Letters to the Editor
Just remember what relief fund was for
When you buy insurance for your car, fire insurance for your home, health insurance for you family, once the insurance expires, it is gone. You cannot ask for it back just because nothing happened to your car, home or health.
After the hurricane hit Hawai'i, insurance companies refused to offer hurricane insurance. Without hurricane insurance, banks and financial institutions would not give building loans for homes or businesses.
The state of Hawai'i did us a favor by stepping in to provide that insurance, so we could get those loans.
Maxine Shea
Pay attention, Ben
Could the message behind the high winds we are experiencing be God whispering to Ben Cayetano to keep his hands off the Hawai'i Hurricane Relief Fund?
Helen Carroll
Traffic cameras are just to raise money
The cameras are coming to our highways. The sole purpose of the cameras is "safety." Now, anyone who believes that also believes in the Tooth Fairy.
The real primary purpose of using cameras is for the company that is supplying them to make a profit and for the state of Hawai'i to collect more revenue. Those are the real and only reasons. Anyone in government who tells you differently is just a liar, period.
Mark Trexler
Waialua
Fancy new buildings paid for by gamblers
A recent letter writer implied that gambling would bring many jobs and fancy new buildings here, as it does in Las Vegas. I think the more accurate site is Atlantic City.
Outside the giant casinos is a wasteland: no small businesses, no good restaurants, just some small pawnshops to get the watches and rings off those who have already lost all their money. Inside the casinos are rows and rows of machines returning 70 to 80 cents on every dollar the suckers put in them.
Please consider what a gentleman who is paid to help design the flashing lights and ringing bells on the slot machines recently said when asked if one in 50 slot machine players came out a "winner." He said "that would be a little high." In other words, less than 2 percent win.
Yes, there are many fancy new buildings in Las Vegas — all paid for by gamblers' losses.
David Bailey
Let's also remember those lost in Pentagon
It's great to see the families of those lost on 9-11 getting away from it all and enjoying the hospitality of the Islands.
But what about the families of those lost in the Pentagon? Those people are also heroes, too often under-appreciated just because they're in or working with the military. They and their brethren are the ones trying mightily to right this wrong at great risk.
Let us never forget and always appreciate their sacrifices.
John W. Duncan
Honolulu in no danger of New York tragedy
George Gessarno writes that he is a spokesman for one of the many organizations that has complained to numerous agencies that the Honolulu International Airport "could" become another Rockaway, N.Y., tragedy.
As a spokesman, he has the obligation to gather all the facts before going public.
As a pilot who has operated for 33 years without incident from Honolulu International Airport, allow me to point out the following:
- When aircraft depart the reef runway, pilots initiate a turn as low as 200 feet so as to remain miles off the southern shoreline.
- Eastbound Mainland flights are only turned north after passing well south of Koko Head and exceeding 5,000 feet.
- When arriving from the Mainland, the minimum descent altitude over Koko Head is 8,000 feet. Once offshore Waikiki, a descent to 6,000 feet is permitted and no lower than 3,000 feet until established over Kaleeloa inbound on final approach to runway 8L.
These flight patterns and altitudes provide for more than adequate safety margins as well as insulation from jet noise.
James L. Jones
Is Hirono's decision linked to glass ceiling?
Lately there have been letters criticizing Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono's decision not to run in the 2002 gubernatorial election. One mentioned that prior lieutenant governors who became governor after their terms. The letter failed to mention one lieutenant governor who did not become governor — Jean King, a woman.
Is it coincidence that our state's women lieutenant governors did not continue on to become governor?
Women make up over 50 percent of the electorate, yet few women become governors, senators, presidents and world political leaders. Is the Taliban the only political organization that suppresses women?
I am happy that Mazie is running for mayor, in a field dominated by men. She is brave and a maverick.
Daphne Barbee-Wooten
Stadium Authority sinks to a new low
Just when I thought the Aloha Stadium Authority couldn't ruin a game at the stadium any further, along comes an edict that lei cannot be brought into the stadium in plastic bags and that candy lei are prohibited.
This is totally asinine. The seniors who have worked hard and shed their sweat and blood for the university can only be awarded with wilted flowers, thanks to the Stadium Authority.
What's next? Telling the drummer in the band that he can't bring in drumsticks?
I watched other games on TV over the weekend. Fans at the other stadiums brought signs, waved flags on poles, had pom-pons and shakers. The women must have been allowed to bring in their handbags because they weren't wearing any fanny packs.
A suggestion to the Stadium Authority: Since you have enough gates to enter, make half check-in gates if people want to bring something in and the other half of the gates for people not bringing anything in.
I think it is about time that the Stadium Authority members (who were appointed by Gov. Cayetano) and the stadium management get their heads out of the sand before they ruin the Pro Bowl.
What kind of aloha will we be showing the visitors with the ridiculous rules the stadium has?
Richard A. DePretto
'Commission' form of government bad
I happened to be in Honolulu on Nov. 19 to attend a majority policy committee meeting. Because I was free at 1:30 p.m., I decided to attend the meeting of the state Health Planning and Development Agency, which was to consider a request from Hilo Radiologic Associates for a "good cause" public meeting regarding certificate-of-need application for the establishment of an MRI service in Hilo. This open MRI unit was to cost $952,000 and be paid by private enterprise. Hilo is not my district, but I have used the services of Hilo Radiology for annual mammograms and other services. As an East Hawai'i resident, I want to have the best medical and diagnostic treatments for myself and everyone.
As I sat there, I could hardly believe my ears that a state agency would deny such service to our community. It was obvious to me that the chair of the committee had already made up her mind to deny this application. It was only an application to prove "good cause" — to have the agency reconsider its previous denial at another hearing.
Because I was late to the hearing, I did not hear the testimony from Hilo Medical Center, which evidently opposed the project, possibly because it did not want any competition to its "closed" MRI unit. The only other "open" unit on our island is in Waimea at the North Hawai'i Hospital; otherwise, people who do not fit into the "closed" unit or have claustrophobia have to go to Honolulu for such treatment.
If private enterprise is willing to risk $952,000 of its own money because it believes there is a need for such equipment, why should the state deny it just to maintain the status quo and protect another agency?
This action confirms my longstanding opposition to the "commission" form of government, whose members are not accountable to the public.
In this next session, I intend to introduce legislation to request the legislative auditor study this and other agencies with power to make binding decisions to ascertain if there is really a need for such institutions.
What happened to free enterprise?
Rep. Helene H. Hale
D-4th (Ka'u, Puna)
SUVs helped bring on terrorists
My SUV — and many thousands like it — was foremost among the overlooked causes of the terrorist attack on America the morning of Sept. 11. As we SUV owners know, our mini-tanks guzzle gas, illustrative of why this country remains woefully dependent on Middle East petroleum.
Accordingly, when in 1990 Saddam Hussein made his move on Kuwaiti oil, we were obliged to go to war to protect our supply. (Anyone who thinks our military suited up to protect Kuwaiti citizens or foster Arab democracy should recall that once the well and pipelines were secure from Iraqi menace, America's interest in Kuwait dropped faster than a hooker's drawers.)
But apparently we were there long enough. Our brief military and cultural presence in Saudi Arabia served to enrage fundamentalist Arabs, among them Osama bin Laden. He swore he would punish those he characterized as the "invading infidels," and on Sept. 11, he surely did.
The 19 suicide bombers in the air that horrific day were citizens either of Saudi Arabia or Egypt, two countries we have long coddled in a foreign policy laced with hypocrisy like fat runs through bacon. We prop up both countries for the same reason we took on Saddam Hussein — to ensure some degree of stability in the Middle East and thereby ensure the flow of oil.
Let's look at these two allies of ours. Saudi Arabia is a fascistic monarchy that, like the Taliban, keeps half its citizens — its women — under virtual house arrest. Egypt is the birthplace and a burgeoning hotbed of modern Muslim radicalism. Both countries are virulently anti-Semitic and, beneath the surface, only slightly less anti-American.
Their Potemkin parliaments brook no dissent. Their press is free only to support the government line. And any citizen who stands up for his beliefs may well find himself one head shorter.
Remember, now, these are our "moderate Arab friends"; yet their animosity for Israel and its democratic ways looks moderate only alongside the more overt truculence of Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, under cover of grudging lip service support of U.S. policies (purchased with bribes of millions in military hardware), Saudi Arabia and Egypt continue to breed thousands of despairing and bitter young men ripe for bin Laden's legions.
Absent our thirst for oil, we would not be much embroiled in this fundamentalist snake pit and thus far less likely targets for bin Laden's animus. So belatedly, I'm going to do my bit. I'm not going to sell my SUV, for then it would see continued service to its new owner, doubtless someone as selfish and thoughtless as myself. Instead, I'll remove the battery, drain the crankcase and put it up on blocks. It's my small way of starting to take back the power we've given these terrorists over our lives.
Martin Blinder
