Vandals and litterbugs ruin beautiful area

Last weekend my family and I walked from the end of the road in Waianae to beautiful Kaena Point and we were dismayed and upset at what we encountered. At the beginning of the hike we were met by a police officer who was cleaning up glass from a car break-in, only to find out that no signs are posted saying that people should park near the lifeguard station and not the end of the road (a common-sense solution would be to post such a sign in English, Japanese and German).

Then, on our walk, we were amazed at the amount of dumping and garbage we encountered - everything from cars to plastic refuse. Once we reached the actual point we saw two highly endangered monk seals, yet there were no interpretive signs posted by the Department of Land and Natural Resources advising hikers to stay away.

At this point we encountered a single female Japanese tourist who was quite excited about the seals and was taking pictures from an appropriate distance. We then continued back toward Waianae only to find this same tourist's car broken into at the end of the road.

So much for a day in paradise!

Americans should face truth about tax cuts

I viewed all three presidential debates and the vice-presidential debate. The political hacks, both Republican and Democrat, all are promising us tax cuts. With the national debt at about $10 trillion and the annual deficit at about $500 billion, we cannot keep deficit-spending without severe financial consequences.

We have been financing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last eight years, we have gone from a $5 trillion surplus to a $10 trillion debt, and we have spent all the revenues for the years from 2001 to the current year. We need a national sales tax of 5 percent piggybacked on each state's sales tax to restore fiscal integrity to our government. Abraham Lincoln had an income tax during the Civil War in the 1860s to pay for the war. The political hacks are being irresponsible when they promise us tax cuts that are no longer feasible or sustainable.

It's not OK to be cruel to food animals

If Star-Bulletin columnist Charles Memminger watches PETA's undercover video (on http://www.peta.org) from an Iowa farm that breeds pigs destined to be killed for Hormel, he'll understand why PETA asked Shane Victorino to stop eating Spam (”;We treat our Spam musubi quite ethically,”; Oct. 19).

Investigators from PETA saw supervisors and workers at the farm beating pigs with metal bars, spraying paint up pigs' noses, shocking pigs in the face and slamming baby piglets on a concrete floor, leaving them to die slowly. A supervisor rammed a cane into a pig's vagina and boasted about shoving metal gate rods up pigs' anuses. He repeatedly kicked a downed sow who gave birth the next day and was thought to be in labor during the abuse.

Both vegetarians and meat-eaters can agree that this is wrong and must stop. Hormel must enforce strict animal welfare guidelines for its facilities, and for the facilities it supports. It shouldn't take a PETA investigation to bring this type of behavior to the company's attention.

Lingle's comments are bad for her, not Obama

Gov. Linda Lingle's disingenuous concern for ”;Obama to visit ill grandma in Hawaii”; (Star-Bulletin, Oct. 21) is sadly ironic because just a few days ago Lingle tried to damage Barack Obama's credibility by saying he has “;no personal connections”; to Hawaii. Now Obama will miss two important days of crunch time campaigning and fly all the way here to be with his grandmother.

Just shows you that Lingle has descended into the Republican smear machine devoid of honor. Very bad karma, Linda.

Con Con would explore what lawmakers won't

Regarding Anne Feder Lee's ”;Hawaii's Constitution is not broken”; (Star-Bulletin, Oct. 19): A Constitutional Convention is held at the will of the people and is not a criticism of the current document. It allows the expansion and inclusion of citizen concerns that the legislative body is unwilling or unable to deal with. Term limits, public funding of campaigns, make-up of the legislative bodies are some of the concerns the Legislature finds itself too delicate to deal with. Feder Lee faults our short, impassioned letters as not spelling out in final wording the changes we propose. She overlooks the newspaper's word limits on letters submitted. She skips by the fact that the wording and formation of change is the work of the convention itself. What she steps over is the variety of concerns the public would like to discuss in a group, in a Constitutional Convention. The unions and vested interests will do their part to supply the convention with those who toe the current line but from the county, from the villages and valleys others will come. The islands will each discover new leaders who will carry their ideas to the gathering place.

One has only to look at who is against the convention to know how dearly it is needed. Vote “;yes”; for the Constitutional Convention.

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