Still too much ADVERTISING Still too much Patrick Donovan’s letter (“Your Views,” Sept. 23) takes issue with some of the conclusions, or at least the method of arriving at those conclusions, discussed in my recent letter about “Too much government.”
Still too much
Patrick Donovan’s letter (“Your Views,” Sept. 23) takes issue with some of the conclusions, or at least the method of arriving at those conclusions, discussed in my recent letter about “Too much government.”
We all know one can argue statistics until the cows come home, but Donovan finds the broader issue of whether government is too big, an “interesting one but won’t address it here.” That seems a pity.
Donovan could well have found a problem with my simple arithmetic. Per the statistics in the Tribune-Herald’s “East Hawaii F.A.Q. Book” published Sept. 13, “Who are the Big Island’s largest employers,” the number of people employed by government is 12,201, of a total of 17,252. The 50 percent/50 percent used in my earlier letter was, therefore, way off the mark. The percentage is more like 70 percent/30 percent.
I would like to repeat: It would be refreshing if folks aspiring to future public office would make this issue No. 1 on their political manifesto.
Chris Tamm
Hilo
Climate unchanged
Ivy Ashe’s coverage of Jason Adolf’s lecture (Tribune-Herald, Sept. 24) on global warming, aka climate change, coincided nicely with the Associated Press article “Pope calls for climate action.”
Yes, CO2 level continues to rise, but the unfudgable satellite data show no global temperature rise in almost 20 years! None of the computer models blaming CO2 for warming fit this.The sea level has been rising at the same rate for a century, and the expected monster hurricanes aren’t showing up. All the apocalyptic predictions are proving false, yet people tenaciously hold on to this belief.
Anthropological climate change is turning out to be more religion, politics and a way to get grant money than science.
Lon Hocker
Hilo
I say reprimand!
In response to the article published Sept. 17 about the County Council’s decision not to reprimand Mayor Billy Kenoi: such a disappointment that members decided to accept his apologies and send him home.
I’ve seen shoplifters get treated as downright criminals, senior citizens get committed when they overspent their retirement online and children taken away from parents for neglect.
Here is a man trusted by the people only to abuse our trust and funds. All the good some of us have done goes unnoticed, but Kenoi’s good lets him off the hook? If ever I’m in court for any reason, I hope they take into consideration the good I’ve done. I say reprimand! What’s good for one is good for all.
Harriet Chung
Hilo
