The Lab School functioned to develop and test curriculum for the public schools. This entire state should be letting everyone know that we value our children and the quality of their education. Children are our only future.

Suzanne Ramos

Delay in cutting taxes a courageous stand

I have spent a fair amount of time at the state Capitol during this legislative session and have noted two overriding features:

• The needs of middle-income public workers have been pitted against the poor in decision-making over the budget. Either/or choices, such as "if we fund raises for teachers, we can't fund programs for the homeless," obscure the fact that there are alternatives.

• Legislators have become so engulfed in party politics and their own re-election that the notion of the "common good" has all but disappeared.

Thus, I was both surprised and gratified at the Ways and Means Committee hearing when my own senator, Brian Taniguchi, boldly suggested that the time is not right for major tax cuts. I am proud of the 14 senators who had the courage to support this position.

The wealthiest taxpayers can afford to wait awhile for a tax cut for the good of the whole community. Those who see the wisdom of this decision need to speak out now, including the public workers struggling for fair contracts. Strong public opinion favoring economic justice will bolster legislative support and may change the governor's mind about a veto.

Nancy Aleck

Full-time lecturers aren't 'paid enough'

As a lecturer in the community college system, I would like to thank, first, our local administration at UH West Hawai'i Center for trying to "take care" of full-time lecturers.

Second, I would like to thank UHPA, the University of Hawai'i faculty union, for standing firm (so far) on including full-time lecturers in its negotiations. Third, I would like to thank the students for supporting their teachers last Thursday.

On the other hand, some media have reported our governor as saying, "Lecturers are paid enough." At the same time, according to the media, our governor is seeking pay raises for some of his administrative staff. I can't imagine anyone who would not see the juxtaposition of the figure he proposes — $125,000, if my memory is correct — with the top pay for a full-time lecturer in the UH system, which is $26,000, as obscene.

Shanti Devi
Captain Cook, Hawai'i

Should the Japanese be ones apologizing?

The other day I was reminded by a journalist of the immense power of the press. He reminded me that perception is reality, and it gave me pause to think.

Had the headlines after the tragic collision between the USS Greeneville and the Ehime Maru read "Inexperienced high school students at the helm of Japanese fishing boat veer into path of submarine" and had the article pointed out that the fishing trawler was tragically maneuvering in waters known to be submarine training grounds, would we be seeing an entirely different picture now?

Would we be watching the Japanese people apologize to a talented and highly respected submarine skipper for the inevitable end to his career? Would the Japanese public opinion be so harsh regarding accidents at sea?

It is an interesting thought. What kind of board of inquiry would, or could, answer the questions of the heart that so many of us feel?

Shelley Farrell
'Ewa Beach


Campaign against OHA is getting tiring

It appears to be deja vu all over again with your negative editorials on the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. You did this to Bishop Estate and its trustees. Your paper did everything it could to discredit the trustees.

Now your focus is on OHA. How much ink and paper are you committed to using to blast another Hawaiian agency? Everyone has read about the audit, over and over and over again. Reporter Yasmin Anwar focuses on one trustee and the administration in every one of her articles. Who are the trustees who made loans to themselves? It is obvious that your paper is very selective as to whom it targets.

Where do you editorial writers get off being experts on how any agency should be managed? Do your writers have a financial background that allows them to take literary license to speak with authority on mismanagement?

Enough, already. Leave the Hawaiians alone. Even non-Hawaiians are sick of your constant haranguing on the same issue. It's time you moved on or you will find a mass exodus to the new paper in town.

Peter J. Bongiovanni
Kapolei

Hawaiian ship isn't sinking, but needs help

Ken Conklin (Focus, March 11) refers to Hawaiians as trying to save a ship that is going nowhere but down. Contrary to Conklin's belief, the Hawaiian ship is not sinking, but it is badly damaged and in need of great repair.

Now it is up to the U.S. government to make things right and to aid in our healing or to scuttle our ship.

The verdict of the Barrett and Carroll case will reflect the path the government will choose. For, if there is a possibility that the United States could raise the Ehime Maru, I'm sure it can figure out how to keep the Hawaiian ship from sinking. Hopefully it will avoid future apologies and salvage operations.

Mel Valmoja
Wahiawa

Equality in law is greatest achievement

I want to express my appreciation for the thoughts and opinions expressed by Ken Conklin in his March 11 commentary on Hawaiian programs. This community needs some truth in advertising, and Conklin seems to be one of the few willing to be out front.

I do believe that equality in law, the product of a thousand-year struggle, is the greatest achievement of our civilization and will always serve us well.

James Wagoner
Kula, Maui

Double-decked Nimitz would complete plan

Please allow me to disagree respectfully with your March 10 editorial "Double-decked Nimitz a non-starter for sure."

I managed the design and building of the airport viaduct over the upper Nimitz Highway and the split interchange into Honolulu International Airport. Both have been well received and used.

When the viaduct reached the Pacific War Memorial, we decided it was necessary to merge the H-1 Freeway with the Moanalua Freeway at Middle Street, so that H-1 could connect with the Lunalilo Highway, mauka of urban Honolulu. The Federal Highway Administration paid Hawai'i $19 million to change the name of Lunalilo Highway to H-1 Interstate Freeway.

All along, I contemplated extending the airport viaduct over upper Nimitz to lower Nimitz, with touchdown well before the Aloha Tower, when state funds became available. President Clinton upped the highway funding substantially. An estimate of $300 million is fair for this project.

Now that H-2 and H-3 are complete, we should undertake the lower Nimitz viaduct, and so complete the 50-year master plan for O'ahu.

E. Alvey Wright
Kane'ohe

Noise pollution spoiled Honolulu Festival

The Honolulu Festival is a good idea, but not if it means inflicting over-amplified music on everyone within a 10-block area of a tent set up on the beach across from Kapi'olani Park.

There is an appropriate venue for concerts; the beach isn't it. How this could possibly attract tourists (other than a certain set that would attend concerts anyway) isn't clear to me. Most people come to Hawai'i to escape the noise and pollution of big cities from which most of them come.

This is not to denigrate the musicians who performed there, some of whom were quite good, when the wind wasn't twisting their sound around. I hope their fans pay them homage in the appropriate milieu. But why, for God's sake, inflict it on everyone with over-amplified loudspeakers? This is no way to attract more visitors to this beautiful place, which carries with it a sense of tropical tranquility.

Charles Pomeroy

High gasoline prices are hurting lifestyle

I am a junior at Roosevelt High School and I'm concerned about how gas prices have soared over the past couple of years. The automobile is of great importance to our family, as well as others around the Islands. 

I can remember when gas was only $1.25. Now, on average, it is around $2.10. I have my own car, which I worked for. I am getting really pressed for spending money because of the rise in gasoline prices.

It is so ridiculous. "Money doesn't grow on trees," and now I know the full effects of that statement.

I wish the state could do something about the extremely high prices because they are making it harder for locals to enjoy our Island paradise.

Mitchell Miho

Cayetano working inside the box

The Advertiser opined on March 4 that "The best way to achieve decent pay packages for the unions (with the teachers coming first in line) is to work outside the box on creative contracts that build in efficiency, flexibility and reform along with better pay."

That leads to praise for Gov. Cayetano, who is leading this "delicate reform process," and to caution the Legislature, which seems only too eager to satisfy teachers' unions.

Perhaps a proposal that works "outside the box," as you suggest, could gain the assent of teachers, professors, their unions and the taxpayers. But has this governor really satisfied the strictures of rational reform and does he deserve your praise?

Consider the professors. The governor's latest proposal — coming two years after our contract expired — includes a slight increase in salary that would be more than offset by forcing professors to pay for their own health care during the summer months when they would be technically unemployed.

This proposal is more an insult than a creative act of restructuring around which all could rally. At the same time, his demand for nine-month contracts practically begs us to apply for unemployment compensation for three months of the year. Flexible, sure, but hardly efficient reform that brings the taxpayers a better university at a reasonable cost.

Public teachers and UH professors work hard teaching the daughters and sons of Hawai'i's hard-working families, and we are underpaid for our performance by almost any standard of measurement. We also face substandard facilities and a lack of official support for our endeavors.

Our students and their families deserve teachers, schools and universities second-to-none. And it is the state as a whole that deserves to reap the future economic harvest that starts with a quality public education.

The teachers' and professors' willingness to accept reform is ultimately predicated on our assessment that our commitment to educational excellence is shared by the governor. The present threat of strikes by our unions shows that he has been unable to come up with anything, inside or outside the box, that advances our dedication or our respective institutions.

The Advertiser should do more than shower undeserved praise on an underachieving governor and blame the unions for obstruction. Instead of useless generalities, why not use your pulpit to encourage a broad and open debate about what it takes to achieve educational excellence, as you did last year for constitutional autonomy for UH? The teachers and their unions have nothing to fear from this honest discussion, and everything to gain.