Throw book at assailants
These three individuals who are on trial for beating the security guard at the Kona Seaside Resort should each be given 40 years in prison before they’re allowed probation.
How would they feel if this was their father or uncle? No, they don’t have the mentality to think in those terms because they are stupid, ignorant, with no respect for others, let alone for themselves.
Whatever verbal discussion they had, it had no place for what they did by beating the security guard. Completely shameful!
Sam Ahia
Captain Cook
Tariff fight a stand for morality, too
So, President Trump and President Xi Jinping are going to meet on US-China tariffs. I like little of what our president does, but on China I’m very much in agreement with his course of action.
China, in case you are out of touch or very naïve, is the big – and bad – dog of Asia, with a consistent, well-documented and unapologetic record of abusing the human rights of its citizens (Tiananmen Square, etc.), turning a blind eye to trafficking in endangered plant and animal species, trashing the environment at every opportunity, egregious hacking of American public and private companies, stealing intellectual property, harvesting organs for transplant from prisoners, intransigence on Tibet and so on — it’s a long list.
In the past 20 years, US administrations have tried to engage China on these matters through all matter of means, but China turns a deaf ear to it all. How to get their attention? Only one way has any realistic chance of success: tariffs. And the more the better. China is not going to win the tariff standoff, and they know it. What China is hoping for is that Americans will back down on tough tariffs because, yes, tariffs are going to cause some financial pain for us.
Then so be it. It’s time we took a stand for morality. Continuing to put our financial interests first with less stringent tariffs is also to continue to endorse China’s outrageous and unlawful domestic and international behavior.
John Kitchen
Kailua-Kona
What about shopping carts theft crackdown?
We all feel sorry for the homeless be they mentally ill, drug addicts, or people just down on their luck, but when you’re driving down the road and pass a homeless person pushing a shopping cart along the side of the road full of their possessions and thinking: (1) obviously they stole it, (2) retrieving or replacing the carts helps bring the cost of our food up, and (3) that’s why the last cart I used shopping had a flat wheel and was so hard to push and who knows what was carried in it that I am now putting my food into.
We see the carts abandoned along the road and at the Old Airport Park and eventually they disappear. I assume someone picks them up — do they sanitize them before putting them back in service?
I am sure the police see the homeless pushing a shopping cart, too, but being only a misdemeanor, they have bigger fish to fry or they know that the courts are backed up and they will just release them. The only way I think we can stop this is to have a zero tolerance for cart thief. I know this will not stop the homeless problem but it’s a step.
Paul Prosise
Kailua-Kona