Posted on: Tuesday, December 2, 2003

Letters to the Editor

Decisional conflict fluctuates year to year

Lynda Arakawa's Nov. 25 story on decisional conflict among Hawai'i Supreme Court justices states that opinions (decisions in cases with published opinions?) were unanimous 93 percent of the time in fiscal 2000, 98 percent of the time in fiscal 2001 and 67 percent of the time in fiscal 2002.

My own published research, based on actual counts of the published opinions, shows that from 1959 through 1994, 339 of the 2,198 total number of cases reported were decided nonunanimously (with dissents and/or concurrences) for an average annual 15.4 percent rate. Only in two years were nonunanimity rates below 2 percent (0 percent in 1959 and 1.8 percent in 1980).

Nonunanimity rates equaled or exceeded 30 percent in seven years (1961, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1970, 1972 and 1973), with the highest rates of 47.5 percent and 47.3 percent in 1972 and 1973, respectively.

From 1980 through 1994, the period after the Intermediate Court of Appeals was in operation, the nonunanimity rate ranged from 1.8 percent (1980) to 16 percent (1991) and the average annual rate is 9 percent.

This indicates that decisional conflict on the Hawai'i Supreme Court can and does fluctuate widely year-to-year, decisions reached nonunanimously 30 percent or more of the time is not that (historically) unusual, and that nonunanimity rates of 10 percent to 5 percent may be "normal."

So the nonunanimity rate was fairly typical in fiscal 2000, abnormally low in fiscal 2001 and high, but not record-breaking, in fiscal 2002.

'100% pay raise' not justifiable

Congratulations to Honolulu Fire Department Chief Attilio Leonardi for his 100 percent pay raise. It's not quite the June Jones pay raise, but it is the highest negotiated pay raise in Honolulu's civil service history.

Will the Fire Commission be paying tuition at private schools for his grandchildren, too? If there is a reduction in brush fires, will there be an additional bonus? Is the City and County of Honolulu offering "Golden Parachutes" for other retiring city employees who haven't fulfilled their dreams?

It is absolutely unbelievable to know that the Fire Commission is telling the public that the HFD deputy chief, HFD bureau chiefs and HFD battalion chiefs are too incompetent to complete the mission of the Fire Department without Chief Attilio. Will there be a national search to replace "Super Chief," or will the 89-day contracts continue in perpetuity?

Mayor Jeremy Harris, you recently chided the Teamsters union and police officers for asking for any pay raise or improved benefits because "there is no money, there's no money today and there's no money tomorrow."

If the mayor's statements are true, will we be raising the vehicle weight tax again to pay for the fire chief's "double-dipping salary" or will we be reducing city services, or laying off "nonessential workers" to meet this new payroll?

City Council members, can you justify this 100 percent pay raise to your constituents or is this your last term in office?

Federal vouchers can instill accountability

School vouchers have proven to dramatically raise test scores. If voters demand the establishment of federal school vouchers, they can fix the public school accountability problem in Hawai'i.

Vouchers provide economically disadvantaged families subsidies for tuition required by private schools. Of course, this is not what teacher unionists want to hear because public schools receive federal support according to the quantity of students attending a school. The federal voucher program permits parents to exercise genuine choice among public, private, religious and secular schools.

In Hawai'i, Article X, Section 1 of the state Constitution prohibits the appropriation of federal public money to nonpublic schools. The state court case known as Spears v. Honda ruled that subsidies to private schools are unconstitutional. Voters need to demand a bill or vote to break up the Department of Education and establish a federal school voucher program in Hawai'i.

Let's stop punishing the children. If the voters force public-school accountability, maybe they will find a way to offer a quality education.

Anti-rail opponents should see Asia's woes

This is in response to all those anti-rail opponents. If they would only go to Korea or Japan and see for themselves how the rail systems get most of the cars off the roads. As it is, even with the rails, the traffic on the roads is horrendous. There is no parking on the streets.

There is no room on the parking decks because they're leased out to whoever is lucky enough to get them. I can't imagine what would happen if it weren't for the rail systems. Let's not wait for another 10 years or 20 years down the line.

Will our children's children have to pay for it when they finally decide to build it? It won't be costing them a mere $2 billion.

Car Hook may be solution to gridlock

Rather than spend billions of dollars and wait decades to get an inflexible rail system that won't reduce auto congestion, I offer the following solution.

It is called Car Hook.

Each vehicle will have a hitch that will connect to an overhead hook. Cars will hook up and hoist up at each freeway entrance, and hook off when they exit. An ambiance-sensitive superstructure will have endless chains of hooks for each lane. Hooks will be microprocessor controlled, like our traffic lights. A remote control selects an exit. Cars will move seamlessly along the integrated network at a relatively high speed for O'ahu (25 mph).

Drivers and passengers can relax, read a book, work on a laptop, etc. The system will not become obsolete because it will be designed for use with the next generation of mass-transit innovations called Sky Hook. This will free us from highways and byways all together. Both of these will be built by E.K. Fernandez.

Who said that sitting in gridlock traffic was a waste? I get all of my best ideas in gridlock.

Gays want behavior to be codified into law

Your editorial supporting same-sex marriage is built on the false premise of discrimination. Sexual choice does not guarantee a person genuine minority status.

What homosexual practitioners want is for their behavior to be legitimized, to be codified into law as acceptable, normal and even a good thing. Should we teach our children that such behavior is a healthy, wholesome way to live? Of course not.

And let me set the record straight about homosexuals raising children. It is nothing more than self-indulgent cruelty to subject children to this type of immoral behavior on a daily basis. The homosexuals do this, not for the kids, but for their desire to be normalized and they force society to legitimize their behavior.

You can call a donkey a horse all day long, but that doesn't mean it's a horse. It is still a donkey, and so it is with homosexual marriage.

Columnist's views on gays are hypocritical

In a recent column, Kathleen Parker claims to care about her gay friends even as she argues against granting them legal equality. Her hypocritical argument not only attempts to denigrate us as gay people, but also insults the straight people who really do care about us.

By relegating our relationships to second-class status, she attempts to deny our very humanity, since nothing is more essential to our humanity than the ability to love.

Either we are fully human, meaning we are capable of engaging in and committing to loving relationships with our partners, or we are not. Like it or not, there's no middle ground in this debate, and her position puts her on the same level as the most virulent (and violent) homophobes.

It can take great courage and strength of character to "come out" as a loving friend or family member of a gay person. Loving their gay child/sibling/parent/friend means recognizing the common humanity in someone they've probably been taught is sick or subhuman. The difficult task of discarding bigotry and ignorance will lead them to be both moral and more able to fulfill the promise of their humanity.

Sadly, Parker has chosen to embrace her bigotry, hiding it under the pretense that "some of my best friends" are gay. She may indeed have gay friends, but she's no friend of theirs.

It's time for courage in defense of freedom

Some years ago at a middle school in Northern Virginia where I began teaching, we customarily set aside a week each year to celebrate cultural diversity. We had students from 44 different countries in addition to American-born students.

In one of my classes, I invited each foreign-born student to share their early memories if they wished to do so. One of the last students to volunteer was a taciturn, academically accomplished Vietnamese boy. In hushed tones, he elicited pin-drop silence from a usually boisterous class as he calmly described how his uncle had been strapped into a chair at a "re-education center" and slapped to death over a six hour period.

Leighton Loo, in his Nov. 21 letter, argues that an American retreat from Iraq "would simply encourage and strengthen the terrorists."

Paul D'Argent disagrees in his Nov. 26 letter and predicts: "As far as 'there's no turning back now,' watch what happens if a Democrat is elected in 2004."

I believe D'Argent is correct. The Cry Baby Boom/Counter-culture Elite that ran away to leave hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese — and millions of Cambodians — to a merciless fate 30 years ago is a cohort that has ever since dominated the Democratic Party. If these cowards have their way, America will again scurry out of harm's way and abandon those who have put their trust in us. We will not prevail in the war on terror with any more craven acts of betrayal.

It is a time for courage and self-sacrifice in defense of freedom. The Cry Baby Boom Elites struck their colors long ago ... thereby rendering themselves unfit for the freedom that was bestowed upon them in such abundance.

Thank heaven for younger generations of American patriots who will not slink away from the obligations of duty, honor and country.

Can Kamehameha Schools do more?

Watching the news report of the crowd booing the lawyer and mother of Brayden Mohica-Cummings, I had to ask myself if I am a part of that group. Would I do that? Do they speak for me too?

No, they don't. Even so, I understand where the protesters are coming from, why they're so angry.

Among other things, they're frustrated because they know of so many Hawaiian children who have not been accepted to Kamehameha Schools. Everyone in the Hawaiian community, myself included, has a child, cousin, niece, nephew or sibling who will not have the privileged education that the school offers at a fraction of the cost of a private school.

But my frustration is not directed toward the family and attorneys, but rather at Kamehameha and the estate. They have so much land and so much money. Why can't they affect more children? They have an excellent financial aid system set up for post-K-12 education that gives scholarships to Hawaiian students to go to college. The problem is, if the students don't have the advantage that comes from a private school education during the K-12 years, they may not be college-bound.

Perhaps that is why many public school teachers send their children to private schools. My two cents is this: even if classrooms aren't available at Kamehameha Schools, let the money be available. Kamehameha is not the only private school our kids can go to. If Kamehameha doesn't have enough room, it should award scholarships for Hawaiian children to go to another private school, to get that privileged education, to be college-bound, to get ahead. It has the scholarship system in place; all it needs to do is expand it to K-12 students.

In a recent news article regarding the court ruling, U.S. District Judge Alan Kay said the school, in its educational mission, was trying to right cultural and social disadvantages that have plagued Hawaiians since the overthrow of the monarchy.

Whereas it used to be "who you know" that got you into the school, now Kamehameha seems to pick and choose only the smartest of the smart to attend their schools. How can we be sure this practice is not contributing to the cultural and social imbalance within the Hawaiian community?