Popular music not to be taken lightly

Being a cynical person myself, I can appreciate Keith Mattson's Tuesday letter concerning Cat Stevens. But I also agree with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who said: "You write the laws, let me write the music ... and I will control your country." Pretty powerful statement, that.

Look back at history and the civil unrest and rebellion that was part of my generation of the '60s, as was reflected in the music of the day. Well, it did bring about a lot of necessary change but carried with it a lot of unnecessary violence. Today we have a lot of hatred in the music of our youth and we can identify a lot of negative things taking place in our society as a result.

Don't underestimate the power of what is pumped into our minds over the airwaves, especially when it is played over and over and over ...

Loser should become managing director

Both mayoral candidates, Duke Bainum and Mufi Hannemann, and the people of O'ahu would be happy if the winner will appoint the loser as managing director for the city. Based on the results of the primary election, it is safe to say that Mr. Bainum will be the clear winner (I hope I am wrong) of the general election.

Mr. Hannemann as managing director will work together with his would-be boss and learn all the tricks of the trade, like D.G. Anderson under ex-Mayor Fasi. That would be the right route for Mr. Hannemann to become the future mayor and be a governor for the state of Hawai'i. I am almost sure the rail transit system that failed years ago, which I am still grieving, will become a reality. Both candidates are for it.

No one knows which candidate they favor

I find it rather presumptuous of Mufi Hannemann's people to apparently believe that all the Fasi voters will come over to Mufi. I think Fasi got the number of votes that he did not because his loyal backers felt he could actually win, but because they simply weren't sold on either Bainum or Hannemann.

These two men have a real battle on their hands to prove themselves before the November election. The voters are not sheep, and Mr. Fasi, much as he loves politics, should have acted like the elder gentleman statesman that he is, and just stayed out of further involvement with this race.

The voters need to decide this matter for themselves — independently.

Catch a Wahine game for a rollicking time

Hey, all you Rainbow fans who miss having a good time at a UH game should come to the next home game of the Wahine volleyball team at the Stan Sheriff Center.

You can yell "Let's go, 'Bows! Let's go, 'Bows!" and rock the arena.

It's like magic — the Wahine can come back from a deficit score and win, when you yell those words! The other teams usually have only a couple of hundred fans at home, so when they see our thousands in the stands, it's hard for them not to be overwhelmed. The live pep band keeps the fans happy to "row their canoes" during their playing of "Hawaii Five-O." This year, the team has no "superstars," so they're all playing together as a team.

Another plus is, so far everyone who has sung "The Star-Spangled Banner" this year has sung it correctly and on key! In previous years, some of the singers had made up their own version of the national anthem and didn't sing the "banner" part as written. More respect should be shown when performing our national anthem.

Number of cars must be limited

Just the other day, The Advertiser told us we would soon have upwards of 20,000 more cars in the state.

Believe me, they're already here! I live in 'Aiea, work at the airport. Eight miles. Takes me over an hour to get home.

Our state government urgently needs to apply some creative thinking and action to this problem. Obviously we have more vehicles on our roads than they can accommodate. As traffic snarls, everything is adversely affected.

Eventually, commerce will grind to a halt.

Personally, I doubt that mass transit will solve the problem. People will still buy new cars, while selling, trading or giving away their old ones.

Maybe there should be a huge tax on new cars, which could be avoided when the new car buyer presents a certificate showing a car has been officially junked.

It just won't do to say we can't control the number of cars in our state. We must.

Candidate is coy on his BRT stand

Duke Bainum and Jeremy Harris together flunked the Federal Transit Administration application process to fund the Bus Rapid Transit project.

Spearheading BRT's legislative agenda, Bainum was manipulative, intolerant and mean tempered. Working groups were handpicked "by invitation only."

Bainum attacked citizens who testified respectfully at public hearings. His favorite tactic was to label small businesses as "special interests over public interests." Now that he is running for mayor and BRT construction is almost finished, Bainum coyly flip-flops.

The Waikiki district Bainum represented now suffers from the worst traffic congestion ever. Worse is yet to come.

Harris and Bainum foisted a hazardous, poorly designed construction project in the guise of transportation. Established traffic engineering standards were ignored — just as the city ignored FTA's frequent, consistent warnings of consequences by prematurely awarding BRT construction contracts before FTA approvals were secured.

True to form, Bainum refuses to answer questions and discuss issues openly in his mayoral campaign. His elitist, hardball record is a bad omen.

His ads for "honesty in government" are spurious, as BRT contractors are mired in "pay to play" indictments and convictions. The citizens of Honolulu cannot afford a succession of the Harris-Bainum high spending sprees.

Why girls shouldn't be sent to Utah

Shawn Lathrop paints a benign picture of Utah prisons in his Sept. 28 letter. Perhaps he is unaware of the history of violation of prisoner rights in Utah prisons.

For example, the death of a 29-year-old schizophrenic inmate who was stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair by Utah prison staff and died from a blood clot that blocked an artery to his heart.

As to the mental health services the six girls might receive in Utah, shortly after the incident above, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against three Utah Department of Corrections doctors for binding a mentally ill man naked to a stainless steel pallet for 85 straight days. He was left to defecate while lying on the board.

The director of the Utah Department of Corrections was forced to resign.

He left Iraq shortly before the shocking torture scandal took over television screens around the world.

Anyone concerned with sending six Hawai'i girls into a system with a record of incidents such as Utah has earned should write Gov. Lingle or call her at 586-0034 and demand that the six girls be returned to Hawai'i immediately and that no children be sent to the Mainland in the future.

Dysfunctional system prevents rehabilitation

I am an orthopedic surgeon who has practiced in Hawai'i over 30 years.

During this time I have observed the deterioration of the Hawai'i workers' compensation system. In my view, two issues override the others:

• Access to care. Orthopedic surgeons are among the main specialist providers for workers' comp injuries, as these injuries are predominantly to the musculo-skeletal system. I am aware that many orthopedists no longer will see injured workers, or have severely limited their access to care. The reasons are twofold. 1) Remuneration is low. 2) The paperwork required is onerous. Some of the doctors have complained to me that it actually costs them money to take care of the injured workers. A specific example of decreased access to care is the fact that Straub Clinic closed down its occupational medicine department last May.

• Return to work. Hawai'i's workers have one of the lowest return-to-work rates in the country. The sooner an injured worker returns to work, the better is his prognosis for recovery. It is my opinion that decreased access to care from Hawai'i's better physicians correlates with the delayed return to work because of the dependence on and overuse of passive care modalities, such as massage, acupuncture and narcotic medications. Short-term passive care can be helpful. But to continue it on for many months encourages the patient to remain disabled and prevents his active rehabilitation.

Council has the wrong idea

The Honolulu City Council is not in support of the city administration's full restoration of the Natatorium pool. The council is also considering a proposal from another organization to demolish the pool, leave the arch and construct a new beach to complement the existing Kaimana Beach. All of this in the name of fiscal responsibility and saving taxpayers' money.

If it's cost that people are worried about, the suggestion to demolish the Natatorium pool is naive and foolish.

First, the fact that the military has not been able to demolish most of the World War II gun emplacement bunkers along some of our shoreline (there's one on top of Diamond Head) signals the difficulty in demolishing concrete structures of that era. The Natatorium walls have more concrete volume than all the bunkers combined. It would take massive amounts of explosives to dislodge and render the walls in small enough pieces to remove.

This will never be permitted because the walls are on the shoreline of a marine life conservation district. Furthermore, after all these years, the coral material has grown and become part of the wall so that its base is now functioning as an artificial reef extension of the natural reef system.

These are just two of a host of issues that will be raised if demolition becomes a serious proposal. The gauntlet of federal, state and county agencies that have to approve various aspects of demolition will never allow it to happen. Another hurdle is that the state of Hawai'i is the owner, not the city. I can't imagine any governor signing off on destroying a war memorial that is on both state and national historic registers.

If the Natatorium disappears so does Kaimana Beach. It is the Natatorium walls that keep the sand in place. If the Natatorium is demolished, creating a new beach as proposed by the Kaimana Beach Coalition will require that two new groins be built. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is on public record with its "no new construction in marine conservation areas."

The cost of a new beach has been conservatively placed at $15 million. This does not include the $4.7 million already invested in the renovated bathrooms, bleachers and facade, and the additional $6 million the city is spending to complete repairs.

Finally, due to its integrated design, the structure cannot stand without the pool in place. So, the proposal to simply preserve the arch as a backdrop for a new beach will not work. The choices and consequences are clear. The least expensive alternative is to restore it — or let it rot and become a national embarrassment.