Letter to HECO CEO: Windmills Keep Generators Idling at 70%
Dear Mr. Rosenblum: June 6, 2012
The manufacture of electricity and its distribution to customers is not a rocket science. We’ve been there and done that for more than a century. Please explain to me why Hawaii’s cost for electricity is more than three times the national average, per kilowatt-hour, per state? Do we not basically use identical mixes of human manpower and generating machinery similar to our other forty nine sister states? How can it be that we are so out of synch, COST WISE, with the rest of America?
Additionally, after several years of active service by the wind turbines above Maalaea, can you put a number on the amount of fuel oil that has been saved as a result of the wind farm operation? Has this savings been reflected in your cost analysis to the consumer? I have heard that you must keep your generators idling at about 70% due to the inconsistent and fluctuating power received from the wind mills. If this is true, doesn’t this negate the very essence of why have wind mills in the first place? I would also appreciate your opinion on whether we can ever expect wind generated energy to be a competitive enterprise.
History teaches us that there is a correlation between affordable reliable energy and the prosperity of mankind. Does Hawaii Electric think that wind energy qualifies as either affordable or reliable?
Appreciatively yours,
James Wagoner
Kula, Maui
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Locating Illegals by Throwing Seniors Under Bus?
Dear Editor, June 18, 2012
We recently attempted to renew my wife's driver’s license at the Kaneohe Satellite office, which is crucial due to our advanced age and health issues. She submitted marriage license, birth certificate, Medicare card and military dependent’s I.D., all of which contain my social security numbers but not hers because her whole dependents existence revolves around the sponsor.
We have been married 63 years and I'm a veteran of three wars with 35 years service, all documented. The clerk still insists on her original social security card issued in 1947 back in Illinois.
We are turning our records upside down looking for that card that all officials tell us not to carry but memorize the numbers and after 65 years who knows what happened to it. We provided them with her number which they could have verified through modern communications with the Illinois Social Security Office. Is this how to locate illegals by throwing seniors under the bus?
Respectfully,
Harvey & Dorothy Wiegert
Kaneohe, Oahu
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Honolulu Rail Agenda Requires Sabotaging The Best Bus System In The United States
Dear Editor, June 12, 2012
HART plans to take $244 million in funding from the city's Handivan and TheBus maintenance funds.
The City is giving away large numbers of buses and no longer hiring mechanics to make the situation as worse as possible for public bus riders.
Reports within the city bus system tell of manipulations of mechanics jobs and other positions in order to cause an increasing degradation of the bus service in order to force the public into the belief that rail is the only transportation solution. Massive amounts of public money is being spent by HART and Parsons Brinkerhoff manipulators and subcontractors to accomplish the degradation agenda of the City bus maintenance and routing system.
Route C express, which was standing room only BEFORE the changes, now is so jam packed its horrible. So many people - that the Air Conditioning has no effect and it gets hotter and hotter in the buses.
At the last stop right before you hit H1, we have had so many people on the bus that there was physically no more room and we have to leave 10 or more people just standing there to wait for the next bus, 45 minutes to an hour later, of course provided those are not completely full as well.
Last Friday 15 people were left standing at the last stop before H1. A couple of them were very pissed.
Getting on the bus at the very first stop at Ala Moana, it was already standing room only. The very first stop.
From there it got worse.
At 9 am in the morning it goes from 30 minutes intervals, to 45 minute intervals. If you miss the C express at Kapolei, it is now quicker to take the Route 40 "slow boat to china" and back, to get to Ala Moana.
Of the next two Route 40 buses that came through there was standing room only. There was no room, people were standing beside the driver.
Monday was a State holiday, but not for Federal workers and most businesses. The new bus schedule for Route C is one hour for holidays. Several people were late for work while they waited for almost an hour to get the bus. Same, there were two Route 40 buses that came through jammed full.
So, what do the new changes to the bus really do ? Make make many non car owning riders seriously consider going out and buying a car. While standing and suffering in the mobile furnace, all of the passengers started talking and one of the conclusions was that if this is what the new bus schedules are going to be, then several of them are seriously going to go out and buy a car.
Others firmly believe that the reason the bus schedules are now so completely screwed up are so people get upset with the Ewa side buses and instead start looking forward to and supporting rail. Others also firmly believe that once the rail is built they will completely kill the bus routes that parallel it.
Most believe the City and HART are forcing the bus riding public into the belief that the once great Honolulu City Bus system can't handle the transit services that only rail- which is still many years away, can only provide.
It is a now typical ploy of the HART Parsons Brinkerhoff agenda that spends millions of tax-payers dollars in propaganda campaigns and outright manipulations to achieve their rail scheme.
John Bond
Ewa Beach, Oahu