Make Hawaii attractive
to businesses
In the latest survey, Hawaii was the least favorable place to start a business. However, the individuals running for office push ideas such as raising the minimum wage or proposing new taxes. This increases the cost of living for the price of food and other services are increased.
It also causes some businesses to go out of business. Kmart is currently going out of business in Hawaii. The government often says they want to have more business diversity, but they always make it less attractive for a business to be started in or moved to Hawaii.
Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to decrease the cost of living by not taxing food and medical? Shouldn’t the excise tax on the excise tax (double taxation) be stopped? If the lower-paid individuals cannot afford to live in Hawaii, why not eliminate the income tax they pay?
Hawaii has many career politicians who indicate they are going to fix everything if elected, but their history says they will only increase the cost of living in Hawaii.
Michael Wilson
South Kona
America, it’s embarrassing
Many of us viewed the pathetic carefully scripted statement of the President of the United States regarding his supposedly slip of the tongue comments standing alongside the dictator of Russia, relating to that country’s interference in our 2016 presidential election.
Most people, especially Republicans, will say “Oh well, it’s just Him.” Well, it’s actually about Us. Once considered the leader of the Free World, we are now led by a clinically defined narcissistic pathological liar. America, it’s embarrassing. I want to be proud of our country again. Let’s figure it out together.
Joel Cohen
Waimea
Representative Evans
deserves thanks for library in Waikoloa
I’d like to personally thank Rep. Cindy Evans for her persistent efforts in getting a library for the Waikoloa region. It was back in 2010 that Evans organized a group of volunteer residents in Waikoloa for a new push to get a regional library. That group went on to become Friends of the Library-Waikoloa Region (FL-WR). Rep. Evans then facilitated the transfer of an unused Bookmobile to FL-WR from the State Librarian’s office, now used as a book exchange.
In 2014, Evans obtained funding for the planning and design phase. The planning study showed the continuing growth of the population in Waikoloa and the need for our own library.
In 2015, the Waikoloa Village Association membership voted to donate a parcel of land near the stables for the library. Unfortunately, in 2016 it was discovered that the county would require a left-turn lane that made the site development too expensive.
Behind the scenes, Evans doggedly pursued other possible sites in Waikoloa Village, including the future shopping center in Waikoloa Village. The developer’s desire to provide a parcel to the state fed new life into the library’s progress.
Evans requested $1.9 million for the site acquisition in the 2018 legislative session, and the whole village stepped up to support her. Over 700 letters of support were collected by FL-WR, and delivered by Evans to key legislators. It was a nervous time waiting to see if the full funding would end up in the appropriations bill, but our efforts were rewarded with the entire $1.9 million to purchase the site. It is expected that the library will open in 2022.
My heartfelt thanks go to Evans for her encouragement and pursuit of our library for the last eight years. We couldn’t have done it without her.
Ruth Bernstone
Waikoloa
Addiction and responsibility
This is my reply to the letter from Mr. Silverman published on July 18.
Yes, it was terrible for someone to lose their life. However, how am I, or anyone else responsible for a person beginning their addiction?
When I was younger, much younger, I began smoking because I thought it would make me “cool.” That was in high school, but I quickly determined that it wasn’t doing me any good, so I stopped. End of story. Yet if I was forced by others to continue smoking, that would be another story unto itself.
It amazes me how a person’s own actions, without the outside influence of violence, makes me responsible for their addiction.
Michael L. Last
Naalehu
A carefully
orchestrated crisis
It was being said Wednesday in Washington, across the U.S., and around the world, that we have a national security crisis. The current crisis has been carefully orchestrated by the Russians and the KGB over the past 30 years as they use President Donald Trump’s business interests and greed to put a puppet president into place in the U.S. that will divide and destroy democracy and the Alliance of the Western Nations (NATO).
The national divisiveness that has been sown in America is being reflected in local communities and in the Congress at a deep level that we have not seen in our lifetime. You can see this divisiveness daily even at the local level reflected in the Letters to the Editor.
The president, in his recent trip abroad and Tuesday in his news conference with Vladimir Putin, essentially threw the intelligence community and U.S. interests under the bus. There is an historical quote that has come down from three prominent communists: Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Karl Marx that essentially says, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” And now, we are watching this unfold on the world stage, and we can choose to see it or not.
Gerry Herbert
and Nancy Redfeather
Honalo
