Letters to the Editor
State appointees should take vacation
I have a simple and efficient way to solve the dilemma of accrued vacation for state appointees.
When I was in management positions during my career, vacation was on a "use it or lose it" basis. My company justified this by stating (and rightfully so) that my salary agreement with it was a yearly contracted amount — so many dollars per year, i.e., I would be paid that total amount in 12 monthly amounts. Based on longevity, I was allowed to take so many weeks of vacation but not entitled to extra pay if I did not take vacation.
I would like to suggest that between now and year-end, these state appointees be told to use their accrued vacation. Take long weekends, Thanksgiving week, Christmas week, etc., or whatever it takes to use up their earned vacation. No one is indispensable, and the state won't cease to function if these people take their well-earned rest and relaxation.
Joe Gallagher
Lahaina, Maui
Hooray for Hokget, but what about others?
The rescue of Forgea, now known as Hokget, is welcome news. But one wonders how she will be able to use all the thousands of dollars received on her behalf, or how she'll spend them herself.
She's just a dog, but praise be to human kindness for such expression of admirable empathy to her kind.
But as I look at Dick Adair's April 23 cartoon, it says it all and sadly for me. It shows human beings lying under a banyan tree, under a blanket of newspaper pages heralding, "Donations pour in to rescue dog at sea."
Avelino N. Bareng
Concord, Calif.
Mink misrepresented resolution's intent
Patsy Mink should reread HCR 280, which she voted against, especially paragraph (3). In her response to Rep. Bob McDermott's accusation, the congresswoman from Hawai'i states that she didn't support HCR 280 because it "urged the president to suspend all relations with Yasser Arafat."
Really? According to the resolution's own language, the president is only urged to suspend such talks if the provisions in paragraph (3) aren't met. Those provisions call for the Palestinian Authority to:
- Destroy the infrastructure of all Palestinian terrorist groups.
- Pursue and incarcerate all terrorists within the Palestinian Authority.
- Prosecute such terrorists with the stiffest possible punishment.
If and only if the Palestinian Authority refuses to do so is the president urged (and rightly so) to suspend all relations with it.
Rep. McDermott doesn't need to blindly search for issues to drive his campaign. He has many. In the next few months the people of Hawai'i will know those issues. Will some of them be rather visionary? You bet.
But isn't that what the people of Hawai'i deserve from their congressional representative? Vision, as opposed to division.
Roosevelt Freeman
Traffic cops affecting study on speed limits
Several weeks ago, Marilyn Kali explained to me at a Rotary meeting that the Department of Transportation was surveying roads islandwide to determine at what speed 85 percent of the drivers on any given road drive. The data is supposed to be used to set our speed limits more realistically.
Federal standards and other state governments regularly use this criterion to determine speed limits.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I saw three of the speed-measuring devices set up along Likelike Highway. At each of the devices, every morning I have been there so far (between 9 and 10 a.m.), I have seen police officers with radar guns, slowing traffic down and pulling people over.
Gee, do you think this may affect the results?
Michael D. Hartenstein
Kane'ohe
Terrorism has taken huge toll in Israel
A recent article noted that Israel had lost 470 people to Palestinian terrorism in the last 19 months. Most of these were innocent civilians, including many children and young people. These losses resulted from suicide bombers, drive-by shootings, sniper attacks and other forms of organized mayhem.
Considering that the Israeli population is just 6 million, it can be concluded that on a per capita basis, the impact of their losses to terrorism has been over seven times greater than the impact of the Sept. 11 disaster has been on the United States. It's no wonder, then, that they have adopted the U.S. policy of tracking down and destroying terrorists and the government that permits them to operate, i.e., the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.
While we pursue terrorists far from home in Afghanistan, Israel has the much more difficult and demanding task of doing so in its own back yard. But in principle, we are both engaged in the same justifiable actions of self-defense.
Dick O'Connell
Legislators should create a toll booth
What were our lawmakers thinking? Or not thinking? How in the world could the entire group of our elected representatives in the House and Senate forget to set aside a paltry $2.5 million for a much-needed road project? What a slap in our (the commuters and the displaced residents) faces.
The other slap in our faces is that the work cannot begin until 2004 at the earliest, unless the funds somehow get emergency allocation. Come on, now, do whatever it takes to get these funds appropriated. The DOT needs the work, local construction firms need the work, and most of all, commuters need the work to be done.
If our legislators cannot find a way to get the funds included in the budget, I have a suggestion on how to raise the funds. The traffic in the area moves slowly enough for all of the Senate and House members to create a human toll booth. Collecting a dollar from each of us 100,000-plus drivers a day for just 25 days would raise the $2.5 million needed for the state's share.
Don't worry, I'll have forgotten the $25 they'll owe me by election day.
Gary K. Hashimoto
Waipahu
Harbor bridge, tunnel critical for commuters
Cliff Slater's April 23 commentary is right on the money, although a few bucks shy. While O'ahu's public transportation system is certainly laudable, it is obvious to the most casual observer that privately owned vehicles are, and will continue to be, the overwhelming choice of the public.
Transportation officials should blow the dust off plans made during the 1970s (when federal money was offered but refused). We desperately need an offshore causeway from 'Ewa Beach-Kalaeloa, skirting Honolulu Airport's reef runway and terminating at Kaka'ako.
Yes, it will require either a bridge or tunnel at the approaches to Pearl and Honolulu harbors, and the cost will be astronomical. But such an engineering wonder will be the equivalent of bypass surgery to a heart patient, and a belated admission that O'ahu is a sprawling, thriving metropolitan area, like it or not.
Let the environmental and Native Hawaiian lawyers file their protest suits early so that, like H-3, we can improve traffic and blood pressure in another 30 or 40 years.
James M. Wilson Jr.
'Tyranny of cars' has no ties to Wild West
Jack Sidener's connection of the "Tyranny of cars" with the heritage of the Wild West (Focus, April 28) is, as they say in England, "too clever by half."
If the cowboy myth landed anywhere, it was in Europe. In spite of more than adequate public transportation, virtually everyone there insists on having an automobile — this in spite of lack of parking, hugely expensive fuel and very high insurance rates. Speeding and speed-related deaths are of legendary proportions. People park damn near anywhere they feel like. The SUV craze hit Europe more than 25 years ago.
Speed limits? Stopping for pedestrians? Jack should spend a little time walking and driving in Germany and Italy. That Europeans might be worse than we are in these matters doesn't, of course, excuse our situation, but the heritage of the Wild West has nothing to do with it.
Dennis Stillings
Waimea
'Business in Hawai'i' campaign won't work
Like sweeping dirt under a rug, the current "Business in Hawai'i" campaign is bound to fail.
Aside from the several millions of dollars that will be wasted, the integrity of our leadership's image — its ability to deliver on promises — will suffer yet another blow.
Our leaders would do better to start by taking a long, hard look in the mirror and assessing the extent to which a spirit of true aloha for all the people of Hawai'i versus self-serving politics characterizes the way they do business.
The bottom line is Lowell Kalapa's observation that "You should spend time improving the product for businesses in Hawai'i before you go out and try to sell it." It is another way of framing a very familiar truism: If you build a better mousetrap, they will flock to buy it.
In other words, promotion without attraction is yet another attempt by our leaders to use smoke and mirrors. It won't fool anybody.
Irv Rubin
Give up on bus lanes, build us a rail system
Honolulu is in dire need of mass transit. Ask any of the thousands of daily commuters who travel the highways and are stuck in traffic.
More than 10 years ago, Frank Fasi suggested building a rail system, similar to BART in the Bay Area, that would have connected the outlying suburbs of Honolulu. The idea was canned, and only today our government leaders have come up with the brilliant idea of building dedicated lanes that only buses would travel on.
Has anyone bothered to talk with the ridership of TheBus? The problem with dedicated lanes is that they eventually end, and TheBus is then forced to merge into TheTraffic. Ask anyone who has ridden a bus in the zipper lane.
Unfortunately, the wall between you and the rest of the herd disappears, and then there you are, stuck among the bleary-eyed and bored.
If only they had used the federal funds for a rail system, a system that would have connected Kapolei to Waipahu, and Waipahu to 'Aiea, and 'Aiea to downtown Honolulu, and downtown Honolulu to Hawai'i Kai. The doors open. People get on and people get off. The doors close, and before you know it, you're zipping past all the cars parked on the H-1. There's no stopping at bus stops every other block, there are no delays while the driver checks for bus passes or exact change, and, hallelujah, there's no merging.
If the mayor and City Council are serious about relieving the rush-hour congestion, they will give up the notion of dedicated bus lanes and consider a rail system. It's time to stop living in the 20th century. Think outside the box, and get on with it.
Moses Akana
'Aiea
Baldwin High should stick to its dress code
A feeling of nausea creeps over me at the slightest mention of the American Civil Liberties Union. It has managed to demoralize business to the point that a business owner cannot make a move without first considering the liability involved.
Lack of school discipline is rampant due to the intervention of the ACLU. Productivity of the work force has deteriorated as management and ownership lose their voice.
Now it's the dress code of a school right here on Maui — all because some graduating senior at Baldwin High wants to wear pants instead of following a dress code set by the school. If this senior girl isn't smart enough to follow the code, then she isn't smart enough to graduate.
If we start shooting down one dress code at a school, where will it end? I hope that Baldwin High does not give in to the ACLU.
Foster Hull
Lahaina
