Letters to the Editor
Rep. Morita is leading clean-energy charge
Duane and Sarah Preble's Feb. 15 letter on renewable energy was true, indeed, but they neglected to mention Hawai'i's most effective clean-energy advocate: Rep. Hermina Morita, D-14th District (Kapa'a, Hanalei).
Over the past half-decade, Morita has been relentless in her support for solar and wind tax credits, net energy metering (where small, renewable energy producers can "sell" their surplus electricity by allowing their electricity meters to run backward), and a renewable portfolio standard, a measure to stop Hawai'i's backward slide toward more fossil fuel use.
This session, Rep. Morita is pushing bills to extend and expand all three of these initiatives. She is also advancing a bill to use revenue bonds to finance the installation of solar energy for government facilities, a winning strategy for taxpayers, investors and the environment. For the latest on this and other clean-energy measures, see www.hi.sierraclub.org/energy.
With the price of oil climbing well over $35 a barrel, Morita's vision for clean power is vital, not only to protect Hawai'i's environment, but to protect our fragile economy.
Jeff Mikulina
Director, Sierra Club, Hawai'i Chapter
Comprehensive reform needed for schools
A study of five states found that students in impoverished communities perform better in smaller school districts. In every single comparison made in Georgia, Montana, Ohio, Texas and West Virginia, low-income students performed better in smaller districts with smaller schools.
A California study found that smaller school districts benefit students in impoverished communities.
A Washington study found that large school districts are detrimental to student achievement. Moreover, the study found that large school districts worsen the relationship between poverty and school achievement.
About one-half of Hawai'i's public school children are low income. We have the 10th largest school district in the nation. And our student achievement is well below what it can be and where it needs to be.
The state House leadership has proposed a reform of our education system. This plan focuses exclusively upon the "governance" of the Department of Education, not the department itself.
I applaud the House leadership's move toward more community input. However, advisory councils and community meetings will not, by themselves, improve student outcomes. We need to decentralize our Department of Education and create smaller school districts that have true autonomy and authority.
Can we please adopt comprehensive reform so all our kids can have a better chance at receiving a good education?
Laura H. Thielen
State Board of Education
Corporate dividend tax break helps many
President Bush's proposal to eliminate the double tax on corporate dividends is not just for the extravagantly wealthy. My wife and I are in a position to know.
We are lace-embroidered blue-collar workers who, separately, never earned more than $50,000 in a year. We receive an additional $50,000 annually in corporate dividends after having doggedly saved and invested for 30 years, but that income is largely illusory. We can neither reinvest nor spend it because state and federal taxes confiscate much of it. Moreover, this phantom income raises our gross earnings beyond the threshold of eligibility for Roth or educational IRAs or tax-credit assistance for our children's college tuition.
Partisan opposition begs the matter in question. What's really at issue here is not a handful of super-rich beyond the beyond, but millions of middle-income investors, half of them retired, who are getting tarred with the same brush.
Theodore N. Pizzino
Kudos for city operation of Hanauma Bay
A while back I wrote a letter complaining about the way Hanauma Bay was being run. Now I must compliment the city — on showing itself more user-friendly, after all.
Opening the bay on Saturday evenings is a wonderful thing. It enabled me recently to have an unforgettable experience, seeing all the red fish and other creatures that only come out at night. And down in that dark center, without light pollution, the stars are magnificent.
I even took another look at the exhibits and found them very good and saw the brief entry movie again a while back, and it's not half-bad. (Also, I got on the "list" so I don't have to wait and see it again if I don't want to — but I do indeed recommend it to all my visitor friends and do watch it with them.)
So I take back most of my complaints — except there still needs to be more shade on the beach and lower grass and elsewhere where people have to congregate and wait — such as at the bus stop.
Jim Beaman
We're seeing the U.N. for what it's become
Hopefully the United Nations will oppose America's war against Iraq and offer the American people more evidence that this corrupt organization exists not to protect free nations but to support dictatorships.
The United States should exercise the moral courage necessary to pursue its self-interest despite U.N. opposition, thus sending the right message to the world: The United States does not need others' approval to defend itself.
David Holcberg
Extraterrestrials have swapped airport signs
I believe that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth and are in Hawai'i. They are ensconced at the state Department of Transportation in the Airports Division. The logic is simple.
Being from a different planet, aliens have no idea why people travel to and within an airport complex and, understandably, have no sense of what signs need to be posted to guide us when we visit an airport.
When the alien creatures explored the airport's upper level, they noticed many service counters with people being issued some sort of card. They understood these cards to be tickets and, inquiring no further, proceeded to remove the sign on the ramp to the airport's upper level reading "Departures" and replaced it with a bright yellow sign reading "Ticketing."
Everyone on Earth knows that ticketing is rarely done at the airport.
Next, they went to the airport's lower level and saw some of us picking up bags. Based on this observation alone, they removed the sign on the airport ramp to the lower level reading "Arrivals" and replaced it with a bright yellow sign reading "Baggage Claim."
Everyone on Earth knows that it is arriving passengers who need to be directed to baggage claim, and these travelers don't get there by way of the vehicle on-ramp.
Conversely, those of us who use the on-ramp headed for the airport's lower level are coming to meet "arrivals," not to claim bags. The words "arrival" and "departure" are obviously not in the alien lexicon.
Joe Gedan
Retired U.S. magistrate judge
