Letters to the Editor

Threats by lessees are nothing new

In response to your Jan. 24 editorial "Lease conversion plan demands modification": I would like to point out that these lessee threats have been going on for years. However, many lawsuits have been won by the landowners, which also resulted in the city (taxpayers) having to pay legal bills.

This time the city should be successful in safeguarding itself against these threats, as its reasoning for not including the small number of lessees is that forcing leasehold conversion is not for a "public purpose."

There is no public purpose served by allowing lessees to ruin a project by taking a small percentage of it away from the landowner and forcing that landowner to become partners with those few applicants.

Minors-and-alcohol proposal shortsighted

I have nothing but respect for our lieutenant governor, but studies suggest that making it illegal for parents to buy alcohol for their children or let them drink at family gatherings will make the drinking-and-driving problem worse.

Teenagers must be taught to drink responsibly, and this has to be done before they are legally able to obtain alcohol for themselves. I don't want my sons learning how to drink from their friends who know just as little as they do.

The state only cares after the damage is done. Laws set young adults up at the starting gate, so when they reach 21 years of age, they race to see what they were missing and the parents no longer have control, and it's at this point that the state lies in wait to punish or take the child to the morgue.

Making it illegal for parents to teach their children how to drink responsibly will put them, and others, in great danger.

Tax break? Take a look at gasoline

Regarding the opening speeches at the Legislature and the leadership's proposal to do something about taxes: The easiest way for lawmakers to give us a break would be to reduce gasoline taxes, which are 50 percent higher than the national average and obviously not used (as intended) for road repairs.

The state's share of these taxes is about 16 cents per gallon, plus excise taxes (all totaling about 24 cents). If they cut off 8 cents from the gas tax, that would be an annual tax reduction of $35 million, directly benefiting everyone who uses a car. If you buy about 50 gallons of gas a month, your "tax break" would be more than $200 a year. If they also repealed the additional excise tax on gasoline sales (another 8 cents right now), you would see a $400 tax break.

Sounds like a win-win for everyone.

Red-light camera proposal bad idea

Here we go again. Another legislator has made an ill-advised proposal, this time for cameras at "selected intersections" around O'ahu. To make this an even worse proposal, there would be a one-year grace period, during which warnings would be mailed.

It is obvious that this is another proposal designed to keep the public believing that the Legislature is doing something.

If state Sen. Lorraine Inouye is truly interested in solving the problem of red-light runners, the following might just do the trick: Rewrite the law to read that a vehicle must be clear of the intersection before the light turns red. This would cause drivers to stop racing the yellow. The traffic lights could be modified like those in Charleston, S.C., where the camera is built into the red light. When the light is red, pictures of the intersection are taken every half-second.

And what's up with this one-year grace period? Drivers are given notice when they test for a driver's license and each time they renew. They should be ticketed the first (and every) time they run a red light. There is absolutely no excuse for running a red light unless the driver is colorblind, in which case he or she should not be driving.

Legislators must take care of crosswalks

The uselessness of the unsignalized crosswalk is a main cause of pedestrian accidents occurring outside of these crosswalks as well as inside of them.

Drivers do not stop for pedestrians at these crosswalks.

The Advertiser's recent Einstein quote, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result," applies here. The Honolulu Police Department has been lecturing its elders year after year after year to "be careful out there" without making the difficult choice of providing them a safe alternative of a useful unsignalized crosswalk, a crosswalk where drivers must stop for them and a crosswalk that is worth walking out of their way to use. The HPD can do this by proposing or supporting legislation that in some way accomplishes this goal.

There are several reasons why a vehicle stopped at a crosswalk for a pedestrian is helpful:

• The pedestrian does not have to rush or take chances.

• The vehicle stopped at the crosswalk provides visibility to oncoming traffic that somebody is stopped for a pedestrian.

• It is definitely against the law to pass next to a vehicle already stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

• By going from one stopped car to the next, slow walkers can safely thread their way across the road.

Obviously, enforcing such a law will take time and money, sometimes cause traffic congestion, require extensive education and irritate many driver/voters. I hope no lawmaker will escape this very hard choice yet another year by rationalizing that pedestrians are largely responsible for their own injuries and deaths.

Justice Thomas' views are inconsistent

John C. Yoo, a Clarence Thomas clerk in the U.S. Supreme Court, recently wrote that Thomas opposed the use of race in law school admissions because if the African-American cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall. Give him a chance to stand on his own legs. Let him alone. Thomas believes that blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators. And, of course, governmental intervention.

In 1995, Thomas declared that affirmative action with racial paternalism can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination. He argued that these programs stamp minorities with a badge of inferiority.

However, playing poisonous and pernicious favoritism, Thomas supported governmental programs that included religious groups. He said, "Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty." In this instance, a child with a badge of inferiority becomes free who has education with governmental meddling.

An American goal is education. Thomas says in one instance to stand on your own two feet to get your education; on the other hand, he says come into my meddling governmental arms and I'll give you this education gratuitously.

Mr. Yoo, is our Constitution applicable to one, some or all?

Lili'uokalani was trying to restore constitution

Readers should find Thurston Twigg-Smith's Sunday letter interesting and humorous. While criticizing Lili'uokalani as not "working for the rights of her people," he used her proposed 1893 constitution as evidence that she attempted to increase unprecedented political rights for herself.

If a person were to compare the queen's proposed constitution with that of the 1864 constitution, he would find that the two are almost identical. The queen was not proposing anything new. She was attempting to restore the constitution of 1864, while ridding the kingdom of the constitution forced upon the previous head-of-state while the Legislature was out of session.

Twigg-Smith claims the queen wanted to take the right to vote for nobles away from the people. What he does not mention is that Lorrin Thurston, through the 1887 Bayonet Constitution, reduced the voting power of all citizens (of all races) of the kingdom, by allowing mere residents of American and European birth the right to vote. It is boggling as to why the Bayonet Constitution did not extend this right to residents of Chinese or Japanese birth.

Resident aliens are not afforded the right to vote in America today, and they were not afforded the right to vote in the Hawaiian kingdom, at least not until the Bayonet Constitution, which was written by Lorrin Thurston.