Letters to the Editor
Tesoro, Chevron have victimized us
I recently returned from two and a half months in Pennsylvania. When I arrived there over the Labor Day weekend, the price of a gallon of regular gas was $1.43. When I departed last weekend, it was $1.08.
The residents of Hawai'i, as well as the tourists who rent cars here, are the victims of Tesoro and Chevron.
Bob Marouchoc
Anti-gambling stance doesn't make sense
The Advertiser's continued crusade against gambling grows tiresome.
You claim in a Nov. 6 editorial that gambling could never cut it as a form of economic diversification and that people would skip the Islands because we would become like Atlantic City or Nevada. Who says that gambling has to become Hawai'i's new economic engine? Can't we have casinos simply as another form of entertainment?
A more apt comparison between destinations would be to compare Hawai'i to Sydney or Melbourne, Australia. Who would ever skip a trip to those destinations (or Hawai'i) because they happen to have casinos?
You claim that jobs, taxes and tourist dollars from gambling would have been generated somewhere else anyway. Perhaps you could tell us where this would be exactly. At the hotels currently bloating our unemployment lines? Or maybe our bankrupt cruise industry?
To top it all off, you once again look down your nose at us poor, dumb Island folk, too stupid to control our wild binge-gambling impulses. Gee, isn't it great to have our big brother, The Advertiser, around to tell us what to do and how to act and to keep us in line?
Kevin Respecki
'Aiea
Special ed excludes 'medical services'
Shelby Floyd and Eric Seitz, counsel for the Felix plaintiffs, state in their Oct. 30 letter that medical requirements of special-education students should be addressed in schools as required by the U.S. Supreme Court. But Irving Independent School District vs. Tatro (1984), the case to which I presume they are referring, makes a clear distinction between allowable "school health services" and excludes "medical services," which are "services provided by a licensed physician."
The justices noted that "the secretary of education, in promulgating these regulations, reasonably could have concluded that the medical services exclusion was designed to spare schools from an obligation to provide a service that might be unduly expensive and beyond their range of competence."
The Felix Consent Decree requires medication monitoring, a service that must be provided by a physician, to be included in students' educational plans. Including medical services crosses a line that perhaps should not be crossed because it opens a door to further medical services. What's next — surgery bought and paid for by the Department of Education?
Administrators and special-education teachers want to do what's right for children while being responsible stewards of taxpayer monies. They look to the law for guidance when there is a dispute about the appropriateness or necessity for certain services.
But if the boundaries set by law are no longer relevant, what should guide our decision-making?
Rebecca Rosenberg
Special-education teacher, Kailua
Customer is right, so you suffer effects
Every day, you go to work for eight hours straight. Working hard to pay your bills. That's all you want to do, make a living. But you can't complain because the customer is always right. You begin coughing constantly, reeking of smoke. Everybody, every time and everywhere, is surrounded by smoke-polluted air.
What is the purpose of the nonsmoking section, anyway? Eventually, the smoke travels back into the nonsmoking section. There is no difference. You can still smell and see the smoke right across the room.
Then, the smell is absorbed into the seats, curtains and you. Nothing can make it go away. Your head aches constantly, your throat becomes dry, your eyes become dry and watery, you stink just like a smoker. Why? Because it's your job; you can't afford to lose it. Just ignore it. You'll get used to it. It's not like you're actually smoking.
Many smoke in restaurants while they eat, talk, etc. It has become a bad habit that is dangerous for the workers, nonsmokers, as well as the smokers themselves. However, the workers are influenced the most by the harmful side-effects of smoking. They are not able to escape from this environment because they must work in the unfavorable circumstances.
Banning smoking from restaurants will help all owners put down this rule and enforce it. Not all restaurants have nonsmoking sections available for customers. We deserve more than that. It would be nice to see the beautiful people of Hawai'i as healthy individuals, not invaded by smoke.
Ji Yeun Ku
'Aiea High School, Peer Education
Med school should join anti-smoking fight
I completely agree with your Nov. 14 editorial that asked to combine the UH medical school and the tobacco fight.
This past special session, the Senate Ways and Means Committee and the House Finance Committee held a joint public hearing regarding the medical school. I specifically asked UH President Evan Dobelle if the medical school and health and wellness center would have an educational component that included an in-house anti-smoking and prevention element as well as an outreach program for our children and adults. He agreed that the public educational concept would be an important part of the medical school.
The idea to combine the medical school and the fight against smoking makes sense. That's why the House and Senate supported this important piece of legislation, which will educate our residents, diversify our economy and make our state a more healthy place.
Rep. Willie Espero
D-41st ('Ewa Beach)
Teachers authorized strike against state
There are lies and there are damned lies: the assertion by the governor's director of communications in her Nov. 9 letter that "the decision to walk off the job was made by the HSTA. HSTA leadership convinced the rank and file to strike." Given the source, one should not be surprised.
Fact: It was the teachers, not the HSTA, who decided to authorize the strike date if settlement could not be reached.
Fact: The number of teachers who preferred to walk in the sun for 10 hours a day without pay in lieu of a timely settlement of the contract was zero.
Fact: During the 19 calendar days of the strike, absolutely nothing changed in terms of the state's fiscal ability to settle the strike. The governor had it well within his power to put the very offer that the teachers did in fact ratify on the table long before the well-advertised strike-authorization date of April 5.
This was the governor's strike from the get-go. He did all in his power to keep it going until Judge Ezra threatened to take over his $1 billion per annum education budget on the eve of settlement. Even months after the teachers returned to the classroom, he decided to jam his thumb into their eyes one more time by pretending that he had to ratify the very offer his own representative had put on the table.
Thomas E. Stuart
Kailua-Kona, Big Island
Trask's Sept. 11 view advocates for peace
Hooray for Haunani-Kay Trask, who has the mana to tell it like it is. Her straight-up political analysis of the Sept. 11 events is right-on.
Although the media in Hawai'i has tried to discredit Trask by misrepresenting her perspectives, the truth of America's violent history cannot be concealed. Instead of relentlessly manufacturing public consent for a "war" that will kill innocent women and children and cost billions of dollars, the media should begin to report on the true nature of America's destructive foreign policies.
It's clear that Hawai'i's local media coverage on terrorism promotes violence, while Trask originates dialogue that advocates for peaceful ends.
Shane Pale
Family of firefighters suffered great loss
I am the wife of a 27-year veteran firefighter who has committed his life to his job. The tragic events that unfolded on Sept. 11 have stirred my worst fears. During the first days of the search and rescue, I prayed that the firefighters and the rescue personnel had made it through the mass destruction of the World Trade Center.
As many have said before me, firefighters belong to a family greater than we can imagine. We all share a common bond as family members of firefighters. New York City has suffered, but more importantly, our family of firefighters has suffered a tremendous loss of brothers. Our husbands have chosen to live their lives as rescue personnel; instead of running away from an incident, they run to it.
It is in their blood to go into action with pride of doing what they have been trained to do. Firefighters give their single most important possession — they give their own lives. They will save your mom or dad, a sibling, your child, a neighbor, a stranger and sometimes even your pet.
I am honored that my husband has chosen this job as his career. It shows the character, the commitment, the devotion and the heart of him and his fellow firefighters.
Chamaigne Ralston
Lost wallet found its way home intact
With all the grave and tragic events occurring in our nation, it's nice to know the aloha spirit still exists.
The other night I lost my wallet, although I'm not sure where or exactly how I lost it. However, the next morning I awoke to find my wallet at my front doorstep with a note wrapped around it. The note read that my wallet was found on one of the on-ramps to the H-1. What was so astonishing was that:
• This amazing person found my wallet and returned it with everything in it — cards, money, ID, etc.
• The person brought it all the way to my house, which is pretty hard to find, as it is set off the main road.
• The person left no name, contact or way to thank him or her.
• The change-purse part of my wallet doesn't close any more, probably because it was run over, but all the coins remained inside. I assume this person picked up all the coins that must have fallen out.
I just wanted to say thank you to this person — for keeping the aloha spirit alive. I wish there were more people in the world like you.
Michelle Okabe
HECO's redundancy is only in its rhetoric
In regard to your Nov. 13 editorial on the HECO power line: What's to mediate? Why impact Palolo with unshielded lines?
HECO has not established any need for the redundant power line, much less proven the need. The only redundancy seems to be in its rhetoric. What it apparently has accomplished during the CDUA hearing is to reveal that it has had some seriously lacking management and maintenance, as well as poorly timed applications thereof.
How much is all this going to cost the ratepayers in the end? Does HECO care? Will it next go to the PUC seeking a rate hike and say, "Here, these are our costs, including horrendous legal fees to promote our challenging preferred route and extravagant redundant upgrade in order to operate this essential public service as mandated"?
As HECO's capital investment increases, so do its allowable profits, as set by the PUC as a percentage over its costs. The higher the costs, the greater the profit revenue generated. Alternately, an offshore submerged line servicing the greater Honolulu area may be the way to go, considering the cumulative costs of court battles, underground and overhead construction costs and arguments and delays.
The public continues to echo loudly and clearly that it doesn't want an unsightly, environmentally and culturally degrading line in the visually prominent Wa'ahila conservation and watershed area, nor does it want an unshielded underground line running through the family neighborhoods in Palolo.
However, during the CDUA hearing, it was revealed that the real reason behind HECO's stubborn and staunch advocacy of the Wa'ahila route is that it wants to maintain the right to string its lines and apply herbicides anywhere and any way it pleases around the island — even through protected watershed and conservation lands.
Approval of a conservation district use permit for the Wa'ahila route would help ensure this right. Ultimately, decentralized alternative energy locations must be seriously considered for our future to improve both energy sustainability and the overall world-renowned scenic, environmental, cultural and economic quality of life on O'ahu.
Instead of arrogantly and expensively confronting 98 percent of O'ahu's public respondents on this issue, HECO should be striving to be a frontrunner in developing the infrastructure and technology for clean and renewable energy — not unstable imported fossil fuels that have gone out with the dinosaurs and Dark Ages. If HECO developed a platform of self-sustaining renewable energy from Hawai'i's gift of omnipresent natural sun and wind resources, public support would follow.
Michelle Spalding Matson
