Health care
Health care
No hard feelings
The Supreme Court decision on health care is certainly nice news for Americans, but there is a fly in the ointment.
In recent memory, here on the Big Island, a liver transplant patient was denied treatment by a nonmedical office worker of the insurance company because a last-minute blood test showed the patient had eaten a marijuana brownie.
Thanks for all the years of premiums, sucker, I am standing in the operating room door, and I am sending you to the morgue.
No hard feelings, that’s just company policy.
Richard Swann
Ocean View
Kawa Bay
Kenoi approach to problem is correct
The controversy listed on the front page of WHT June 27, is but a small part of the history of Kawa.
Many of us who have had the privilege of visiting and seeing its archeological features with an interpretive guide, preferably local kupuna, know that once opened to the public, many of the valuable features will disappear. For instance, Kawa is the only place on this island that has what the old Hawaiians called Pohaku Hanau. A rock that gives birth to little baby rocks.
Legend says that these little rocks migrate down the coast to visit family once a year. The rocks that give birth and the migration are all explainable events that were a real part of the lives of those who lived there many years ago.
I was born and raised in Ka‘u and my school bus stopped to pick up classmates, who lived in a shack attached to a cave in Kawa, each morning on the way to school in the middle 1950s. They were dirt poor but had a rich concept of the heritage from which they came. It was always a treat to visit Kawa with them.
The eviction of Abel Simeona Lui from Kawa is now front and center in the mayors’ race to some of the people in Ka‘u. The consequences of that action will have a lasting negative effect, if not done properly.
Reading the responses provided by Council Chairman Dominic Yagong and former Mayor Harry Kim reminds me of a like incident that took place 30 some years ago.
In protest to the development of the property on the ocean side of the old Kona Airport, a group of Hawaiians set up a village-type campsite and called it Kukailimoku Village. The landowner won an injunction in court and the police were asked to evict the squatters.
I was one on the officers assigned and we went in with force, equipment and authority. By day’s end, all of the trespassers were either moved out, arrested, or went into hiding. Their properties were hauled off in dump trucks and the camp site leveled. The law was enforced.
On the more subtle side of this story, friends became enemies, distrust of the police magnified, and “hate for the haole” increased. In the statewide Hawaiian community, stories of this group being evicted by force brought to mind the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the illegal annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the U.S.
Within six weeks of the eviction, the same group was back in force and, this time, with more sympathizers. On the second try, the eviction responsibility was given to then police Capt. Ed Nobriga, a Kona rancher, who chose to show less force and more humility in his approach. It took a little longer,but the job was accomplished without anyone being arrested —and Capt. Ed Nobriga shaking hands with the trespassers at the end of the day.
I think Mayor Billy Kenoi is correct in taking the time to accomplish the task that can be more efficiently completed by the police but has the potential to explode and create unnecessary animosity for years to come.
We live on an island, we need to live together and share a common interest in the land and its people for the common good.
Leningrad Elarionoff
Waimea
Really?
Intersecting questions
The Ane Keohokalole Highway going through Kona is a beautiful piece of roadway with places (up to the civic center) that people can walk, bike and get out of the congestion.
But, really? A stop sign at one of the busiest intersections — with the high school and Laiopua above and our West Hawaii Civic Center right there? Really?
A streetlight could not have been part of the planning process? Really?
A roundabout similar to the ones used in Washington and Boston for the past several hundred years (and let’s not forget Europe) could not have been put at this intersection as a model for growth and transportation on the rest of the island? Really?
When the schools go back into session, everyone has to stop and go for who knows how long, two times a day? Really?
How long is it going to take so that it will be a great functioning road versus a stop and go on a highway? Really?
Barbara A Welsh
Kailua-Kona
Lanai’s fate
A different future?
Wouldn’t Lanai be a good place for a dairy farm and processor for the state?
If you can grow pineapples, you should be able to grow grass. Maybe an outfit like Meadow Gold Dairies would consider it.
Then there is the possibility of creating a beef “stocker” type of ranch operation (a stocker operation is where one buys wean-off cattle, mostly steers at about 500 pounds and puts them on grass for a year or so to gain another 600 pounds for a total slaughter weight or is it PC to say harvest weight of 1,000 to 12,000 pounds?).
With grass-finished beef in demand these days, one only needs to plant the proper grain grasses, pray for rain, stock the fields with stocker cattle from local ranches and, wela, you have grass-fed beef with a few range chickens, pasture-raised hogs and a sheep or two thrown in to round it all off.
Plus, there is the fact that this would be a green type of outfit, what with all the foul gases produced by these animals being blown away into oblivion. Such a deal.
Hugo v. P. Luder
Holualoa
Phone poll
Out-of-state efforts annoy here at home
There I was minding my own business and the phone rang. The person on the other end asked to speak to my wife concerning the upcoming election.
There were many questions concerning some issues and questions concerning candidates.
When my wife asked who was financing these questions, the questioner was very vague.
When my wife asked if the questioner had ever even been to Hawaii, the answer was no.
When the questioner finally copped to the question as to who financed to the survey, she all but said: Kenoi.
Billy, who are you trying to kid?
The woman is from Oregon; her words. Is this what it takes to hold power here in Hawaii?
Richard Allen
Keauhou