Posted on: Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Letters to the Editor

Personal accounts argument is wrong

The Republicans are arguing that we need to privatize Social Security and that privatization will not result in transaction costs. They believe that the money heaped onto the national debt to finance privatization will actually save money. They have compared their financing scheme to prepaying a mortgage.

This is a false analogy. Social Security payments are more akin to operating expenses of the U.S. government than capital expenditures. When you pay down your mortgage, you acquire equity in your home and real property and avoid the scheduled interest payments. In the privatized scheme, the nation would only borrow money today for expenses that won't occur for at least 40 years in the future.

The Republican plan is more analogous to prepaying the grocery bill for you, your children and grandchildren for the next 75 years ... on your credit card. You wouldn't do it because it would be crazy.

Then again, these are the same Republicans who argue that the U.S. Treasury bonds held by the Social Security Fund are worthless, when they themselves buy millions of dollars of the same bonds for their own personal savings.

Communism conqueror

Pope John Paul II's role in the collapse of East European communism was formidable and it was accomplished peacefully. The first Slavic pope's visit to his native Poland in 1979 helped inspire and protect the Solidarity movement, and when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited the Vatican 10 years later, I said to myself that the Cold War was indeed over.

Wrangling birds good measure against flu

Regarding the March 28 article "Wrangling the wild chicken": Bonnie Huff is completely right about "the potential for disease" from feral chickens. Beyond noise and mess, there is an even greater reason to bring the feral chickens under control: to prevent the spread of bird flu if it should arrive in Hawai'i.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has said that bird flu is the single biggest threat to the world (Advertiser, March 21). Already there are approximately four dozen human deaths, and the necessary sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of chickens in Asia from the H1N5 bird flu virus. Currently there is no immunity.

It could be the next global influenza pandemic. The last global influenza pandemic in 1968 began with a single case and in five months had spread around the world and killed more than 45,000 people.

A Web site (influenza-pandemic.com) has been published in Hawai'i geared for the lay person. The intent is not to instill fear but knowledge. I encourage readers to visit the Web site or seek more information wherever they find it on this new avian flu.

Thanks go to many who helped in crash

I would like to extend my deepest heartfelt appreciation and thanks to all of the people who were involved in rescuing the victims of the automobile crash on March 23, in Makua Valley.

I am very grateful to Bobby Cummings, who was able to flag down assistance for the other victims of the crash. It was his strength and bravery that saved my son's life.

I would love any information on the Good Samaritan who appeared with a fire extinguisher and apparently scaled the barbed-wire fence onto the Makua military base and extinguished the fire in the car my son was trapped in. My son was a passenger in the front seat of the vehicle as it cartwheeled about 100 feet into the fenced-in area. He was unconscious and pinned in the upside-down vehicle. I would like to thank the Good Samaritan personally.

I am very grateful to all of the emergency personnel who assisted the victims of this crash. The ambulance crew, the helicopter crew, the staff at Queen's. All three occupants of the car survived, and we are very grateful. Most important — thank you, God.

Kudos to Kalaheo for helping little ones

I would like to thank Kalaheo High baseball coach Alex Racoma, his staff and the players who helped out at the baseball clinic for coaches, parents and players in Kailua.

They volunteered their time on a Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to help the coaches and parents better understand the game of baseball and what our youngsters should be learning and to teach the kids some basic, hitting, fielding and pitching skills.

Through their selfless efforts, the Kailua Little League will be a better organization, turning out quality athletes and creating a better community.

On behalf of all those who participated, thank you all!

Pay issue is about DOE honoring its promise

The Department of Education is claiming it can't afford to give us the money it owes us.

The issue is not whether it can afford the retroactive provision, but whether the DOE and the state will honor its legal commitment to pay substitute teachers what it promised in 1996. The DOE has not paid substitute teachers its statutory per diem rate for nine years. This is not about affordability; this is about enforcing a legal obligation.

Do you realize that in the middle of a contract year, 2004-05, the DOE decided to deduct $7 per day from our pay?

Please put yourself in our shoes. What if you were suddenly and arbitrarily given a pay cut? Would that be fair?

What if the state did not pay what state lawmakers are supposed to be paid by statute? Would that be justifiable if the state cannot "afford" to? It is the law that must be followed. The DOE must be an honest broker.

Gated communities protect against crime

Do our elected officials actually believe people want to spend their hard-earned money on electric gates and security guards?

Gated communities are a natural response to property crime out of control. If the government won't protect us, then we have no choice but to protect ourselves.

Our elected officials need to wake up and deal with the root problem — property crime and the revolving door that puts property criminals back on the street. Get property criminals off of the street so we can start to feel safe again in our communities. If we feel safe, then there's no incentive to build gated communities.

Hannemann doesn't deserve the criticism

Auwe, Lee Cataluna. Your column accusing Mufi Hannemann of picking on Jeremy Harris was way off base. I seem to recall that you've spent a lot of time crabbing about Jeremy yourself.

If Jeremy was as bad as you say, then Mufi must be holding back because he has only talked about Harris publicly a couple of times. I think if anybody's picking on Jeremy, it's the media that keep bringing that stuff up.

Jeremy had 10 years in office. He spent much money on frills and left the city in a deep financial puka.

Mufi has only been in office less than three months. He's trying to make sure the sewers and roads get fixed, so he's cutting off unneeded projects. Makes sense to me and most other maka'ainana.

So, quit crabbing about this wonderful man, who truly deserves the support of the media and the citizens of Honolulu.

Hawai'i in danger: Tort reform must be approved

Twenty states are in a healthcare crisis. Soon Hawai'i will be joining them if it doesn't act.

At the last Senate Health Committee hearing on tort reform legislation, several doctors, healthcare organizations and medical liability insurance representatives testified that our healthcare system is in deep crisis. In many areas of O'ahu and the Neighbor Islands, there is very little or no access to healthcare. Patients are suffering. Frivolous or nonmeritorious lawsuits against healthcare providers have driven the cost of their medical liability insurance sky-high. Doctors are no longer able to offer complete care.

Many doctors are either retiring early, leaving the state or not doing risky procedures. They are not taking hospital calls, especially on Neighbor Islands. The only trauma center in Hawai'i, at The Queen's Medical Center, is in jeopardy.

Recently, I tried to get a cardiologist for one of my patients who was experiencing chest pain. The only appointment I could get for my patient was two to three weeks away. While I was calling around to get an earlier appointment, my patient had a heart attack and was admitted to the hospital intensive-care unit. How long can we tolerate this?

Reasonable and positive changes are needed to existing tort law on non-economical damages to discourage nonmeritorious or frivolous lawsuits against doctors and other healthcare providers. These changes include closing loopholes in the existing tort law by expanding the definition of non-economical damages to include all non-economical damages beside pain and suffering, changing the cap on non-economical damages from the current cap of $375,000 to a more efficient cap of $250,000, and paying more money to patients and injured workers from the award instead of to their trial attorneys.

We can no longer afford to have more patients suffer heart attacks due to lack of access to healthcare like my patient. It is time for our legislators to act properly and pass suggested tort reforms immediately. Waiting for someone to die would be too late.

Social Security: Better act sooner

Whether Social Security is in crisis or will go bankrupt or has no problem currently is just semantics. The bottom line is that under most current projections, there will be a serious Social Security problem in future years that can be solved easier if acted upon sooner. Or it will likely be a massive and painful problem in the future if nothing is changed soon.

It is like constantly depending on credit cards but paying only the minimum payment each month. Everything will be great in the short term, but in the long run, the debt could grow enormous enough to bankrupt you.

President Bush deserves a lot of credit for taking the criticism that most presidents dared not in his attempt to reform Social Security. Unfortunately, it has been too easy to label any who try as hating the elderly and wanting to destroy Social Security.

In the past, fear of this has blocked intelligent Social Security reform that could be good for all Americans. I suspect that is part of the reason the president has not yet been more specific on his Social Security reform ideas. Anything he proposes will likely be criticized simply because it is the Bush plan. The risk is that the first to stick his neck out in proposing change will be the first to get his head cut off.

But a gradual move toward ownership and investment for retirement is simply the smarter way to go individually and nationally (like the way most of your current pension plans are). President Bush's idea of optional private or personal accounts has merit in that direction. The current Social Security system of simply confiscating money from a relatively shrinking workforce and giving it to a growing retiree class is not smart or workable in basic arithmetic in the long run.

The legitimate criticism of President Bush's idea is that it will likely take substantial federal borrowing to initially finance the optional private or personal account idea of Social Security reform.

In all probability, some combination compromise of raising the Social Security retirement age, increasing the income level taxed and the start of optional personal retirement accounts will be part of the solution.

As one looking toward retirement in perhaps less than a decade, I would be in favor of raising the Social Security retirement age partly because it makes sense since Americans are living longer than ever before. When the system was first started, it was not designed for Americans living and collecting for that long. Back in 1935, because of the lower life expectancy, a portion of the population was expected to die before receiving a single Social Security cent.

Seventy years later, it is time for reform. We really should have a reasoned national discussion on the issue rather than hysterical partisan accusations. No solution will be painless, but the problem should be faced soon in order to avoid even worse pain. There is no free lunch.