These heroes are more than ambulance drivers

I commend our local media for recently showcasing some true heroes, the Honolulu City & County emergency medical personnel. As a 12-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department, I have witnessed paramedics and emergency medical technicians in action and know they truly are our last link to life in many situations.

They are cool under pressure and courageous and, above all, they really care about their patients.

Some insultingly call these brave men and women "ambulance drivers." They are highly trained, motivated and experienced people who do much more than drive an ambulance. These professionals risk it all for us when they deal with life-and-death emergencies on a daily basis. Because they respond to many of the same incidents as the police and fire departments, quite often they must deal with combative, "high" or mentally incapacitated individuals. They are assaulted, cursed at and spit upon, yet they persevere.

Most of us sleep at night taking for granted that paramedics are ready to respond at a moment's notice. Most of your readers would be shocked to know there are only 15 full-time (24-hour) ambulance crews islandwide. For a population of nearly a million and over 600 square miles to cover, that's terrible! Yet these fine, outstanding citizens risk it all for us.

I have had the great honor of being married to one of these awe-inspiring individuals for seven years. Although our dinner conversation can at times be gruesome, I am humbled by the passion my wife has for her job when she relates events of a previous shift or that she delivered a baby by the roadside.

To all first responders, paramedics, police officers and firefighters, thank you!

Why is city trying to put us in poorhouse?

I am 75 years old, retired on a fixed income, wondering how I will be able to survive all the increases the City Council has in store.

Wish I could understand the City Council and its plan to put retired people into the poorhouse by raising taxes as if we have unlimited funds at our disposal.

It used to be living in Hawai'i was considered paradise; however, these days it seems more like hell. When will the City Council and our mayor see the light?

Creative thinking is needed over budget

Balancing the city budget is easy. Just raise taxes and fees. Instead of doing it the easy way, how about some creative thinking?

• An untapped labor force could be the residents at OCCC. How about a chain gang to clean our parks and streets?

• Increase car safety inspection violations to $25 per each month of delinquency. If violators cannot pay the fine, impound their cars and auction them off. An added benefit would be to get a lot of uninsured drivers off the road, maybe even helping the traffic situation. If you cannot afford car insurance, catch the bus.

• Levy a $300 fine for red-light runners. If necessary, hire monitors. An added benefit would be reduced pedestrian accidents.

Some may consider these measures harsh, but these are tough times. But why burden everyone? Make those who break the law pay. Stay tuned for more "less taxing" ideas.

City Hall is finally doing things right

It is so refreshing to see sound decisions from our elected officials at Honolulu Hale ("Council OKs $1.8B in outlays," June 7).

Despite having his hands full undoing all of Jeremy Harris' silly mistakes, Mayor Hannemann smartly recognizes the city's real issues and makes proposals to work on them. And the council supports him.

That's the process I voted for. Nice job, Mufi. And nice job, council members.

Now we (the voters) just need to get Charles Djou to listen to us and start working for us.

Title IX important to fight discrimination

Ferd Lewis' June 7 column on Title IX was excellent, and all of Hawai'i should be proud of the part that Patsy Mink played in passing the legislation as well as fighting to see that it was enforced.

When schools provide educational opportunities (in athletics or anything else) for males that are far superior to those provided for females, they are not only discriminating against girls and women, they are discriminating against taxpaying parents who happen to have daughters instead of sons. Surely, nobody still wants that to happen.

Way to go, Ferd! Mahalo, Patsy.

Workers' comp rule changes unwarranted

Gov. Lingle has forced rule changes on workers' compensation (Advertiser, May 7) and will almost certainly veto Senate Bill 1808, which would reinstate protections for injured workers. The Lingle administration resorted to "legislation by rule-making" after failing to advance workers' comp proposals in the past two sessions.

The danger here is twofold: First, the rule-making is one-sided, excluding representatives of workers; second, the role of the executive branch is to implement legislation, not to write it. In our "checks and balances" system, the legislative branch writes the law, while the executive carries it out, and the judiciary keeps an eye on both of them.

I strongly urge our Legislature to reconvene and override the expected veto of SB1808.

And if workers' compensation laws are to be changed, I suggest that the governor collaborate with all interested parties in the legislative process.

Litter marred exciting powwow day at park

On Sunday, my sons and I had the pleasure of watching a live powwow, which was sponsored by the Intertribal Council of Hawai'i, at Kapi'olani Park. The dances were entertaining as well as educational, and we thoroughly enjoyed the presentation.

On our way back to my car, we stopped at the pond at the 'ewa end of the park. I was saddened by what I saw. There were empty plastic cups, beer bottles, plastic bags and other debris in addition to ironwood needles and coconuts in the water. It spoiled what otherwise could be an attractive feature of the park. Imagine what visitors to O'ahu think upon seeing such a disgraceful sight.

In addition, the recycling law seems to have produced a new phenomenon. Several of the garbage cans along the way had dozens of bottle caps surrounding them. It looked as though people had kept their plastic bottles and merely thrown the caps at the cans (since the caps are not redeemable).

It is difficult explaining to a 6-year-old and 2-year-old why we need to pick up after ourselves when we see such poor examples others have left behind. I am proud to say, however, that we managed to pick up more garbage than we brought in.

Commission on women still needed

Gerald Nakata asks why there is a State Commission on the Status of Women, but no parallel group for men (Letters, June 6). I am sure Mr. Nakata is not the only person to have such questions.

There are historical reasons commissions were organized for women at both national and state levels. For generations, elected officials have been primarily male, and they still are. Slowly we are seeing more women enter elected office, but this is very recent.

One of the downsides to gender imbalance in legislative bodies is that female issues are frequently misunderstood or overlooked. During the political fermentation of the late '60s, such commissions assuaged female activists and served an advisory role for both administrative and legislative branches.

Sad to say, there is no longer a national commission on the status of women, and fewer than half the states still have such a body. Hawai'i's commission has suffered at the hands of the budget ax and is not likely to remain a part of the state structure for much longer.

All groups have had to fight to have their chance at equality. Women were not given the vote until 1920; they fought hard for 75 years to get it. Blacks and other nonwhites were not automatically given the same freedoms that white males take as their due. They, too, had to fight in both the courts and the streets for rights at the voting booth, the workplace, schools and other public and private venues.

More recently, we have seen this process repeat itself for Americans with disabilities and gay rights. Although it may seem as if the balance has swung, men are the majority of officeholders, have the highest athletic budgets (male athletes still receive $137 million more in scholarships each year than women at NCAA member institutions), and still earn a dollar for every 72 cents women make. If we factored in the variables of race and ethnicity, the imbalance would be even greater.

I think it would be great to have a commission on the status of men. Men deserve better treatment by the courts in child-custody cases. The loss of a man's life on the battlefield is no less than the loss of a female soldier. The average life span of a man is seven years less than that of a woman. Those are important issues for all of us — male and female.

However, men still call most of the shots in the major institutions of government and commerce, and until the balance of power is spread a little more evenly between genders, races, ethnicities and the full array of diversity in our community, we need to keep up the effort.