Surely, this question has been answered a number of times. However, I’ve missed it and so has everyone else with whom I’ve discussed rail.
So I’ll try asking it again: Who is expected to ride the rail outside of the rush hours to and from work?
Who will want to go downtown after 8 a.m. and who will want to go in the other direction before 4 p.m.?
Since downtown is “dead” on weekends and holidays, who will use it on those days?
No doubt a few people will be taking the train to the Pearlridge shopping center now and then, but definitely not enough to make it worthwhile.
I see empty trains 20-22 hours a day and on weekends, except possibly for a few football games.
Michael Tymn
Kailua
Federal candidates offer goodies outside purview
Presidential and congressional candidates will tell us all the things they can do for us. Most of those things are not part of their job.
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution directs Congress to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”
Just to make sure Congress clearly understood the limits of its duties, the founders added the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Doing good stuff people want and need is for state, county and city governments. It is the rights of the states that the Constitution sought to ensure. The idea was for the various states to exercise sovereignty for the people in their states.
Douglas Beijer
Kaunakakai, Molokai
Loss of civility putting future of U.S. at risk
No, it is not OK (“There is no aloha in being silent in the face of wrongdoing,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Aug. 4).
Chelsea Lyons Kent not only diminished her delegation and state by her childish display of temper at the Democratic convention, but she provided a terrible role model for her children.
She could have left the convention or published an op-ed, or both, at that time.
The loss of civility — dubbed the “little ethics” — frays the fabric of society and contributes to the decline of civilization. The penalty for her shaming of the delegation is ostracism and censure, not legal action.
From the shoutout of “You lie!” at a State of the Union address to the current lowlife display by the Republican candidate, Americans are at risk of becoming an uncivilized nation.
Jean E. Rosenfeld
Wailupe Peninsula
Kent’s gesture ruined what was a good point
Chelsea Lyons Kent’s commentary gave me a jolt to learn just how flagrantly the Democratic National Convention was organized to “dump” Bernie Sanders without getting this wrongdoing reported to voters while the convention was in session. So I agreed wholeheartedly with the author’s frustration and anger of the suppression of Hawaii’s delegates. Yes, what she experienced was, as she stated, “wrong.”
But, alas, she ended her article with a reference to her gesture, “I objected in the only effective way I could.”
The gesture was the only effective way she could?
Doug Kaya
Kaimuki
