Posted on: Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Letters to the Editor

Law needs to step up speeding vigilance

It is shocking to me that speeding citations issued by the HPD have dropped substantially in 2004 versus 2003.

Speeding has been a large factor in fatal deaths and injuries, with more vehicles on the roads and highways, and yet we see a decrease in issuing citations? Unbelievable!

Drivers are risking lives of innocent people, and the HPD better improve its awareness of the seriousness of this problem and go after these lawbreakers.

The Legislature should make tougher laws, and the courts need to enforce these laws and give the offender the maximum penalty.

It is not enough that misery comes to innocent victims who wish nothing more than to see these offenders given sentences they deserve. If these are multiple offenses, then the law should step in and confiscate their licenses and vehicles. Make them realize that we will not tolerate such stupid acts and behavior.

B&B operators should pay commercial rates

I support City Council action to legalize short-term vacation rentals and bed-and-breakfast operations on single-family residential-zoned property. I agree that these uses are of great economic benefit to the community while at the same time they place a minimal burden on public services.

However, I suggest that in addition to the necessary licensing (including for food preparation) and payment of all general excise and transient accommodations taxes, the following be made a part of any authorizing legislation:

• The portion of any such property, both land and improvements, used for income production would be taxed at commercial property rates, not at residential property rates.

• That portion would not be entitled to owner-occupant status for the purpose of property tax exemptions.

• Nor would that portion be entitled to the capital gains tax exemption from federal and state income tax upon the sale of a personal residence.

• Owners and operators should be required to keep a formal set of books, carry business insurance and meet all regulations such as OSHA, Americans with Disabilities Act, etc.

• The increased property tax revenue would be used to reduce the property taxes of single-family occupied property.

Any attempt by the City Council to make this problem go away by simply waving its wand and declaring it legal as the federal government has effectively done with illegal immigration should be vigorously opposed by those of us who do not operate our personal residences as for-profit businesses.

Lease-to-fee decision coming back to haunt

Remember last year when most members of the City Council voted to stop lease-to-fee conversions? Well, last week Judge David Ezra said the City Council made a "bad mistake" by not letting those with pending condemnations go on. He called it "unfair to the apartment owners and highly unwise ... because the costly litigation will cost taxpayers money."

So Mr. Mayor and City Council members, will you be able to pay for this expense out of the ever-shrinking city budget?

Chinatown has lost its allure with visitors

Two years ago, I had some friends coming from San Francisco to Honolulu. They went to Chinatown and were so impressed about the cleanliness compared to their Chinatown.

This year, their good impression of our city has brought them back for another vacation. But they are so disappointed because our Chinatown has totally changed: filthy sidewalks, trash all over, homeless people sleeping in front of stores, beggars, prostitutes on Hotel Street, the smell of urine has permeated the air, narrow sidewalks have been abused by store owners displaying their goods, etc.

How can I explain to my friends about the deteriorated condition of Chinatown? I can't find any answer.

I would like to know who is responsible for Chinatown's condition as it exists today. How could that person or persons let Chinatown deteriorate in just a short time of two years?

Please help save our beautiful Chinatown!

Military training is good for community

Regarding the proposed C-17 training flights planned for Kona International Airport: I really don't see what all the hubbub is about, frankly. The positives outweigh the negatives from my view.

The Air Force would build a second runway at Kona International Airport, which non-military flights could use while not in use or for emergency use. Let us not forget, back in 1988, a United Airlines DC-8 had its tires blow out on landing at Kona International, shutting the airport down for a few hours. Also, the Air Force would improve the fire/rescue services at the airport.

One thing I don't understand is that the military is already doing training touch-and-goes at Kona International Airport; no one is grumbling about these training exercises. My gut feeling is this opposition is really just a cover for some people in the community against military expansion here.

Which is fine and dandy, but the focus on the C-17 training flights is wrong. Unlike the proposed Stryker training up at Pohakuloa, the military's use of Kona International Airport has tangible benefits to the community as a whole and should be fully supported.

Conservatives' goal: turn PBS into a Fox

I've watched as the conservative charge of "liberal bias" in the media has grown from a low roar to one that is nearly deafening. Today, in the hands of Ken Tomlinson, the new conservative Republican boss of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the charge "liberal bias" threatens to destroy the national treasure that is PBS. They cite Bill Moyers on "Now" as "liberal bias" proof. Yet, I can't remember a single charge of "conservative bias" all the years we watched that conservative lion, William F. Buckley, on PBS.

As the "liberal bias" mantra has grown louder, I've become increasingly sensitized to what conservatives are charging. The more sensitive I've become, the more obvious it's become what they really mean. I finally figured it out. "Liberal bias" is a misnomer. It's not liberal bias at all. Rather, "liberal bias" is really the absence of a conservative bias.

I had this epiphany seeing the boundless praise that conservatives heap on the Fox News Network, which, despite the laughable label "fair and balanced," makes little effort to hide its conservative leanings.

So, if you want to see what Tomlinson and his followers are out to do to PBS, take a look at Fox. As you can see, our beloved PBS is in great danger.

New Hope doing what we all should be doing

I have been following the story of New Hope church's offer to the city to assist in cleaning and maintaining a park area in return for the right to build and use two canoe halau, which would also be for public use.

Everyone in the community should be standing up and cheering this group.

The fact that it is a church is immaterial. Its members are still members of our community who are volunteering to take on a task that the city does not have the manpower or the funds to accomplish. They are offering to build at the halau at their own expense.

New Hope is serving as a model for the rest of the community. All of us should follow its model and look to see what we can do for our community, either individually or in groups. Isn't it time the rest of us step up to improve the quality of life in our community? Broken-down parks, graffitied public restrooms, littered highways, drug houses, etc., don't have to be.

Three cheers for New Hope church!

Paper should identify biased columnists

Every week in the editorial section, The Honolulu Advertiser features a commentary by Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution think tank at Stanford University. This connection with Stanford University gives the uninformed the notion that Mr. Hanson is an unbiased scholar-historian. The Hoover Institution is in fact a conservative think tank bent on pushing the Republican agenda.

Its Board of Overseers includes none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing billionaire who financed groups whose sole purpose was to attack President Clinton. You may remember they accused Clinton while he was governor of ordering the murder of dozens of people.

With problems in Iraq growing larger due to no planning, $8.8 billion of reconstruction money missing (the trail points to sloppy bookkeeping along with Bush and Cheney friends pocketing the rest), a growing deficit at home due to huge tax breaks for the rich that also endanger the solvency Social Security, and the revelation of the Downing Street Memo that indicates that President Bush wanted the intelligence and facts to be fixed around the policy to invade Iraq, right-wing extremists like Mr. Hanson must resort to misleading and distorted statements about Democrats and their positions.

My hope is The Advertiser will look for writers both right and left and identify them as political pundits so the reader can make sense of the nonsense they express.

Why have a survey if it doesn't count?

Regarding the unified public school schedule article on June 10: At whose expense were the 126,000-plus surveys sent out to parents, students and education employees to be tabulated to determine a uniform school schedule? How is it that the most voted schedule by those completing the survey can be disregarded by the Board of Education?

I agree a common schedule is necessary, but it seems that some funds could have been saved by excluding the surveys if the only votes that "counted" were the board's.

Shirkey will be missed

'A'ole! Please say it isn't true. Wade Kilohana Shirkey's Hawaiian Style column is so warm and welcoming — downright charming! — that he simply cannot give it up. He has brought many a chuckle, a tear to the eye and a warmth to the heart — always reaffirming that Hawai'i is, indeed, a truly special place. He will be sorely missed. Me ke aloha pumehana, Mr. Shirkey, and mahalo for your memories!

Mauna Loa: measuring global warming

Last week, Charles Keeling passed away. While never a household name in Hawai'i, he conducted pioneering climate research on the slopes of Mauna Loa for nearly 50 years. There, far removed from industrial contaminants, he and his colleagues made precise measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The "Keeling Curve," called the most significant accomplishment in the field of environmental science of the 20th century, shows an inexorable increase in the global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide with time. This increase is a result of the burning of fossil fuels, the clearing of forests (whose trees would otherwise take up carbon dioxide) and the production of cement.

Longer records of atmospheric carbon dioxide from minute bubbles of air trapped in the Greenland and Antarctic ice reveal that the current increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is unprecedented in the last several hundred thousand years — since Mauna Loa itself arose from the sea. The Keeling Curve unequivocally documents the effect of humans on the planet's atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse" gas, trapping heat that would otherwise escape to space, and warming the planet. An increase in carbon dioxide should lead to global warming, and indeed, temperature records show a significant rise in temperature over the last century and half. The four warmest years in that record are 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Computer models that account for human activity can explain this warming; those that do not include human activity cannot.

In the future, we will certainly live in a warmer world, but how much warmer and what that world will be like is less certain. Records of past climate do show, however, abrupt changes can occur within a period of as short as a century — or even a decade. Will such changes lead to monster hurricanes, drought or floods? We cannot be sure.

And there's the rub. We humans are tinkering with (some might say trampling on) natural systems that we do not completely understand but on whose functioning our well-being depends. The Earth is a complicated planet, but unfortunately it does not come with an instruction manual. To make matters worse, we are changing the world in multiple ways, each one of which has potential, sometimes unforeseen consequences, and cumulatively have completely unknown synergistic effects.

Whether, and to what extent, such changes and risks are acceptable is a serious issue for discussion. But we must first recognize that, collectively and individually, we are affecting the natural world around us. Like the marks on a wall recording the growth of a child, the Keeling Curve shows us that we have grown up as a technical society. We are now a planet-altering species. Let us act with the wisdom that our new role demands.

Visit the Mauna Loa Observatory Web site at www.mlo.noaa.gov.