Larry Ellison is a Greedy Douchebag

[Chas]

" That wonderful Canadian healthcare system doesn't work too well."

I know a couple who moved here from Canada and they said the healthcare system was great, and WAY better than it is here.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

" That wonderful Canadian healthcare system doesn't work too well."

It’s a talking point for right wing editorial TV.  For a Pavlov’s dog response from their viewers. Who will never check.  Benghazi!  Canadian healthcare!  Antifa!  Someone in line at Malama Market buying lobster with EBT!  
Ding ding ding!
Woof! Woof!

[Durian Fiend]

I'd hold off on that Canadian trip, regardless of how bad your eyes get, but maybe only have to use it once your health insurance premiums become too much to afford, and there are no publicly funded health care benefits available for you, and, God forbid, you contract a terrible disease.
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That wonderful Canadian healthcare system doesn't work too well. Long appointment wait times, difficult to get appointments with specialists, etc. People die waiting just to see the specialist or get procedures approved. This is why so many Canadians buy private health insurance even though they have the public insurance. Same thing in the UK, Spain and many other countries.

I don't know about this.  An acquaintance of mine who used to be an MD in the US and has dual citizenship with Canada claims their system is way better than ours.  

Here's what AI says regarding the above: 

"Yes, a large majority of Canadians—approximately two-thirds (66%)—have private health insurance. However, this private care rarely replaces the public system; rather, it supplements it by covering services not fully funded by the government, such as prescription drugs, dental care, vision care, and private hospital rooms....

While private insurance is common, buying private insurance to skip, or "jump," the wait times for medically necessary, publicly funded care (like heart surgery) is generally illegal or restricted in most provinces.."

[Punatang]

  Open your eyes!  Sometimes there are no bootstraps, figuratively.  There aren’t bootstraps to be had literally.

I see! I see!  Punatics that I have come to adore can't even afford straw to feed their strawmen! Strawman be lookin' like just a pile of nasty, ripped up cargo shorts, faded tie-dye t-shirt full of pukas from Jungle Love, and sad strapless boots with newspaper stuffed in them to fill holes in the soles - but with zero form and even less substance. 

SNAP for strawmen (and women+++) !!

Maybe take down those no-trespassing signs and invite everyone over for some free baked ulu?

In the absence of transparency we are forced to form unsubstantiated theories. I'm picturing your Ayn Rand libel, Edge, as a slanderous talking point learned from a college professor's Che Guevara t-shirt wearing, left-wing-extremist assistant, between chronic bong rips, which probably earned them a Pavlovian response from red eyed freshmen who never checked - but repeated for the next 55 years. LOL

Question:  if you add to your signage, so that they now read, "no-trespassing - we are against stealing - anything stolen may be pursued and recovered", and your neighbor steals your rake, and then they leave it leaning against their side of your fence with the top pointed at your house, and you go to your fence and retrieve it, are you quietly admitting that you're actually for stealing?  

Aironiyaku-san - I'm still processing all of that. Mahalo for the tone. Seriously though, what would be the optimal spots you would recommend in Hawaii - 15 minute city wise?  Tangs prefer camping for stay-cations - instead of hotels.  Some pretty cool art for free at Disney also and with those free trains - makes for a fine day-excursion indeed. ;-)

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

we are against stealing - anything stolen may be pursued and recovered"

OK, I’ll play along.  Rand’s soc sec checks (and Medicare!) were restitution for taxes she was forced to pay. Let’s agree then that other people who had items of value taken without permission are also entitled to some form of restitution?  There’s precedent.  Some citizens of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii and on the mainland received a one time payment for their forceful relocation into internment camps, including Kīlauea Military Camp. Many lost homes, businesses, and years of their lives while locked up.

Then there are Native Hawaiians and members of the monarchy.  Should they receive restitution for the islands?  Should Native Hawaiian descendants get something for work their ancestors performed in the cold adze mines on Mauna Kea?  

Native Americans had most of a continent taken from them with broken treaties.
Let’s not even start on Africans captured into slavery and brought to America.

But sure, Ayn Rand is “entitled” to reclaiming her loss. Poor thing.  Her first world white woman oppression must have felt like the weight of the world on her shoulders.  Something Atlas could really shrug at. 


Where do I line up and sign up for a rebate on Hawaii County services I pay for with my taxes but never receive?  I once asked a County worker what I receive for my real estate taxes and she rattled off 10 things in an exasperated tone like I was an idiot. I told her I never benefited from any of those services.  My point was that her assistance at the moment was all I would get for my $2200 that year.  Should I write a book about how life’s unfair but no matter what I’m gonna take as much as I can get my hands on? Maybe call it “Too Bad Suckers I Get Royalties For A Book Against Government Assistance AND A Social Security Check And I’ve Convinced A Fair Number Of People That’s Not Hypocritical.”


Maybe she could have written a book that would explain how others in her very same situation could get their just restitution?  Like she did. Or would throwing a bone to the little people be at odds with the Captains of Industry who would most likely be responsible to pay for it, with funds, lands, hours, etc looted from those little people?

[HiloJulie]

Unfortunately, as you probably know, what the voters want, and what congress does, have little to no relationship, which has only gotten worse since Citizens United. Did you see a checkbox on your Hawai'i State ballot to give yet more billions to billionaires before you dropped it in the mail or dropbox? I didn't, but that may just be my failing eyesight, or maybe mine was one of the missing 19,000 votes so it wouldn't have mattered anyways. 

Yes, I do know. Again, the voters got what they voted for. Well, being clear, the MAJORITY of the voters who voted got what they voted for. I did not vote for any of that. I take it you did not either. Thus, I, nor you, are to blame for it.

That's quite literally what happened at the beginning of cars, it's just that the energy density of batteries couldn't compete then with that of fossil fuels, like they can now.

Correct, which is why just electrifying the current car-centric infrastructure is not a sustainable solution - actually need less cars and driving overall. Maybe those "big visionary" people in the Acres and other burbclaves can do a tool & car share where those with the electrified options exchange their use for other local goods and services (I know, I know, you pick up peoples fifths and handles and such - just imagining it as a more wide spread and maybe health-oriented practice, and yes, we too are often sharing tools and labor as well, and ending up with pineapples and other local goodies at the gate). Now imagine guzzoline at $10+ a gallon to see how essential these sorts of arrangements might be - good to get the practice in now.

Both my husband and I develop weekly plans that minimize the need to travel and also include the needs of our neighbors as well. I can't speak for, nor can I do anything about the ones who can't plan longer than the nose on their face. 

It also seems that you are desiring a euphoric idealist scenario happening overnight and until it happens, why bother with anything else that can diminish overall pollution that comes along is pointless. You post a line of a study that shows EV cars make more pollution in this area, while conveniently ignoring that OVERALL, in the long term, they produce less carbon and then toss your hands in the air saying, "no good." Further, I never said EV/Hybrid was sustainable. It is a step, in the right direction.

I am also quite positively certain that you will win over the majority of Americans that by changing the way their car is propelled as well as to how it's made in order to drastically reduce or if possible eliminate carbon pollution versus trying to convince Americans that they can't have a car anymore and must ride the bus with former SNAP recipients looking for "bread crumbs" and those having continual coughing fits while riding to Longs Drugs for cough drops as their Medicaid was cutoff.

Not to repeat known history, but Puna was a not-meant-to-be-inhabited swamp-land tax scheme as designed by the insiders at the County, which has become the fastest growing district in the state. What it will become next depends on choices made now so if you don't want it to be pin-to-pin paved and strip-malled (even if only with 120sq ft jungle shack store fronts) best to figure out other options now (including reducing the induced demand for yet more lanes and businesses on the highway)

I agree. My husband and I came here, bought our properties, built out home and want it to be exactly like the first day we set foot here. We have not spent one minute trying to change what Puna was or is. I am not calling for strip malls, paved roads, pin to pin cleared lots. But unless the State/County and the people are willing to PAY for that all to be done, then maybe strict (or sticker) regulation as to what can and can't be done is the way to go. Allowing more or less a free for all then let the free for allers demand all these services, is what's unsustainable. 

I'll show you how old fashioned I am and how I want to keep it. I mentioned this before, but back in 1987 when we built our home, the only internet was copper line dial up. It required us to have 5 telephone lines. How does one manage 5 telephone lines? Today that's really easy, but back then, just as Ma Bell was breaking up, a certain brother-in-law was retiring from Arizona Bell and came and installed the then state of the art telephone system for us. Known as the "Charlie's Angel's telephone system" with the speaker phone! It still is working to this very day! We could have gotten rotary dial, since Hawaiian Telcom back then charged $1.50 per line for touch tone, but we needed touch tone for voice mail access at the office in California. And we also did opt for "private lines" over the standard, still available back then "party line."

   

[Punatang]

we are against stealing - anything stolen may be pursued and recovered"

OK, I’ll play along.  Rand’s soc sec checks (and Medicare!) were restitution for taxes she was forced to pay. Let’s agree then that other people who had items of value taken without permission are also entitled to some form of restitution?  There’s precedent.  Some citizens of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii and on the mainland received a one time payment for their forceful relocation into internment camps, including Kīlauea Military Camp. Many lost homes, businesses, and years of their lives while locked up.

Then there are Native Hawaiians and members of the monarchy.  Should they receive restitution for the islands?  Should Native Hawaiian descendants get something for work their ancestors performed in the cold adze mines on Mauna Kea?  

Native Americans had most of a continent taken from them with broken treaties.
Let’s not even start on Africans captured into slavery and brought to America.

But sure, Ayn Rand is “entitled” to reclaiming her loss. Poor thing.  Her first world white woman oppression must have felt like the weight of the world on her shoulders.  Something Atlas could really shrug at. 


Where do I line up and sign up for a rebate on Hawaii County services I pay for with my taxes but never receive?  I once asked a County worker what I receive for my real estate taxes and she rattled off 10 things in an exasperated tone like I was an idiot. I told her I never benefited from any of those services.  My point was that her assistance at the moment was all I would get for my $2200 that year.  Should I write a book about how life’s unfair but no matter what I’m gonna take as much as I can get my hands on? Maybe call it “Too Bad Suckers I Get Royalties For A Book Against Government Assistance AND A Social Security Check And I’ve Convinced A Fair Number Of People That’s Not Hypocritical.”


Maybe she could have written a book that would explain how others in her very same situation could get their just restitution?  Like she did. Or would throwing a bone to the little people be at odds with the Captains of Industry who would most likely be responsible to pay for it, with funds, lands, hours, etc looted from those little people?

Who is John Galt?
Do you mean Who is John Galt as related to Puna? I believe John Galt as related to Puna is _____.  What do you think?
Edited

[Durian Fiend]

Gas prices on Lanai are said to be the cheapest in Hawaii because Ellison subsidizes the cost. I wonder what it's going for per gallon today?

[leilanidude]

gasbuddy.com shows a station name on Lanai but the price is "blank"
I guess no one needs or cares to input it

[HiloJulie]

Gas prices on Lanai are said to be the cheapest in Hawaii because Ellison subsidizes the cost.  I wonder what it's going for per gallon today?

Testing 123, testing... "Please pardon the interruption, but will a Mister Mark Benioff please report to the "gas subsidies for the Big Island" office immediately!"