Too late for Puna
I just read in the paper where County Council members are trying to figure out what Civil Defense is up to (Tribune-Herald, April 19).
I am feeling like you on the County Council are kinda late on this, and it would have been nice for you all to have supported Puna residents’ efforts to figure this out prior to now.
A bunch of us “Punatics,” organized by myself, already did this twice. We did this with Harry Kim’s help in 2014, and then Jon Olson and myself sat in front of the council last year and tried to tell them what the heck happens to Puna residents in emergencies.
In 2014, our two councilmen, Danny Paleka and Greggor Ilagan, refused to schedule our complaint in front of the council and wanted us to meet with Civil Defense directly, which we did, then the Civil Defense dude retired before anything meaningful could be attained.
Last year, we got up in front of you council members and started to talk and we got shut down. Remember? The County Council did not want to hear our gripes about Civil Defense. They said we needed to complain to them directly.
I guess now the council is ready to hear about it. You better keep on it because our island is covered with live volcanoes, and it is only a matter of time before you in Hilo or Kona will know what us in Puna have gone through.
All it comes down to is respecting the residents and how the government treats us. Harry Kim used to know that; he was the much-loved, much-respected head of Civil Defense for many years. Somehow that love for the people vanished, and love for big government money replaced it, and it makes for a really super-dysfunctional government — as we saw in the budget pie charts a couple of days ago, and as we saw in Civil Defense’s response to the 2014 and 2018 emergencies.
Sara Steiner
Pahoa
More on socialism
Turns out that the darling of the Democratic Party, socialist Bernie Sanders, is a self-described millionaire. How did a guy in government service who prior to holding elective office held only menial jobs become a millionaire?
He says he wrote a book. If you write a book, says he, you, too, can become rich.
Well, how does that work? You create a product, a book, you market it, and sales come in. You pay taxes on the income, but you get to keep the rest. Ta-da — that’s capitalism.
So this makes Sanders somewhat of a hypocrite. Socialism doesn’t allow this type of free marketing, since the government controls all you do.
And one other thing. Don’t expect to see Sanders, Nancy Pelosi and all the other politicians standing in line trying to see a doctor under their free medical plan.
Sam Wallis
Hilo