Mayor’s Cup a win
West Hawaii Parks and Athletic Corp (WHIPAC) expresses its appreciation for the volunteers and supporters for the 10th annual Mayor’s Cup Senior Baseball Tournament held Jan. 17 through Jan. 21. Twenty-eight teams from across the United States and Hawaii totaling 311 seniors ages from 60 and over participated in this year’s tournament. Teams came from California, Indiana, Alaska, Arizona, Kauai, Maui, and Honolulu. Pick-up Players came from New York, New Mexico, British Colombia, Kipapa, Kauai to Ka’u.
Special thanks to County Parks Division, former COH Parks Director Bob Fitzgerald, State Senior Softball Commissioner Jeff Kimoto, and Lorene Yoshimura-Tanigawa for their unwavering dedication to the tournament.
Finally, the 10th annual Mayor’s Cup Tournament supported our island economy generating revenues for small businesses and the hotel-restaurant industry.
Craig Bo Kahui
Kailua-Kona
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Socialism!
In response to Mikie Kerr’s recent complaint that raising the state minimum wage to $18 an hour is socialism, this is the old free enterprise canard that jobs should pay 5 cents an hour as long as someone is willing to take them. That road leads to a race to the economic bottom with each employer lowering wage offers until we all end up working for almost nothing and being unable to afford to buy the very products and services we make and provide. Societies that care about the well-being of their citizens make certain that they are not victims of economic rapacity.
This kind of “I’m-for-me-first-ism” is the ugly underside of the much-vaunted American individualism. For me to succeed, it is not necessary that someone else fail. It is not a zero-sum game. It is life. There is room for all to succeed.
The horror of the $5.25 cup of Waimea coffee is not a way station on the road to oblivion. An $18 per hour minimum wage, which Ms. Kerr of course will never be paid, comes to just $34,000 annually. Hawaii rents and food costs exhaust that in a flash. And she wants the underclass to be paid even less so her coffee will be more affordable.
How much concern for the poor are you willing to sacrifice in the name of ideology?
John Sucke
Waimea
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