Letters to the Editor

Be thankful our troops defend your freedom

To the many folks who write letters protesting our "occupation" of Afghanistan and Iraq, please allow me to remind you. Be thankful for our troops who defend in foreign lands your rights and privileges of freedom. Try to imagine our world today had Germany, Japan, North Korea, China, or ... Iraq had won, instead of us.

Have you truly forgotten the events of 9/11, or are you part of the idiocy that believes President Bush knew and allowed that horrible event to happen ... just so he could wage war?

Those of you who have never done anything in the service of your country should be ashamed of yourselves; you have not earned your citizenship, you have simply assimilated it. Those of you who served, and still turn your backs on your brother and sister warriors, you do not deserve to be called Americans. To protest is our right, guaranteed by our Constitution. But if you don't have firsthand information, and protest based on second-, third-, fourth-, or fifthhand "facts," whom are you serving?

I've been there (Vietnam), done that (waged war) and can tell you, firsthand, that protesting, back home, demoralizes troops in the field. Whether you intend to or not, your protests hurt the individual soldier. You don't hurt those higher up, because they don't engage the enemy, face-to-face. You think about that, and think hard!

Gas-price cap, ethanol bills just plain dumb

Dumb and dumber! Yes, I'm referring to the Democratic majority in the state Legislature.

First, they pass legislation implementing gasoline price controls. Now they are considering passing legislation to subsidize growing of sugar cane for use in producing a gasoline additive, ethanol.

It's just plain dumb to pass price controls on anything. History, and almost every expert — even the consultants hired by the Legislature — tell us that the gas price controls will not work. The result will surely be shortages of fuel, businesses going bankrupt and no significant reduction in fuel prices ... if any.

And it's even dumber to pass legislation to subsidize the growing of cane for ethanol. Just like Mainland corn grown for ethanol, it uses more fuel to plant, harvest, transport, process and refine the corn (or sugar cane) than the amount of energy available from the ethanol produced. Where are the environmentalists?

Ethanol is less energy-efficient than gasoline. It has fewer BTUs, units of energy, than gasoline, so you get fewer "miles per gallon" with fuel that is "diluted" with ethanol. In some instances, especially in older vehicles, the ethanol damages fuel system seals and gaskets. Since these old vehicles are generally driven by lower-income taxpayers, it becomes another hidden tax on them.

Our state Legislature is being pressured by powerful agricultural interests and farm voters to pass the ethanol subsidy legislation. Just remember, a subsidy to them for ethanol is a tax on you. And the price controls will not lower gas prices.

Get rid of the gas cap before it's too late

The Legislature's pathetic attempt to amend its faulty gas-cap law is like trying to put lipstick on a pig. All the makeup in the world won't help this beast.

Experts including the Federal Trade Commission said the gas cap will increase gasoline prices. And if it were law today, we'd be paying much more for gasoline.

It's time to cut out the politics and get rid of the gas cap before it winds up hurting consumers.

Here's a principal who prefers public education

How often have you heard that DOE administrators and teachers don't send their own children to public schools? Well, this is not necessarily so.

I'm principal of 'Aina Haina Elementary, and have served as a public-school teacher and state curriculum specialist.

I'm also a public-school graduate (Roosevelt, as well as UH-Manoa). My wife, too, is a public-school graduate (Kalani and UH-Manoa). The system has done well for us and most of our classmates.

My stepson attended 'Aina Haina for grades four through six (earning a Presidential Award in grade six). Then he was an honor student at Niu Valley Middle, and now is a freshman at Kaiser High (4.0 through three quarters). The DOE is doing well for him and his classmates.

My younger son begins kindergarten in July, and, I am happy to say, will be attending 'Aina Haina.

Yes, I am so proud of my school that I want my own son to attend.

Law needed to battle 'vexatious requesters'

Lynda Arakawa's April 27 article on "vexatious requesters" (someone who does something to excess) leaves a wrong impression. The intent of this bill is to allow more access to government by getting the very few "obsessive-compulsives" to back off and share.

Ever been in the express checkout line behind someone with way too many items, and who then has the gall to write a check? It makes you mad, and this is 10 times worse. The very few who abuse the system by tying up the limited resources keep the rest of us from getting timely replies.

For society to work, some rules are needed to curb abuses, and this bill only does that.

Vote report incorrect

Your May 2 Washington Week incorrectly reported my vote as "Nay" on the April 28 U.S. House vote to make permanent elimination of the "marriage tax penalty." I voted "Aye" on this bill to permanently extend the increased standard deduction and 15 percent individual income tax rate bracket expansion for married couples filing jointly. The vote tally was 323-95; the bill now moves to the U.S. Senate.

Diatribe against Bush just same old liberalism

Don Neill's great comeback (April 29) to David Polhemus' diatribe against President Bush (April 25) clearly indicates that Neill, not the far-left-leaning Advertiser crybaby, should be writing for a newspaper.

Polhemus' stuff was just another effort by the liberal Advertiser to paint Bush and conservatives as evil people even though huge majorities of Americans oppose racial preferences, want immigration limited, resent benefits for illegal immigrants, oppose gay marriage, are morally troubled by cloning, support the death penalty, look favorably on the Boy Scouts, support parental-consent laws on abortion and want a ban on "partial-birth" abortion.

Liberals, such as Polhemus, have several big problems. They lack ideas. They are much too taken with the fact that most newsrooms are full of liberals, such as the Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Weekly, to see that the great unwashed are gaining the upper hand despite the columns, cartoons and editorials adhering to the party line.

The Advertiser newsroom should turn on KHVH's Rush Limbaugh radio show every weekday to get the conservatives' viewpoint. It would be very interesting to see how any Advertiser writer would stack up Rush. As Don said, "Lighten up, get a life!"

Students do indeed go on library field trips

I wanted to respond to the April 27 letter from Richard Brill that questions the teachers and principal at Jefferson Elementary arranging field trips to libraries. I can assure Mr. Brill that we do take our students to the library on field trips.

Let me illustrate our perspective on the importance of libraries and literacy. At Jefferson, we are only allowed to go on four field trips. Two of the four field trips were literacy-based, one to Waikiki Library and the other to Borders. In addition, I have a classroom library of over 5,000 books (that I have purchased with most of my own money, not taxpayers') that the students are allowed to borrow.

Yes, it is true. Many of our students had not been to a bookstore before Mr. and Mrs. Van Trees' field trip and did not have the luxury of owning their own books. Over half of our students are on free and reduced lunch. When you are faced with decisions between where you are going to live and where your next meal is coming from, buying books is often not a top priority. Survival is most important.

In addition, most of my students do not have a library card. Therefore, they are unable to borrow books at the public library.

I commend Mr. and Mrs. Van Trees for fulfilling a need and supporting literacy for the future generation. I also appreciate their desire to share their passion for reading with our children. Our students were so excited with their books that many of them read on the bus and throughout lunch. Quite a few stayed up into the night reading. We are very grateful to the Van Trees for their generosity.

Instead of putting down a wonderful event, do something positive to help our school. We have been advertising for tutors to help students with reading after school, and there is a wonderful program called Adopt a Teacher run by Maggie Ulm.

The wheels are coming off

Try connecting some of the dots from recent news:

• The April 25 Advertiser chronicled scientists studying a serious change in the Atlantic current that warms Europe, something that climatologists say can alter world weather significantly, perhaps catastrophically.

In the fall of 2000, as G.W. Bush was asking the U.S. Supreme Court to elect him, an article called "Transnational Security Threats and State Survival" by Paul Smith in the U.S. Army War College publication Parameters indicated that sudden global climate change ranked as probably the worst transnational threat facing America, echoing the longer-term climate-change predictions from International Protocol on Climate Change. Once in office, Bush reversed a campaign pledge on global warming, and with it America's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

• The Union of Concerned Scientists, including eight with Nobel prizes, recently wrote the president to ask him to stop stifling all manner of reputable science.

• While U.S. Marines were dying in the siege of Fallujah and Army personnel continued to die all over Iraq, the administration fired a woman for releasing photos of the flag-draped coffins of our military. Meanwhile, Bush backs a flight to Mars and another to the moon, a missile defense system in space that reputable scientists say won't work, and approves reversals in the Clean Air Act and increased logging in federal forests. The rising costs in lives, treasure and environment receive no official comment, no accounting.

• With federal deficits running at 6 percent of GDP and conservative International Monetary Fund bankers warning the president that soaring debt could cause a worldwide economic meltdown, the administration omits the cost of the ongoing Iraq war from the annual budget. W. instead insists that tax cuts for the wealthy become permanent.

• According to the April 25 New York Times, a NASA memo tells its scientists to say nothing about a forthcoming fictional film dealing with the consequences of sudden global warming, as if scientific employment requires giving up one's First Amendment rights.

Politics in the hands of Bush and company has transformed into a crazy quilt, separate patches where uncomfortable facts require official contradictions or some form of muzzling. In a short three-plus years of Bush, we have arrived in Orwell's version of Oz, but this time without Dorothy and the brainless and heartless leading the parade.