Energy costs
Energy costs
It took long enough
“We’re not interested in more renewable energy. We’re interested in cheaper renewable energy. Unless it has lower rates, we will not support it,” Mayor Billy Kenoi, August 2012
We are glad to see an elected official finally doing the math. It took long enough.
Expensive energy is not sustainable.
Our energy policy should be cheap energy.
That is sustainable.
On the Big Island, geothermal is the cheapest source available and it is both renewable and local. We need to go there, and nowhere else, as soon as possible for the entire island.
Everything else is more expensive and makes folks suffer as a result.
It is time to end the crony PUC-protected energy industry and its patrons who benefit at any cost, while everyone else has to pay for their inefficiencies.
“I can tell you that life without energy is brutal and short,” Dr. John Christy, Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, testifying to Congress March 2011.
Edward Gutteling
Vice President of the Conservative Forum for Hawaii
County Clerk
Who made decision?
After the recent primary polling debacle, everyone has been very quick to heap scorn on the county clerk as incompetent.
What I’d like to know is who hired her and why? It seems to me that individual would be the real incompetent, giving county jobs out to unqualified cronies. How much does that clerk’s position get paid?
Nepotism inevitably inbreeds this kind of incompetence. Blame our own feudal county administrative culture, not the pawns.
Bruce Baron
Waimea
Poll problems
A reflection on service primary election day
A week after the mishaps of the primary elections, I want to speak on behalf of some, if not all, of the workers who staffed the polling stations on that day.
Out of 40 stations, only five had problems — minor and inconvenient problems, which did cause some to leave; that was unfortunate.
On a positive note, the staffers worked tirelessly to accommodate all who voted. We stayed open for an extra 90 minutes for those who had to leave. We solved problems, gave directions, shared laughs and tried to make comfortable those who stayed with us until the poll books arrived.
I was at the Kona Vistas polling location and most of those who left came back to vote later that day. Some actually made jokes about it.
This was my first time working the polling station and although it didn’t start out on a happy note, I will do it again in November for the general election. It is long hours and little pay, but we are serving our country and we enjoy it. It is a privilege to vote and one of the few rights we have left.
Life is not fair. We can only learn from our mistakes and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We spend too much time looking at the negatives instead of concentrating on the positives.
We are blessed to live in a country that has so many freedoms, that the minority voice is heard. We can fight, demonstrate, share our beliefs and, at the end of the day, we can all put those aside and love our country, our families and our neighbors.
Tamara Halliwell
Kailua-Kona
Mars landing
Competence needed
Watching the recent landing on Mars of Curiosity, I was once again reminded what great things Americans are capable of, such as innovation, cooperation, coordination and long-range planning.
We should throw the bums out of Washington and send that NASA team to our nation’s capitol to run things.
Scott Giles
Kailua-Kona