Wild dogs on the loose

WILD KILLER DOGS are prowling Lahaina again. Please be on the lookout for at least two killer, wild dogs prowling near or around the aquatic center on Shaw Street.

One is a large black and white pit bull. The other is a medium-size Brown Healer. They have packed together and have already killed dozens of pets and livestock throughout Launiupoko, and they are now roaming Lahaina late night.

Wild dogs walk for miles on any given night – and they could be anywhere on the West Side – but they are likely always within a few miles of downtown Lahaina.

Maui Humane Society has been informed by e-mail and phone. MHS told us that they will not try and catch these wild dogs anymore. DLNR was also informed but hasn’t returned any calls.

Please keep pet food inside and be aware. These dogs are very, very dangerous to pets and livestock. Please spread the word.

SAVE MAUI CATS INC., Lahaina

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Get the West Maui Hospital project moving

Someone told me it’s been 13 years.

The LAHAINA BYPASS took 20 years, and it is still not completed.

The WEST MAUI MEDICAL CENTER (Hospital) had a groundbreaking a few years ago. The site is up COFFEE FARMS ROAD a quarter-mile or so.

Nothing happened since… even the sign looks like it needs painting

There is a concrete culvert lying on the ground wondering if construction will ever begin

Mayor Victorino, Rep. McKelvey, LET’S MAKE THIS HAPPEN. It is another overdue project

BRIAN EGAN, Lahaina

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Customers pay for bad management

So let me get this straight. According to a Maui News front page article (“Utility Pays Solar Projects $222K”), the PUC approved a private company to build a solar farm on the slopes of the West Maui Mountains above Lahaina, which all in West Maui agree is a blatant eyesore.

They contracted to sell their energy to Hawaiian Electric, but Hawaiian Electric says their grids are full and have to pay the private company $112,000 in “curtailment,” plus another $110,000 to their sister company in South Maui.

Finally, Hawaiian Electric wants ratepayers (you and me) to pay this $222,000. Have I got this straight?

From the original PUC approval onward, this stinks of bad management, and we, the customers, are the losers.

PENNY WAKIDA, Lahaina

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Separating democracy from voters

The mainstream media imposes some serious certainties on the 2020 presidential election that drive me into a furious despair.

Even though Bernie Sanders, winner of the first two Democratic primaries, is now leading in the national polls, he “can’t and won’t” be the party’s nominee “because in coming weeks,” writes Liz Peek in The Hill, “Democrats will make sure that Socialist Bernie does not get the nomination.

“More will realize that he will lead the party to a calamitous loss, and they will look for an alternative. Overwhelmed by ads, underwhelmed by others in the race, they will come to realize that Mike Bloomberg is the best they’ve got.”

Hey progressives – America is not a socialist country! Get it?

This same mentality, so I believe, is doing everything it can to ensure that the progressive base of the Democratic Party – represented, to a large extent, by Bernie Sanders – remains on the wrong side of the wall, barred from having an actual influence on the American political process.

Elections aren’t supposed to be about core values. Those values are already decided, and “Socialist Bernie” (psst, “socialist” is the same thing as “communist”) doesn’t get to mess with them.

These values, of course, mean as little as where you were born. These values are about who has power. Big Money rules and will always rule, right?

Thus the election coverage doesn’t look deeply beneath the surface – at who we are or how we ought to relate to the planet and to life itself.

Maybe Trump’s wall is creating an ecological dystopia, but Bernie Sanders is a socialist. And look, here comes Michael Bloomberg to save the day.

I’m not saying that change is simple, or that a national and global course of action, in the face of war and climate crisis and the growing phenomenon of refugees trying to find a home, is in any way obvious.

But our collective focus should be bigger than the needs and limits of corporate centrism. Do we not all have a stake in the future of this planet?

If you consume a lot of mainstream news coverage, you might be thinking that no one has quite the stake in the future that Bloomberg, the $60 billion man, does.

He has bought his way into the election process.

This is our country: up for sale.

So what we have here is a political system that continually surrenders to us-vs.-them thinking: leadership that requires an enemy to keep the country united.

This kind of thinking cuts cruel social gouges everywhere it’s in place, creating endless harm to some and insecurity for everyone.

American democracy continues to be up for sale.

ROBERT KOEHLER, PeaceVoice