Fine the parents
Fine the parents
The article on student misconduct (July 2, Tribune-Herald) aroused sadness and anger while reading — sadness in that the … young people involved will probably have lives of trouble and hardship; anger in that I wonder what the family life was like for these young people, and what was the status of these families?
Tough love is a way of turning around some young people’s bad behavior, and it seems to me that would be a good start in helping them for their future. The government should hit the families with uncontrollable teens in the pocketbooks. Make the parents (married or not) pay a fine for every incident of misconduct.
It would be of interest to see if there is a common denominator between all of those involved with the bad conduct.
Those of you teens who do not fall into this category, I commemorate you. And down the road, you will realize your good behavior and perseverance to study will be rewarded. Remember the saying: Pay me now or pay me later.
Carmine Spada
Pahoa
Fix the streets
I have always been against tax increases, particularly during the economic downturns that we are presently being subjected to. However, I support the increase in the registration weight tax only if the increase is used solely, 100 percent, for the repair and maintenance of our roads and streets!
One only need look at the deplorable conditions of a number of our streets.
It is way beyond time that our council should introduce and pass a bill that unconditionally states: “Vehicle taxes should be used for maintenance of our streets and roads only.” Or are they waiting for someone to mow the grass and weeds between the cracks in the streets?
Ron Baptista
Mountain View
Restrictive voting
I found out that Dan (Lindsay) was right (in his response to my letter about partisan elections), although when I talked about it to people, several of them thought it was non-partisan primary and partisan general.
Either way, to make someone have to choose parties instead of the individual on their merits is one of the reasons our government is so lame. There is substantially no difference in Democrats or Republicans today. They obviously both love war, taking away our freedoms, huge government, spying on us, keeping us all sick by pharmaceutical and chemical ingestion, keeping us all in prison by the drug war, and on and on.
So, whether it’s in the primary or general, making someone choose a party rather than an individual is another way we have our choices made for us by our government.
Sara Steiner
Pahoa