater efficiency by 30 to 50 percent, eliminate wasted layers of government, and improve worker satisfaction with incentives for better production.
Leadership and political will is all that’s required to change and make privatization a viable alternative to raising property taxes and fees for Kauai’s citizens.
Steve Martin
Kapaa
Research on atrazine worth repeating
Dr. Darryll Pederson is a full professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Lincoln, Nebraska. He has done extensive work on atrazine contamination of ground water, and explains how the samples must be taken to ensure an accurate assessment of the water’s condition:
“For a period of time (months after application) atrazine can be mobilized by rainfall runoff. Atrazine can attach itself to soil and other colloidal particles. This rainfall runoff enters streams. Water samples taken from the Platte River by the Lincoln, Nebraska, wellfield have very low concentrations of atrazine during normal flow, but during runoff events the concentrations can reach well above allowable concentrations. If Kauai sampling was done during normal runoff (usually fed by baseflow from groundwater) the higher concentrations of atrazine present during rainfall runoff would be missed. The fact that some water samples showed higher than acceptable concentrations of atrazine means either there was rainfall runoff (usually sampling not done during runoff events) or baseflow from groundwater had high concentrations of atrazine which represents a much more serious issue.
In our research we sampled the Platte River every three days for several years. There were large changes in atrazine concentrations even over several days. The main conclusion from our studies is that a snapshot sampling (once in one place) cannot fully represent how much atrazine is getting into the surface water.”
He added that atrazine degrades to by-products which are persistent and increase in concentration over time. Little is known about them.
John Patt
Koloa
Don’t be in the dark about GMOs
Mr. Menn displays the mind trips that the GMO industry has foisted upon some folks. His letter is full of inaccuracies; he does not acknowledge that the use of Round-up has now created super weeds that now must be combated with even worse chemicals coming to us soon from the same companies.
The truth is that we are selling out our health to these monster chemical companies. They have infiltrated almost all processed foods with their poisons. There has been no testing about the effects of our over processed foods that contain GMO soy, canola oil and corn. Of course they don’t want labeling. People might get wise. Their health might improve or at least not deteriorate any more.
It is criminal that they are allowed to poison our precious Kauai soil with their chemicals.
Eleanor Snyder
Lawai
