Posted on: Monday, February 21, 2005

Letters to the Editor

Consumers bear burden of excise tax

Many people feel that an increase in the general excise tax is justified to pay for a rail system on O'ahu. One point must be understood: Businesses do not bear the burden of this tax, the consumers do.

Most, if not all, businesses simply "launder" the money collected by the state. For example, say an item costs $10 at the store. If the store owner charges 4 percent tax, the customer would pay $10.40. (Remember when this was actually the case?) The state charges the business 4 percent of all revenues, so the store owner would have to pay about 42 cents for this sale, leaving $9.98 for the business to keep. In reality, the store owner charges the customer 4.167 percent, thereby collecting $10.42 for the $10 item. For this sale, the state collects 4 percent, or 42 cents again. Now the store owner gets to keep all $10 of the listed price.

Should the tax rate be raised to 5 percent, the consumer would end up paying about 5.26 percent for every purchase. That same $10 item would now cost $10.53.

Compensating workers in war zone is not fair

Legislation that requires the state to compensate its employees on active duty in a hostile-fire zone the difference between their higher state pay and their military pay is similar to the Guardsman and Reservist Act of 1991 as then proposed by Congressman Neil Abercrombie, except that that defunct legislation had a $40,000 differential cap.

It is unseemly for the state of Hawai'i to pay a differential salary that, in some cases, would make a corporal in a hostile-fire zone earn more than his or her captain in the same zone. It would create a competition between states for those who are professionals back home. It would give a distinction akin to a title or patent of nobility to state employees but not to those Hawai'i residents who work for private employers.

Does the state presume to determine who is more welcome back or who should not have been subject to the backdoor draft in the first place?

Pat Tilman was a hero. He gave up a multimillion-dollar deal to play football to serve in Afghanistan. The Army National Guard advertising poster "Heroes Wanted" — paid for by the Hawai'i taxpayers — lists "lack of concern for material reward" as an attribute of heroes. Tilman was in it for the duration.

All U.S. soldiers in current hostile-fire zones are volunteers — as those 27 Marines who gave the "last full measure of devotion" on one day last month were volunteers. Youth can't be compensated. But are state employees who now are older and may still owe on their mortgages (or who may own their mortgages outright) and who "only stand and wait" somehow less patriotic?

One internment camp teacher lives in Hawai'i

Your Feb. 5 feature "Internment camp teachers honored" was very meaningful and well done. But did you know that we have one of those teachers living right here in Honolulu?

Her name is Catherine Harris, and she was a teacher at the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona, in the middle of nowhere.

She was only 22, an English major in college, with no teaching experience whatsoever. No desert experience, either, because she was from the Midwest. She wrote a book about her adventures and misadventures. It is titled "Dusty Exile" and was published in 1999. People are still buying and enjoying it in Hawai'i and on the West Coast.

I was thrilled to read about how the Japanese Americans pulled themselves together, organized everything, and made the best of a very unpleasant and difficult situation.

Grammy-winning album was right choice

I was amazed by the response by some Hawaiians who said that they were surprised at the choice of the Grammy-winning Hawaiian album and were even bold enough to suggest that it was voted on by people who are not from Hawai'i. I was very happy with the winning choice and for those who took on the project and made it a reality.

With all the pre-Grammy hype that really focuses on only a few of the nominees, I was pulling for the instrumental album and even voted for it online. All Hawai'i should support the first-ever Grammy winners and certainly be proud of them instead of turning it into a political issue.

Kumu hula Frank Hewitt had it right when he said this "is the first of many good things to come." This win for the underdog has certainly given me hope that you don't have to have the top-selling albums in Hawai'i to win a Grammy. All it takes is hard work, a little luck and, most of all, humility.

Hana hou, Charles Brotman.

Enforce law against dogs in pickup beds

Why is our Police Department not enforcing a city ordinance that clearly states that dogs are not allowed to be transported in the back of pickup trucks without being enclosed in a "secure carrier?"

I see dogs precariously perched in the back of pickup trucks, trying to maintain their balance as their drivers are speeding down the freeway. Not only is this cruel to the animal, but it also endangers everyone on the roadway.

I am aware of a recent incident in which a dog that was tied had fallen over the side of the truck and was being pummeled to death. The driver didn't have a clue until he was alerted by other motorists.

This ordinance saves lives and needs to be enforced.

Aloha Stadium needs to join high-tech world

High-tech Hawai'i? For years in previous state and city administrations, I have heard our Hawai'i and Honolulu touted as a high-tech mecca with high-speed fiber cable this and wireless that. It is to a degree embarrassing at the Pro Bowl when visiting journalists and photojournalists ask us local photographers for assistance and all we can do is point to a phone line at Aloha Stadium as our "high-tech" connection to the cyber world.

At the Turtle Bay Resort for the recent senior PGA Turtle Bay Golf Championships, every journalist/photojournalist had a dedicated high-speed Internet connection and the hotel had wireless Internet capabilities.

As this ancient technology is not of your making or design, Gov. Lingle and Mayor Hannemann, I respectfully suggest that your offices coordinate with the very helpful people at the Stadium Authority, Oceanic Cable and CompUSA to implement some immediate improvements, as the stadium is frequently a showcase to visiting journalists from around the world. I think that something could be put in place by the end of February for the upcoming D.C. United vs. L.A. Galaxy soccer match.

Bring me on board, I'll be glad to help — we've had it going well for quite a while in high-tech Hau'ula.

Housing developers must be reined in

The traffic problem is out of control because the source of the problem — overdevelopment — is out of control.

The threats to quality of life — aesthetic environment, sustainable fresh water supply, cost of living, crowding, ecological degradation, shortages of landfills and, of course, traffic — are part of the price we pay for allowing the developers to virtually assure more of the same. They pocket their profits while the taxpayers live with and pay for the growth problems the developers leave behind.

We are stuck with the never-ending cost of maintaining and staffing schools, police and fire units, parks, libraries, highways, etc. A true and accurate cost-benefit analysis seems to have been lost on the latest euphemism, "sustainable growth." Soliciting in-migrants to move to the Islands and buy the developers' homes has caused the population, hence cars, to grow beyond any acceptable rate. Now everybody, including those who allowed this out-of-control growth to continue, complains about the traffic they're stuck in because they were too shortsighted to anticipate the consequences of growth.

No to rail transit. We've already subsidized the above-mentioned aftermath of development far too much.

Let the developers provide regular and permanent shuttle transportation. To assure their shuttles will always be filled, do not allow new homes to include garages, and ban overnight yard, driveway and on-street parking.

Shapiro didn't show semblance of balance

David Shapiro's Feb. 2 column was a typical "if you don't like the message, just shoot the messenger" mentality that is prevalent in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. It is obvious throughout the opinion piece that Shapiro is pro-Hawaiian sovereignty and also for the Akaka bill, calling two individuals opposed to both as "ludicrous and mean-spirited."

But surely after all the name-calling of those who do not see things his way, Shapiro could have maintained a semblance of balance, but he just couldn't control his own self-appointed sovereignty agenda, saying that the Akaka bill was merely a "Hawaiian effort to gain federal protection."

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Akaka bill is clearly the federal creation of a Nation of Hawai'i where ancestry and race are the only qualifications for membership. Not only is the intention to protect current benefits but to lay the groundwork for future benefits, including the taking of the public ceded lands.

Shapiro is no better than the individuals he takes to task as "anti-Hawaiian." However, you would expect that at least he would inform his readers that he is pro-Hawaiian sovereignty.

Palliative care isn't a panacea

Thanks to David Shapiro for setting the record straight on palliative care for the dying ("Palliative care claims are a cruel deception," Feb. 9). Those opposed to assisted dying on the premise that "what we really need is better pain management" both deceive themselves and ignore six years of Oregon's data, which shows that 87 percent of patients who chose to hasten their death cite loss of autonomy as the primary concern. Pain or the fear of pain ranks near the bottom.

While few would argue that hospices provide the best that palliative care has to offer, 86 percent of these same Oregon patients were enrolled in hospice, and thus it is obvious that palliative care alone is not the panacea groups like the Hawai'i Medical Association make it out to be.

For many patients, even when the pain can be controlled, the prospect of being kept alive in an eternal stupor, suffering from chronic constipation, constant nausea, shortness of breath or the many other side effects of heavy sedation is not how they wish to live.

Ironically, many of the same doctors who lash out against assisted dying already practice it; they just call it something a bit more palatable.

Take "terminal sedation" as one example of a very routine practice carried out daily in hospitals across the country. Under this procedure, the patient can request to be placed into a drug-induced coma after which his or her life support is withdrawn. The result is the patient dies, usually of starvation, within a few days or weeks. Although the patient couldn't have done it alone, no one ever accuses the doctor of "assisting" in the death. Yet that same dying patient, even when lucid and suffering intolerably, is denied the right to a prescriptive medicine that he or she can self-administer to bring about a peaceful and quicker death.

Yes, better pain management is desperately needed and yes, while it will unquestionably reduce the number of terminally ill people wishing to hasten their death, it will never entirely eliminate the desire for it.

For some, a dignified death means the ability of the dying person to control the time and manner of his or her own death, rather than leaving it up to useless medical science and technology. A physician's duty is not limited to healing but to ending suffering as well. And where this is only possible through a hastened death, the physician should be willing to help the patient experience a death in accordance with the patient's own personal beliefs and values.