Letters to the Editor
TV shows, rap songs harming the children
As a youngster, I was always taught to obey my parents and respect the elderly. Today as a teenager, when I go out, I see children disrespecting their parents, yelling and swearing at them.
Recently, an incident occurred at Longs. I saw a young boy yell at his mom and then burst into tears because she wouldn't buy him the toy he wanted. Children seem to have lost respect for family members, especially for the adults.
One reason might be too much watching of television shows with lots of violence and crime. Another is the type of music listened to. For example, Eminem, a popular rap artist, talks about the many issues in his life in his songs, using profanity and lyrics that focus around illicit sex and drugs. Many parents are afraid of the influence of such programs and songs on their children and how they grow up and therefore try to regulate what their children are exposed to.
I believe morals are important because they show a person's beliefs and who they really are. Children who are growing up these days need to be taught good lessons, discipline and morals to counter all the bad influences in our society.
Stephen Alcoran
Wahiawa
Prison authorities ignored inmate pleas
On May 22, 2002, I, Lael Samonte, 48, an inmate at the Halawa high security facility, was found unconscious, with serious head injuries, by prison guards.
With the medical unit only a few doors down the hallway, it took the nurse approximately 15 minutes to arrive at the scene after being summoned. I had to be taken in a wheelchair out of the housing to a waiting van to be transported to the medium facility medical unit. I was placed in the psych ward under head injury observation and given an ice pack. Two days later, I was discharged from the medical unit by a dentist. My daily plea to be examined by the doctor was ignored.
Approximately nine weeks later, two separate X-rays showed a fractured and broken jaw. Queen's medical doctors will perform surgery at the end of this year.
Pain, pain and more pain.
Lael Samonte
Parking, security rules were well-thought-out
In the Sept. 12 paper, a letter was published asking about policies at Aloha Stadium during UH football games. I would like to take the opportunity to explain the policies and why they were put in place.
This year, additional parking stalls were set aside in Section 4 for members of Ahahui Koa Anuenue, who annually contribute to the university's athletic scholarship fund. We apologize if this has inconvenienced our visitors, but we feel that this was an appropriate decision given all that Ahahui Koa Anuenue has done for UH football and UH athletics in general. Without their support, it would be difficult to imagine our teams having the kind of success they are having now.
The decision to double-park the buses was made to minimize their impact on traffic inside the parking lots. Placing the buses where they are now enables them to exit the stadium quicker and helps us in areas where traffic is the heaviest.
Also, this decision was made in conjunction with the Honolulu Police Department and O'ahu Transit Services. I can assure you that no safety codes are being violated.
Finally, I would like to address the security measures currently in place at Aloha Stadium. It has been our policy since last year to prohibit bags, purses, handbags and backpacks. We do this to ensure that our visitors are in the safest possible environment. We do allow fanny packs, which are subject to search by stadium security.
Please come to the stadium prepared, as we cannot make any exceptions to these rules. I'm sorry if they are inconvenient, but we must keep security our No. 1 priority.
Eddie Hayashi
Stadium manager
Where would Lingle get needed revenue?
A Sept. 10 letter in The Honolulu Advertiser mentioned "free speech" and an "informed electorate" would be benefited by more debates.
Instead of television debates, we need more coverage of organization meetings that address pertinent issues. Where was Linda Lingle when the Tax Foundation of Hawai'i met with other candidates?
I think the Tax Foundation or organizations like it help a voter like myself understand where my money is going. It sounds as if Ms. Lingle needs at least $400 million in state revenue.
If there are future organization forums or panel discussions, I would want to hear from her on this issue.
Vera Johnston-Fong
Sign-wavers don't teach us anything
Having received my license only a few months ago, I have had precious little time for driving free of sign-wavers. While I realize that sign-waving is a long-practiced policy for candidates in Hawai'i, I find the procedure annoying. I see no point in being frantically waved at by strangers, and I dislike the rude response I get if I don't honk or wave back.
Ultimately, the signs teach me nothing about the candidates except how to spell their names. Until signs include the candidate's background and position on major issues, my opinion is to keep these useless promoters off the road.
Leanne Jones
Leilehua High School
Candidate waving sign can be approached
Your political cartoon of Sept. 15 showing a woman attacking a political sign-holder and saying, "You got my attention, now why should I vote for you?" is just the point.
The candidate will be wearing a lei and can be seen and approached and spoken to about the issues. Nothing could be more harmless or more democratic.
Those who have nothing more important to gripe about must just be upset that it is not their candidate with such a show of support.
Alexander Sholer
Bill 53 would unfairly enrich investors
When the original ordinance carrying the idea of leasehold conversion passed the Honolulu City Council, it was based on the same premise as the state Land Reform Act.
Although one could question that an oligopoly of land ownership actually existed in the case of the condominium projects located on O'ahu, the thrust of the ordinance was that owner-occupants of condominiums on O'ahu should have the same opportunity as the owners of leasehold single-family homes on the island to acquire the fee-simple title to their homes.
Bill 53 pending before the City Council violates the intent and purpose of both the state and the city legislation on the subject as it would allow a small number of owner-occupants in a building where most of the units are not the primary residence of their owners to force the condemnation of the fee-simple interests.
In many cases, the owners of the other units in the building don't even live in Hawai'i or acquired their units as rental property investments, never intending to live in them. When these owners acquired these units, they were clearly informed that they were acquiring leasehold property with limited terms and reduced values and signed binding contracts to that effect.
Under Bill 53, these same owners can violate their contracts and turn their property, acquired at lowered prices, into fee-simple properties of increased value. To unfairly enrich these owners was never the intent of this legislation.
H.K. Bruss Keppeler
News editor didn't strike right chord
Jim Kelly, your executive editor, observed in the Sept. 15 paper that your 9/11 front page "struck the right chord" and paid respect and homage to those who were killed or maimed in the treacherous attacks on the World Trade Center.
On the other hand, Brad Lendon, your news editor, callously comments in the same paper that 3,000 lives is really no big deal and the rest of the world feels "that Americans are self-centered and our agony means little elsewhere." What an insult to those who died and more infamous to their loved ones (wives, husbands, children, parents, friends, etc.) who survived them.
Lendon concludes his article: "America's losses pale" in comparison to the deaths and misery around the world.
Is Lendon the new breed of heartless anti-American reporters The Advertiser is grooming for the millennium?
To sink so low — from Kelly to Lendon — is to reach the bottom.
Philip T.S. Ho
Telecredit was first on check verification
I am writing to correct misinformation in your description of the early history of Telecheck Inc. (obituary of Robert J. Baer, page B2, Sept. 19). The idea of a check verification system was not originated in 1965 by the founders of Telecheck, as you indicated.
Computerized check verification had already been successfully provided for three years by Telecredit Inc. in California. The system is described in the Jan. 4, 1963, issue of Time magazine. Time wrote: "In Los Angeles, a pair of science-minded entrepreneurs are using a digital computer to blot out what J. Edgar Hoover calls 'fountain-pen bandits.' An IBM Ramac 305 computer is the soul of a profitable year-old company called Telecredit Inc., bossed by Chairman Robert Goldman ... an electrical engineer, and President Ronald Katz ... a businesslike onetime assistant dean of students at UCLA."
As one of Telecredit's founders who has lived in Honolulu for over 30 years, I naturally find it disturbing to see the erroneous information in a Honolulu newspaper.
Robert N. Goldman
Hawaiians are not claiming to be a tribe
The distortion of the truth by Sandra Puanani Burgess (Letters, Sept. 10) is a revisionist strategy being used by her husband, H. William Burgess, to deflect what Hawaiian sovereignty is really about.
Her opening statement, "The Akaka Bill and any other recognition bill will not and cannot succeed," is predicated on the assumption that Hawaiians are claiming to be a tribe. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Anyone who has taken Sovereignty 101 will tell you that the internationally recognized Kingdom of Hawai'i, of which Hawaiians and persons of non-Hawaiian extraction were citizens, was an independent and sovereign nation state recognized by other nation states throughout the world. England, France, Russia and the United States were nations that recognized the sovereign nation of Hawai'i in 1893.
That is the difference. The Indian nations were determined to be tribes. The Kingdom of Hawai'i was recognized throughout the world as an independent nation.
To my knowledge, no Hawaiians are exploiting the Indian tribe concept in their quest for sovereign recognition.
What Hawaiians are seeking with the help of U.S. Public Law 103-150, commonly known as the Apology Bill, is for the United States to act upon its apology by reinstating the political relationship that existed prior to the overthrow of 1893 between both independent nations. Nothing more, nothing less.
There is no question as to what happened in 1893. You cannot "tweak" recorded history.
The only question today is what the United States is going to do to ameliorate this violation of justice perpetrated upon the Hawaiian people and their sovereign nation.
Rod Ferreira
Kamuela, Big Island
There's an outlet to protest Iraq invasion
Many readers who share your deep concerns about the push to invade Iraq and the curtailment of civil rights may not know that there is a nationally circulated document that we can sign to express our concerns in a united way.
It is a "statement of conscience" by the American Friends Service Committee, clearly and courageously written. Thousands of people, including many well-known in public life, have already signed it on the Mainland and elsewhere. Copies are available at the Friends' meeting house on O'ahu Avenue or by calling the center.
Signing the document does not presume membership in this or any other religious or political organization. For example, I am not a member of Friends, but only a profoundly concerned citizen glad to know that this opportunity exists.
Alice D. Scheuer
How novel: Employers as people with rights
Jeff Portnoy, thank you. Employers as people with rights? How novel, how refreshing, how long overdue. Thank you for your Sept. 15 commentary regarding "access to justice for all of Hawai'i's people."
What does it say about our state when we small businesses are struggling against the poor economy, oppressive business regulations, taxes-upon-taxes (GET) and state-sanctioned discrimination?
Contrary to the Civil Rights Commission view, employers are doing their best to stay in business and provide jobs. Most of us don't fall into the deep-pockets, cold-hearts category, and we are part of Hawai'i's people.
Martha Harding
Cisco's Cantina, Kailua
