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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Thursday, January 15, 2004

Letters to the Editor

Government owes us explanation for roads

Where is all the money we pay in gas taxes going?

Every automobile owner on O'ahu needs to contact City Hall, the Department of Transportation and the state Division of Highways demanding an explanation for why our roads have not been repaved (not dumping a shovel of asphalt into a hole and saying this solves the problem).

There needs to be an investigation into this now and an accounting (an itemized list) as to where these taxes are going.

I have lived here for 23 years, and Kapi'olani Boulevard is no better today than it was then. Does anyone remember Dillingham Boulevard? We keep getting the same story year after year: "Oh, that area is scheduled for more (underground electrical, sewer, water, telephone) work, and it doesn't make sense to fix the road until that is completed."

I guess if I were in the business of repairing cars, I would be happy with that answer; but I'm not, only because I'm getting screwed twice — gas taxes and auto repairs.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Automobile Owner, it's time for you to do something about the poor quality of our streets. You're paying for them and you're not getting your money's worth.

Marion Higa, where are you?

Jan Wonso
Honolulu

Take a closer look at Cambodian adoptions

Thank you for the well-written and -researched article by Timothy Hurley on Cambodia's not-really-orphans being adopted overseas. I'd like to present some food for thought: Parents in Cambodia and northern Thailand and China have been selling their babies and young children for many generations.

They sell them sometimes out of desperation — not enough food to go around in their poverty-stricken households, or not enough food in times of crop failure. Others sell for income. Some tribes and rural villages raise their daughters with the expectation that when they come of age, that is, puberty, they will be sold to brothels. Most of these children end up in slavery to households of varying degrees of kindness or else in brothels (boys as well as girls).

How much better for a parent to sell a child to an American where he or she knows the child stands a chance of a decent life. In America, we have an abhorrence of selling babies. Perhaps we should take another look at it. For the toddler being adopted, it probably doesn't matter that much whether her parents were both dead or whether she was just "surplus" in the family. What will be important to the toddler is whether she ends up in a family that really wants her and will give her enough food to grow big and strong.

There is always a danger that a baby has been abducted from the mother and is being sold as an orphan strictly for profit to the agency supplying the infant. But with the ready availability of babies in Asia, particularly girls, that probably doesn't happen in that part of the world very often.

Elaine Masters
Waikiki

Don't let roundabout craze get established

Looks like the current roundabout craze that Mainland city planners have rammed through so many cities is now being pushed in Hawai'i.

Coming from Eugene, Ore., where dozens of roundabouts and traffic-calming devices (lots of raised bumps and knobs, along with curbs jutting out into lanes on major streets) have suddenly appeared without the people's input. Believe me, they solve nothing, but increase accidents and deaths.

Bike riders are particularly at risk. These obstacles are a complete waste of taxpayers' money when stop signs are less costly and much safer. In Oregon, the accident and death rates increased because of the confusion these devices have caused.

I hope the people of Hawai'i don't fall for the street planners' giant con job regarding the benefits of roundabouts and traffic-calming devices and fight them.

Congratulations to the Salt Lake-area people for protesting them. Unite your protests; don't let the planners take over your neighborhood. Beware — if one roundabout gets through, there will be many more to follow.

J.J. Breeden
Kahuku

Editorial was wrong about Gen. Musharraf

A brutal dictator who has denied democracy and freedom to his people. A man with weapons of mass destruction at his disposal. A man who has links to terrorist organizations. A man who has done business with others in the "axis of evil." A man who has threatened one of America's allies. I must be talking about Saddam Hussein, right? No, all of this can easily be applied to Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.

So, this is someone who should be stopped, right? But The Advertiser tells us (Jan. 6 editorial: "Musharraf's defeat would be disaster") that we must support this dictator because he is "trying to keep the lid on Islamic radicalism."

Are the Pakistani people any less deserving of democracy and freedom than the Iraqis? Are they any less deserving of the right to chart their own destiny? Simply replace Musharraf with "Saddam Hussein," and your editorial could have been written 20 years ago about Iraq.

As Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I guess it's normal for us to have a short attention span, but I'm amazed that The Advertiser's editorial writers have chosen to forget so much, so quickly.

Curtis Washburn
Makiki

Increasing excise tax for light rail a bad idea

Cal Kawamoto's idea to raise the excise tax to 4.5 percent to fund a new rail transit system has me, and should have everyone in Hawai'i, hopping mad.

I hate the excise tax. But if I lived in one of the other three counties, I'd be upset because this is funding a project in Honolulu. Since I live in Honolulu, I'm upset because we don't have to increase taxes at all.

A novel idea: How about allocating 0.5 percent from the existing 4 percent excise tax that is generated on O'ahu for its rail system? Given the recovering economy and resultant greater aggregate of tax revenues, let's cut the portion of the excise that is spent now for state government and use it for the rail system.

Wait, wouldn't that be a tax reduction? No, but it wouldn't be a tax increase.

John D. Nielsen
Honolulu

Cut down on traffic with odd/even system

Regarding the Jan. 5 editorial "Never mind the beef; worry about driving": OK, everyone agrees that we have a problem with too many cars on the road. And a very big problem it is indeed.

However, nobody seems to agree on how to solve the problem, let alone an idea that would actually work.

Already, the onslaught of trial balloons has begun over the various permutations of public transportation solutions.

I submit that we are all wasting our time gnashing our gums over the pros and cons of these various brainchildren. If we are to solve a problem, we must first understand what exactly the problem is. Here in Honolulu, most of the traffic congestion is caused by the same people who cause it in every other major metropolitan area in the world: the single-occupant automobile commuters.

These people do what they do not because they have no alternative; these people drive to work every day alone because they want the freedom and independence to come and go at will. No availability of mass transit, no matter how convenient or affordable, is going to change this behavior until it is forced to change.

So the real question is, how do we go about causing this behavioral change to happen and to happen quickly?

You want to effect change immediately and reduce the traffic by roughly 50 percent? Here is what to do. It is called "odd and even." On even workdays of the month, only cars with license plates ending with even numbers would be allowed on the Honolulu city surface streets during the morning and evening rush hours. On odd-numbered days, odd-numbered license plates would be allowed. Of course legitimate service vehicles, residents and other justifiable traffic would be exempt.

Richard Koretz
Honolulu

More Christmas trees means more planting

I want to correct a common misperception. A recent letter referring to Christmas trees stated "if nobody buys a tree next year, a whole evergreen forest can continue living ..." ("Try a reusable tree," Jan. 3).

Actually, what would happen is the tree farmers would plant no new trees and would convert their present forest land to other crops, pasture or development. This is equally true for the larger forests that provide our lumber; the more lumber we use, the more trees are planted to fill the market need.

The good news is that we are using more lumber, and our forest land in the United States has increased 20 percent since 1970.

Larry Lanning
Kailua

Hawai'i's public school system is not broken

I fear that James Kerr, in his letter of Jan. 11 ("Making excuses won't improve our schools"), may have failed to do some research.

He is correct in that Hawai'i's educational environment is not unique. Washington state (and others with high immigration counts) is experiencing the same result as Hawai'i. I suggest that he read an article in the Seattle Times of Dec. 24, "Limited English dooms kids on WASL," which is available on the Internet (www.seattletimes.com).

The public school system in Hawai'i isn't broken. If a student's family's first language is not English and the student is poor at speaking, reading and comprehending English, "equal educational opportunities" — without teachers in every classroom at least conversationally proficient in the first language of each non-English proficient student — are not going to be easy to achieve.

For example, I believe that last year The Advertiser reported that Ala Wai Elementary School had students from families representing over 20 different primary (non-English) languages. I do not believe that school is unique in Hawai'i.

Bernard Judson
Kapolei