Posted on: Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Letters to the Editor

Large tax on gasoline needed for rail transit

Mass transit is a great idea. Unfortunately, the people planning it here (or rather, not planning it) are setting the program up for failure. Successful mass-transit systems need either high gas prices or high population densities. Hawai'i has neither.

Putting a price cap on gasoline was the first step to ensure a failing mass-transit system because as long as gas is cheap, the average person won't park his car and take mass transit. Every successful mass-transit system in the world has taxed gasoline in order to subsidize it. Without a $1-to-$3-per-gallon tax on gas, the traffic situation won't change.

Some say this is unfair because the people paying the tax aren't using the system, but they're wrong. The people paying that tax are getting less traffic, fewer accidents and cleaner air.

We will all benefit from mass transit; the question is, are we all willing to pay the price?

Ticketing mopeds for parking wrong

In a time when traffic congestion is on everyone's mind, downtown police officers are penalizing moped riders.

Not only do moped commuters have to deal with the daily elements of wind and rain, breathe in the exhaust of surrounding cars and avoid dangerous potholes, but they are now being ticketed when using city-placed sidewalk lock-up poles.

The black poles (often built in the shape of bicycles) provide a safe and relatively convenient place to lock up bicycles (and often mopeds).

Recently, I returned to my moped after a class at HPU to find a $35 parking citation. As always, I was carefully parked directly parallel to the pole, just as I had been doing for the past three months.

I can understand being penalized if I had been blocking the sidewalk or causing a hazard, but that simply was not the case.

What kind of message does this send to people who are trying to do their small part in alleviating our serious traffic-congestion problem?

Band's legacy outlives directors

Former Royal Hawaiian bandmaster Aaron Mahi should be commended for his 24 years as bandmaster, but his tenure and departure should be kept in perspective.

The Royal Hawaiian Band is its own legacy, and is not about any one person. There were 17 bandmasters before Mahi, and the band existed for 145 years prior to the start of his tenure. I don't see how people can call themselves "friends" of the band if they can only support the band under one specific conductor. This, in fact, is not support for the organization as a whole.

Mahi's departure does not mean the end of the Royal Hawaiian Band, but rather perhaps the end of an era, and a chance for new and continued growth.

It is my sincere hope that those who have supported the band in the past would continue to do so; their support is an integral part of the band's success. Change and transition are a part of any organization; let's continue to support this cultural treasure through change, where needed, and ensure the band's rightful place in the future.

Get medical examiner to accidents sooner

Nice story on Feb. 12, thank you ("Closing roads after accidents routine"). I was caught in the H-1 fatality traffic on Dec. 20 and waited with thousands of others for three hours. The ambulance threaded its way past me en route to the scene at 3:30, a full two hours after the 1:30 incident. After an hour, traffic flowed again at 4:30.

The Honolulu Police Department initially responded that the delay was necessitated by the wait for the medical examiner. Granted, the examiner must check each fatality, but it seemed an inexcusably long wait for him or her.

I'm told that in California it is routine to dispatch fatal-crash teams by helicopter, which in this case would surely have saved tens of thousands of motorists at least two hours each. Although California roadways are "closed when necessary," my understanding is that this usually requires no more than 30 to 60 minutes, even in accidents involving fatalities.

HPD is doing well in the face of conflicting pressures, but there is always room for improvement. We need to keep the pressure on the police to continually improve their response time and efficiency, particularly during peak hours, because our island offers almost no alternative streets along its main traffic corridors.

Congratulations

Congratulations to the artists featured on "Slack Key Guitar, Vol. 2" for winning the Best Hawaiian Music Album Grammy award. I felt proud seeing Charles Brotman and Sonny Lim accept the award. The "Kiho'alu Style" is Hawai'i all the way — a slack key style tuning that is indeed unique to our Islands. Mahalo nui.

An unbiased choice

Finally! The Grammys have clearly defined what good music is in Hawai'i. Unlike the Hoku Award winners, who are usually politically connected, the winner was selected by unbiased music critics who choose according to quality apart from whom an artist is connected to. Music in Hawai'i will never be the same. Hooray!

Just a tiny mistake

Watching the Pro Bowl on TV this year was great. Less obtrusive commercials than usual and many great quarterbacks live, past and present.

One highlight also was during the halftime show. Don Ho had just finished singing "Tiny Bubbles" (of course) and his name was flashed on the screen with the last name spelled Hoe.

Churchill talk stirs community

Churchill is not about freedom of speech

As a retired professor of English in the UH system, I'm simply outraged at the university departments that sponsored Ward Churchill's visit and talk. Churchill is not about freedom of speech. Rather, he, and the departments that have invited him, are about the abuse of academic freedom of speech.

To put the university in the untenable position of hosting someone who approves the killing of the business people (calling them "technocrats" and "little Eichmanns") in the World Trade Center is irresponsible. Ward now says he regrets the killing of the janitors and children. How nice — although supporting violence against some people, he draws the line at those of whom he approves.

The man is a small-potatoes guy trying to re-create himself as the poster child of the "blame America" crowd, using "freedom of speech" as a rallying cry. His background as an American Indian is suspect. He has weak academic credentials. But, still, several UH departments wanted to lend him a hand, and a microphone. Why?

Forget the fig leaf of "freedom of speech." It's because they agree with him. Would they give the same invitation to an academic whose "freedom of speech" was threatened when that academic supported the killing — or even blaming — of, say, Hawaiians or women? I think not.

We teach students to evaluate ideas

The University of Hawai'i, funded by taxpayer dollars, educates students to think independently and take informed positions on controversies, such as the one that professor Ward Churchill's post-9/11 article, " 'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," has provoked. As public educators, teaching our students how to evaluate ideas and events in an objective and sophisticated manner is one of our mandates.

Taxpayers don't need to pay for people to attend universities if their only sources on the controversy and its implications are going be Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or the Hawai'i Senate minority leader, Fred Hemmings. Condemnation, fear and distortions stop debate and dialogue instead of encouraging them.

Perhaps this is a good time for the public to think about what exactly their tax dollars, which pay for public education, support — free and informed speech, or bigoted and uninformed opinions.

Churchill opposition should be invited

Well, we certainly know which side of the political spectrum David Stannard, UH professor of American Studies, is on, don't we? He states "If we invited a right-wing political commentator like Bill O'Reilly, we'd defend him the same way we defend Churchill" ("UH takes heat over visit by professor," Feb. 19).

Note he has not called Churchill "left-wing." Why is O'Reilly called "right-wing"? So much for objectivity in our university!

What Stannard and the rest of the bunch at UH need to do is invite someone, anyone, in fierce opposition with Churchill's viewpoints. Maybe then we won't flunk Stannard and UH on "credibility."

Churchill should be praised for his efforts

I am proud to belong to a university system that is courageous enough to host professor Ward Churchill.

A serious, respected and thoughtful scholar of America's institutional practices against indigenous peoples and other oppressed peoples, professor Churchill criticizes the foreign policies of the United States based on actual historical and social research.

Rather than malign professor Churchill out of the growing mob mentality that takes his work out of context, we should try to understand, support and praise his bravery to speak the truth to a population that deeply needs to hear it.

Free-speech crowd has one-sided view

Ward Churchill's visit sure brought out the free-speech crowd.

Funny, I didn't hear an uproar when Dr. Ken Conklin was denied the right to teach a class (Hawaiian sovereignty — another view) in the fall of '02. The subsequent uproar and accompanying threats and intimidation, of the director of the academy of lifetime learning, a frail old lady, in her office by burly anti-free-speech members of the academic community at UH was enough to cause the cancellation. (See http://tinyurl.com/3rlyk.) Though subsequently reinstated, the damage was done.

It is obviously OK to say anything you want to at UH as long as it is filled with hate and anti-Americanism.

Critics missed point; it's about free speech

The real issue here is that those who opposed Ward Churchill's UH visit (perhaps not realizing that many supporters of the talk vehemently disagree with Churchill on many issues) are missing an extremely crucial point: Ward Churchill's visit is not really about Ward Churchill at all.

Churchill's visit to UH is about valuing free speech, upholding the spirit of academic freedom, which involves open expression and transparent debate and, equally important, respect for informed discussions within and beyond the university that do not boil complex, controversial and problematic ideas down to cable television and drive-time radio sound bites.

'Academic freedom' here is disingenuous

I have noted with disgust and even loathing that Ward Churchill, the "professor" from the University of Colorado who has recently achieved notoriety for calling victims of 9/11 the equivalent of Nazis, was invited to speak at the University of Hawai'i. The use of public facilities to give an additional forum to a man to whom I can only attribute the term "traitor" is absolutely unconscionable.

Critics say that Churchill is not an Indian, although he has professed to be, and he doesn't even have a doctorate that he can claim as a credential. To hide these kinds of actions and the philosophy expounded by this man under the umbrella of "academic freedom" simply shows how low our academic system has fallen.