Letters To The Editor
January 10, 2007 - MidWeek
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Kudos to Bob Jones for his column on pronouncing Hawaiian words correctly. It’s the very least those of us who come from other places can do.
Terry James
Honolulu
Kahuku champs
Pamela Young’s “Applause” story about members of the championship Kahuku High football team stopping to help some folks change a flat tire and direct traffic just made my day. At a time when so many athletes act - and are often treated - as if they are above everything, it’s great to see these boys acting like men.
Ted Leong
Kaneohe
War haters
From his letter, Geoff Boehm sounds like a big listener of “Faux News.” We “Bush Haters,” as he puts it, hate his war and all of the deaths, injuries and destruction he has caused just to kill one man, Saddam Hussein - a dictator who had nothing to do with 9/11 or with us (except when Cheney and Rumsfeld helped to arm him decades ago).
And “Bush protecting us”? He was warned by President Clinton as he took office. When an FBI agent in Arizona asked why Saudis were attending schools here and learning to fly but not land large aircraft, she was ignored. The Bush Administration received a memo in August 2001 stating that “Bin Laden set to attack U.S.” and Bush spent the month of August on his ranch cutting brush and riding his bike.
Mr. Boehm, and others, try to tell us that Bush is protecting us from terrorism, but you cannot prove a negative. Bush has ruined our reputation and made us hated around the world. He, himself, requires unprecedented protection when he ventures out. He is by far the worst president in our history and has done great harm to America and the world.
Nancy Bey Little
Makiki
E-mail correction
Thanks for doing the article on our group, Korean Adoptees Hawaii. I’m really excited and pleased with how the article came out. One correction though, the contact e-mail address listed is incorrect. Our e-mail address is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) m. I hope that the e-mail address can be corrected in case people want to contact our group.
Katie Putes
KAHI
Taxes and homeless
Rick Hamada is right to warn that here in Hawaii the tax situation is out of hand, does not return the community benefits we are paying for, and is about to get much worse. I agree with him that the rise in GET, property tax and gas cost will deeply hurt, let alone the decades of new gouging that government will come up with for the insatiable albatross masquerading as the answer to our transportation problems - which most of us will not be able to effectively use even when it is operational (many) years hence. I also agree that we are in danger of losing much of the middle class as a result, making the situation still worse.
Where we differ, though, is in Mr. Hamada’s assumption that the working poor will benefit from this situation along with the rich. That new 4.7 percent GET will hurt a minimum wage worker far more than a middle-class one.
And those who have cars and must commute from areas where working class people predominate generally have long drives, and don’t have hybrid cars or new models that save on gas. Think about it: A minimum-wage worker commuting from Waianae has to spend well over an hour’s pay every day just to get to and from work.
I have worked in the Hawaii human services sector for 26 years, and I can assure anyone who thinks tax-and-spend is a boon for the poor that it’s just not so.
The growing numbers of homeless people in the parks and on our streets and beaches attest to the effects of the escalating costs of living here. Many of them would love to be in a position to complain about high property taxes.
Holly Henderson
Honolulu
Welcome back
I just wanted to say how nice it was to see columns by Jerry Coffee and Susan Page back in the pages of MidWeek. They really do add a lot to the publication.
Donna Matsumoto
Honolulu
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