More signs need fixing
Well, that was nice of the DOT to remove that one incorrect “directional” sign, however there is still the yellow sign by the cleaners that shows going to Napoopoo, you need to turn left instead of heading straight makai (heading straight makai shows a dead end on existing sign).
Until the correct signs show up, how’s about setting up the DOT’s electric sign stating Highway 11, turn left? Was there someone who’s not from Kona doing this chore?
C.F. Steffen
Captain Cook
History lesson on party shifts
After reading Henry Scroggin’s letter of Nov. 25, I feel I need to respond to some his misleading statements.
The Democratic Party created the Ku Klux Klan? That seems to be a bit of a reach, to put it mildly. The Klan was formed by former Confederate soldiers, who happened to be Southern Democrats.
I say Southern Democrats because in 1860 the Democratic Party split into the Northern Democratic Party (nominating Stephen Douglas for President), and the Southern Democratic Party (nominating John C. Breckenridge). A smaller faction of Democrats formed the Constitutional Union party.
As we all know, Lincoln won the election, although it was with less than 40 percent of the vote. Yes, some southern Democrats did own slaves, and the Republican Abraham Lincoln did lead the effort to free them. But political parties are composed of human beings, and as such they tend to evolve as time goes by, and the fact is that these days the parties have completely switched places in the political spectrum.
The Republican Party, at its founding was, by and large, a Northern Party, having been formed mainly to oppose slavery. The Democratic Party divided itself into factions divided by regional lines, the northern Democrats and the southern Democrats. In the south, the GOP was reviled as it was the party of occupation from the Civil War. But that slowly changed.
Around 1948, the southern Democrats formed the State’s Rights Democratic Party, known as the Dixiecrats and even nominated their own candidates for president. After the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Bill, the Dixiecrats began defecting to the GOP, changing control of the south from Democratic to Republican.
To say that today’s GOP is the party of Lincoln is laughable at best. It has morphed into the opposite of the original Republican Party.
Terry Davis
Kailua-Kona