Paid day off
Paid day off
Dear Mr. Mayor: We got a quarter inch of rain (from Tropical Storm Flossie), and the wind was blowing. I stayed home.
Please send me a check.
William Wade
Kehena Beach
Heed the warnings
The Tribune-Herald’s editor is way way off base to run an article — front page, right side — supporting not following the safety guidelines offered for a storm that had a very good chance to pass over the Hilo area.
I do not have a problem with a person feeling that it is unlikely that it will happen. I was hoping the same thing. But to offer to the readers of this paper your support, via the prominence of where you run the article, that she knew it would not happen, is foolish.
Your … article regarding the mayor’s position, stating the cost and inconvenience, shows your support for the front-page article. If the mayor took any other position than the one he did, and someone died because of it, the cost of a life would be horrible — a lot worse than the inconvenience we experienced, and we all know what in dollars.
Jack Stevenson
Hilo
Unjustly imprisoned
Just a reminder in case you have forgotten. A citizen of the Big Island, Roger Christie, has been in the federal lock-up in Honolulu for over three years now. No trial, no bail, because he’s been deemed “a danger to the community” by federal prosecutors and judges who don’t even live on Hawaii Island. And what was the crime this dangerous monster is accused of? Selling marijuana — not meth, heroin or cocaine — to people who wanted to buy it.
Three years. Children have been born and learned to walk and talk in that time, and Roger Christie is still in jail; no bail, no trial.
I don’t know how come the rest of us aren’t in the streets with torches and pitchforks demanding justice. Like me, you probably think “this couldn’t happen to me, in Hawaii, in America,” but if it did, my friends, neighbors and government representatives wouldn’t stand for it.
Well, it seems that when it comes to the federal justice system, what the majority of the people — including friends, neighbors and family — want doesn’t count.
If you should be charged with a federal offense, even unjustly, God help you, because it seems like no one else can.
Michael Engstrom
Hilo
Tax on munitions
(Recently) on HPR/PBS radio I listened to a report about 7 million refugees in the Middle East who need to be fed. These are citizens displaced by the various conflicts, Syria being the headline nation. It was said that it costs $27 million per week and that worldwide aide is necessary, NOT just from the USA.
I would speculate that most people would support a tax to finance such causes that are brought on by warring conflicts and that this tax would be levied on all munitions and armaments of war!
John Begg
Pahoa