Your Views for June 21

Pay to see

Lower Puna residents are packing it in. Pahoa is becoming a ghost town, and businesses are failing.

The County Council voted down an extra general excise tax increase. The real estate tax coffers are dipping dangerously low. Many county services are going to need to be sacrificed, especially for our youth who will have a frustrating summer without access to facilities. Visitor count is way down. Hotel occupancy is half. And Madame Pele is here for an extended stay in all her glory.

The answer seems simple.

The helicopter and lava boat companies know it, but only the super rich can afford their services for several hundred dollars a view. We already have the checkpoints manned. Why not charge people a buck or two to go visit the plume at the end of the Pohoiki-Kapoho “Y” road? They can’t go anywhere from there! A perfect view of what EVERYONE wants to see.

How many people went to see the flow before at Kalapana? Thousands a day at one point. Do the math, do what’s right, and let’s be prosperous again.

Dawn Hurwitz

Pahoa

Who are we?

I just finished reading the article in the Tribune-Herald regarding the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border. Who are we as a people now?

The accompanying photo tells the story — small children on thin floor pads with foil blankets. A young teenager describing how she has been caring for a small child in diapers, a child she doesn’t even know. Kids in fetal position on the floor. Kids sobbing. And, representatives of our government at the highest levels saying this is OK because they believe the Bible says so.

First, we do not govern based on the Bible in this country. And second, if we did, this would not be happening. Jesus is weeping and the people making and supporting this atrocity are not Christians by any standard. They are monsters, and if this was happening to our kids it would start a war.

For shame!

Laura Buck

Keaau