Posted on: Monday, November 17, 2003

Letters to the Editor

Let's not deny access to gem of Ha'iku Stairs

In a day and age when all need respite from daily stress, we cannot open to the public a local jewel that provides an opening to peace and calm. Why?

I am at a loss to understand how public access to Ha'iku Stairs differs from public access to any other jewel in the state requiring the tolerance of those living nearby. Would hikers not be parking on public streets, accessing via public property?

If the current perspective becomes the standard, then we should deny parking to UH students parking in Manoa who clog the streets with non-local traffic, eliminate any non-driveway parking for locals, eliminate non-local parking for beach and mountain trail access, etc., etc.

Don't we all deserve to have no non-local intrusions into our respective neighborhoods or locales for the reasons just stated? Maybe all neighborhoods should become gated communities? We all have cellular phones to talk to one another, TVs to view the jewels. Wouldn't this solve the problems that occur when we bring our physical selves into the space of others?

I think not!

We would become quite lifeless, our sense of place, love of the land would die, aloha would become a distant memory. We have the capacity to make this work for all. Let's just do it already.

Nationality isn't cause of citizenship delay

The Iranian man written about by Curtis Lum on Nov. 13 who is having difficulty obtaining his American citizenship shouldn't make misguided accusations against Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and David Gulick of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in Hawai'i.

My wife, who has legally lived and worked in the United States for the past 30 years, and who has been married to an American all of this time, first applied for citizenship in April 2001. In August 2001, two weeks before 9/11, she began the physical process — fingerprinting, etc. — of becoming an American citizen. In March 2003 — two years after she began the process — she was notified by Immigration Services that she would have to begin the process all over again. No reason was given. Neither of us understood this, but she went down to the Immigration Services office to start over again.

In August, she was told the process was about to be completed, and she would be called in to complete her citizenship this November. When October arrived, she was then told her name was high on the list, but everything had been postponed and that she should expect to have everything completed in January 2004. After almost three years, we anxiously await the moment.

My wife is not Iranian. She is, however, a New Zealander, a mixture of Irish, German and Polynesian. So how can Mr. Shemirani claim to have his citizenship delayed because of nationality? My wife's son, the same family ancestry as my wife, began his citizenship process in early 2002. In December 2002, nine months later, he became a naturalized citizen. He lives in Kansas.

We have been told by the people at the Honolulu branch of the INS that the cause for so many delays is the citizenship application backlog in Hawai'i and California. So you see, nationality has nothing to do with it.

There's no freedom to abuse substances

It saddens me to see so many deaths in Hawai'i over drugs.

In America, we believe in a lie that says "Freedom is when we can do whatever we want." But this is a very distorted perception of freedom. True freedom can come when we are not in bondage to anything.

We see in America the result of this deceptive view of freedom. The rise of drug and alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion are signs that this country is in bondage to sex and drugs, and the consequences are high.

Sometimes the chains of these habits will control people until they destroy them.

Learn to make the right choices, and don't live your life foolishly. We only live once. Let's live it the best way we can.

Fairness in Sentencing Act is anything but

As you probably know, mandatory minimum drug sentences are based solely on the type and quantity of the drug involved in the offense. Under these laws, peripheral participants like "mules" and "couriers" in drug conspiracies are subject to the same excessively long sentences as drug "kingpins." But unlike drug kingpins, these minor players often cannot trade information for shorter sentences.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission sought to rectify the sentencing disparity between minor players and kingpins by placing a cap on sentences for defendants with a mitigating-role adjustment. This cap prevents their sentences from reaching kingpin-size levels.

The amendment was sent to Congress and became law on Nov. 1, 2002. Now the so-called Fairness in Sentencing Act, which is anything but, seeks to turn back the clock on this important piece of sentencing reform and force minor players to serve out unnecessarily long sentences.

I'm sending this to you because my best friend is going to be sentenced to 70 to 87 months as a co-conspirator in a conspiracy drug ring bust in which she has no knowledge, meaning she has no information to offer.

The major players in this have been and are getting sentenced to less time even though the documents (wiretaps, etc.) prove their part as major players. My friend has never been in trouble before, no prior arrests, has lived in the Islands for over 15 years, has ties in the community; however, because she won't show any anger, they say she has serial killer tendencies.

Is this justice?

Article that criticized medications unbalanced

I'm writing to express dissatisfaction with the article on teen depression in the Body & Mind section in the Nov. 6 Advertiser. While treatment of depression in teens and children is a complicated issue, your article seemed to make a point of emphasizing the negative aspects of medications rather than the positive benefits that many experience.

An informed patient and parent is the best healthcare consumer. One-sided articles in which negative aspects are given first-person stories and dominate the article, while positive aspects are given one paragraph at the end of the article, don't give a balanced, informative picture.

The article might have emphasized that Prozac is the only SSRI (medication) currently FDA-approved for use in children and adolescents. It might also have emphasized that medication use without other forms of treatment such as psychotherapy is considered poor care by professional organizations such as the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The article also stated "The drugs have long had their critics, even for adults" without further clarification. The total effect may be to scare adults off medication that may be very beneficial to them.

The SSRIs mentioned are considered safe for adults. When medications are taken consistently, some 80 percent of patients get better. The American Psychiatric Association recommends medications for moderate to severe depression, and as an optional but beneficial treatment for mild depression.

Also mentioned in your article are two forms of depression. The psychiatric profession abandoned the distinction between endogenous depression and exogenous depression in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders years ago.

Elderly, mothers should be own crossing guards

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's state-by-state "fatality facts" for 2002 are out. As expected, Hawai'i was the worst state in the union for the percentage of traffic fatalities that were pedestrians.

Coincidentally, Hawai'i was also the worst state in the union for the percentage of traffic fatalities that were motorcycle riders.

However, Hawai'i has been the worst state in the union year after year for the percentage of traffic fatalities that were either a pedestrian or a motorcycle rider.

About 75 percent of the pedestrians killed last year were elderly. From what I read, these elderly people were from underprivileged areas, probably having to fend for themselves, walking to the store to buy their daily groceries, etc. They were probably no longer fast enough to get all the way across the road "between breaks in traffic," as 95 percent of drivers reportedly expect pedestrians to do.

Currently, the Honolulu Police Department does not support a change in the vehicle code in which a driver must unconditionally stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. However, certain pedestrians such as the elderly, handicapped and mothers trying to control two or more children could be empowered to be their own crossing guards such that if a driver passes by them when they are holding up a legally authorized sign, then that driver would be subject to a citation.

Tracking and killing sharks is not the answer

Dan Stillman's idea of tracking and killing sharks (Letters, Nov. 5) is beyond me. Sharks belong in the water; it's their home. As humans we must respect that.

I am sorry to hear that another person has been bitten by a shark, but killing them is not the answer. Sharks and humans must learn to live together in harmony.

It's a different band

In the Nov. 11 article "Expelled students preparing to appeal," Mrs. Kim Kaahanui stated that her son was a drummer in the band. It is important to clarify that the band she refers to is not the Kamehameha Schools Warrior Marching Band and Color Guard.

Viaduct the answer

A highway viaduct over Nimitz connecting the airport interchange with downtown would be strongly cost-effective. A two-way viaduct or a reversible viaduct would be worth the additional impact and better ease the Middle Street merge.

Rail-transit criticism falls short

Cliff Slater came dangerously close to making an enlightened contribution to the rail-transit debate in his Nov. 10 column ("It's no way to run a railroad"). In the end, however, he reverted to his time-worn solution for O'ahu's traffic: more reliance on cars and highways.

Slater started out with what he believes is a deplorable fact about rail transit: It doesn't reduce traffic congestion, and anyone who suggests otherwise is misleading the public.

Slater cited statistics showing that cities with rail systems still have clogged freeways just like cities without rail. In other words, he said, rail's done nothing to "solve" the traffic problem.

This clever argument uses an observable fact to supposedly denigrate rail's contributions. But the problem for Slater and his anti-rail friends is that their argument has no sting.

Rail supporters agree that these systems are not built with the primary purpose of reducing traffic congestion.

Think about it: If families keep having babies and the population continues to grow (they will keep having babies, won't they?), and if West O'ahu neighborhoods are built to accommodate that growth, H-1 traffic will grow, too — with or without rail.

Condemning rail for not preventing something that's bound to happen anyway doesn't pass the smell test.

If Slater wanted to be forthright with his readers, he would have acknowledged the true reason to build rail — to provide an alternative to being stuck in traffic.

For the vast majority of West O'ahu's commuting public, there is no alternative today to driving on congested streets and highways to get to town. (If TheBus were a viable option, bus ridership would be much higher.)

Rail will be the missing alternative. It will be a convenient, comfortable and time-efficient alternative to the daily grind in the automobile — especially if it is grade-separated from cross-traffic.

I can hear Slater now: "But the H-1 Freeway will still be clogged with traffic congestion! Rail will have failed to solve the traffic problem!"

Rail will forever be a failure for car-loving Cliff Slater. But for those who opt for an alternative to highway traffic, rail will be a blessing — the only form of urban transportation that can guarantee a time of arrival.

That's something automobile transportation can't do, no matter how much land is paved over with more lanes of concrete.