Letters to the Editor

Adjust gasoline prices for Hawai'i's taxes

CNN reported Sunday that gas prices in California jumped 10 cents per gallon in one day and are now more than $2 in metropolitan areas, having been well over $2 in other areas for a long time. Ho-nolulu prices have not changed, and remain about $2. Adjusted for taxes, Hawai'i is significantly below California.

I find it interesting that The Advertiser is quick to report any negative gas-price disparity, but makes not a peep when stories like this are reported nationally.

If you keep track, you will see that Hawai'i's gasoline prices are extremely stable, unlike many places on the Mainland. They are also often lower after being adjusted for Hawai'i's taxes — the highest in the country. If you don't know the taxes, you don't know the price. Gas stations just collect taxes for the government, but must reflect them in the prices on their street signs.

You would be shocked if the price sign requirements in Hawai'i were changed to require the pre-tax prices to be posted.

Think before dissing all private schools

I would like Marcus Daniel, assistant professor of American history at UH-Manoa (Letters, Feb. 18), to continue his research of the private school system in Hawai'i. I would like him to do research on the thousands of "private school" children not educated at Punahou who are academically successful and most of whom are far from affluent.

There's more to private schools than money. Many of these schools have such tight budgets that there's no room for the added extras, but the children learn.

The Catholic school system in Hawai'i has been umbrella-ed under the title of independent schools with the likes of Punahou and Kamehameha. We have no parity with them financially. We don't have anything close to the resources they have at their fingertips. But we push forward.

At my school, we have a leadership team that has a vision of where our school needs to go to be able to accommodate students. All of our classes are not small, but we do have dedicated, highly trained teachers who focus on the dignity of the children and positive reinforcement. We also believe that, given the right conditions, all children can learn. We work hard on staff development. We want children to succeed. Who doesn't?

So before you condemn all non-public schools, do your homework and give credit to the underpaid, understaffed, underprivileged small schools that get it done without the frills.

Ted Hong's arguments collapse under scrutiny

I'm always interested in what Ted Hong has to say since he's a member of the UH Board of Regents, the state's chief labor negotiator, and may soon be a judge — who knows when I may have to face him? But two assumptions in his Feb. 23 letter need to be questioned.

First he writes, "Since 1973, arbitrators have ruled in the employers' favor on only two occasions: Dec. 1, 1983, and Nov. 21, 1997." This he suggests is a sign that the system is unfair. That sounds like an argument a losing football coach might employ. Another way to look at it is that the state has consistently failed to deal fairly with its employees, and so the state consistently loses at arbitration.

Hong then floats the defense that in economic hard times, the state as employer has nothing to bargain with, so, I imagine, it should not be required to pay its employees what they need to meet the high cost of living in Hawai'i. The trouble here is that Hong is claiming for the state an advantage the worker does not have. When a worker goes to pay a mortgage or electric bill, he or she can't say, "Sorry it's economic hard times and I have nothing to bargain with."

The real problem is the government's desire to avoid responsibility. It makes a deal with citizens to provide police protection and good schools, then turns to teachers and police officers and says, "Oh, we'd like to pay you a fair salary, but we don't have the money," as if getting the necessary money is completely out of its control.

The reason the state doesn't have the money to pay fair salaries is it can't do its job. Stop drying up revenue streams and claiming economic hard times! The money is out there. Look at the cars on the road, the houses being built, the expensive restaurants and retail outlets. Stop giving tax breaks to movie companies, high-tech wannabes, and corporate freeloaders, and the state will be able to pay its bills.

Castle Junction hill project is too grand

The hillside removal project at Castle Junction is way too big. Why does such a large cut have to be done?

I doubt very much that there is that much soil and subsoil in the area to be removed. My guess is that under 15 feet or so of the subsoil the contractor is going to hit very hard basalt, and no terraces will be cut into that, leaving a big ugly mess for all to see.

The project needs to be scaled way back.

Other areas can benefit from Weed & Seed

I commend The Honolulu Advertiser on its Feb. 18 article highlighting the need for support for the Weed & Seed strategy in Hawai'i.

As Peter Boylan points out, the initiative has successfully reduced crime in some of Hawai'i's toughest areas. Now strengthened by programs such as Project Safe Neighborhoods, Weed & Seed continues to make progress in our fight against drug crimes and illegal weapons.

But it isn't only the officially designated areas, or even high crime areas, that can benefit from Weed & Seed. The strategy behind Weed & Seed can be applied to all of Hawai'i's communities.

The Weed & Seed initiative works by bringing everyone together to focus on a common goal — stronger communities. By communicating openly, communities can work together to identify the problems that their area faces, and what each person can do to help address the problem, such as taking part in community patrols, donating cleaning supplies, or simply notifying police of suspicious activities.

'Western scientists' wrongly crucified

As an eighth-grader at Le Jardin Academy, I respectfully disagree with the Feb. 21 letter "Stop desecrating our sacred cultural sites," in which the author takes a headshot at Western science and its "Spanish conquistador"-esque ways.

During elementary school, I clearly remember my fellow classmates and I being taught to preserve Hawai'i by these "Western scientists" and learning to hold indigenous organisms and cultures in the highest regard. There is no "genocide" taking place.

Let us reach a solution regarding the telescopes without desecrating the reputations of Hawai'i's scientists — people who I believe are our true heroes.

Iraq reports are more like Pentagon boosterism

It is commendable that The Honolulu Advertiser is shouldering the expense of sending a reporter to Iraq with Hawai'i-based soldiers — and brave of William Cole to accept the assignment. Sadly, your dispatches so far read more like Pentagon boosterism than serious journalism.

In "Learning ins, outs of insurgency" (Feb. 13), for example, you present a skewed report on house-to-house weapons searches (which turned up no weapons) by accepting senior officers' justifications for the aggressive, no-knock raids and by exclusively interviewing American personnel. One soldier claims that most Iraqis understand the need for Humvees to pull the gates off their houses and for GIs to rummage through their belongings, perhaps carting off relatives for interrogation or detention, because "I think they realize you are performing a search that is necessary and removing a threat."

There were no Iraqis to substantiate or refute this sentiment.

American newspapers have a noble tradition of "embedded" wartime journalism that is both sympathetic to soldiers and open-eyed about the caprices and cruelties of war. The Advertiser's articles, however, fail to meet this standard. They are one-sided, devoid of context, conflict and critique. Such reporting does no real service to American servicemen and women sent to do a nasty job for what turns out to be dubious reasons.

Don't forget other GIs

I commend your reporter on being with the 25th Infantry soldiers over in Iraq. My husband is part of the 84th Engineers, a support unit. I would like to see an article on them and other units from Schofield at least once. They are very important to the missions in Iraq.

Thousands of soldiers went to Iraq from Hawai'i, and I don't want them to be forgotten.

Solve the speeding, civil union problems

In response to some of the letters in Monday's paper, I would like to voice two concerns:

• I agree that speeding is an issue. I am sick and tired of coming home from work late at night and having to feel like an obstacle on a race track. It amazes me that the cops are there to go after the somewhat innocent people who park at parks late at night, but they cannot patrol the roads against life-threatening drivers.
• On the civil union bill, how can intelligent humans be so archaic? Where is the equality? Where is the fairness? I would like to be with my partner, legally. We long to one day own a home when we save up enough money. At the same time, it hurts to see our parents and friends enjoy their tax breaks when they buy a home, since they are married — and we will not be able to reap those benefits.

Call it what you want, but we deserve equal rights. We are tax-paying citizens and voters, too. Think of your friend or relative who longs to be happy with his life partner — isn't it fair that he enjoys equal rights and is not considered just a minority?

And as for our government, it is getting paid to help the people who put it there.

It had better start helping us, or we can find a new group come election time. Stop delaying and start accomplishing.

House members failed us over school reform

It's a sad day for the children of Hawai'i when our Legislature refuses to facilitate changes to a public-school system that has a decades-long history of failing them.

In their deliberations on the bill to provide local school boards, House members ultimately decided against our children. They chose to pick at, and challenge, legitimate studies and data that supported the bill. They chose to pick at the wording of the bill itself. They chose not to let the citizens of Hawai'i make their own decision on this issue. They chose, finally, to stick with the current system, the one option with a proven and unchallenged record of failure.

I guess they chose to hope for a miracle.

During deliberations, one member of the House Committee on Education commented that she liked the idea, but that the current bill was too cumbersome. She preferred simpler wording with more flexibility in the final number of school districts. Why didn't she offer such a bill? Another committee member, recommending against the bill, cited his own 14 years on the Education Committee to establish his bona fides. It worked! We now know he's a bona fide part of the problem.

It seems to me we have all of the components of a successful public-school system. We have bright children, we have dedicated and capable teachers, we have good principals, and the system has plenty of money per student. What we don't have is efficient use of that money, nor any sense of community connection or influence with their own school board.

Before we fix that, we have to clear two obstacles. The first — changing to local school boards — will not be on the ballot this November. But the other will. That's the name of each and every House member who refused to put public education back in the hands of the public.