Posted on: Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Letters to the Editor

State Kapolei project should be all rentals

The contracted Kapolei affordable townhouse development by Castle & Cooke on land contributed by the state designates 205 of the 492 units be sold, the balance offered as rentals. This is based on a state-sponsored study that showed that of the 30,000 affordable units needed statewide, 41 percent wished to own their homes.

Do we need a survey to know that many want to own a home in Hawai'i at an affordable price? The state used the study to justify selling its land and allow a few lucky families to finance (at a discount) part of the development in order to reduce the state's cost. With the recent increase in values, many former rental units have been sold to owner-occupants, and few replacements are being built.

The development should be all rentals, with the state retaining control to ensure future availability of affordable rental units. The Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i and Gov. Lingle should feel some shame in selling our limited resource and not being more creative in financing needed rental housing.

Building moratorium is critical for O'ahu

We are on water conservation after several years of drought. I do not know of many people who do not need fresh water for drinking, sanitation and personal hygiene. I learned in college from Maslow's hierarchy of needs that food, fresh water and shelter are physical needs. Love needs and security are secondary needs.

According to the Board of Water Supply, our water would be five to 10 times more expensive if we went to desalination. Our energy is becoming more expensive; the Arabs and Israelis have cheap sources of energy. What are we to do? Keep growing on the 'Ewa Plain and reach a point that water no longer flows from our faucets? Shall O'ahu's people bow to the unreasonable demands of the development industry?

I want the news media to conduct a poll to determine, given the aforementioned, what percentage of O'ahu's population wants to have a moratorium on new construction.

I know the Board of Water Supply has the legal authority to impose a building moratorium. I think we are beginning to run low on fresh water, and I want to know how many people are in agreement. What good are the development and construction jobs if nobody has any fresh water?

Cartoon criticism added more error

In respect to H. William Burgess' letter to the editor regarding the Akaka bill ("Kamehameha cartoon was off the mark," June 14): I concur with Burgess' statement that "Dick Adair's cartoon in The Advertiser on Kamehameha Day (suggesting Kamehameha would have thrown opponents of the Akaka bill over the Pali) was uncalled for and historically inaccurate."

However, while Burgess' historical comment is generally accurate, his supposition that Akaka bill proponents, instead, "would probably have been sent sailing over the Pali" stretches poetic license to the limit.

In fact, the Akaka bill simply aims to extend the federal policy of self-determination and self-governance for indigenous peoples in the United States to Hawai'i's indigenous people, the Native Hawaiians.

The goal of the bill has always been to formalize the political relationship between the United States and the Native Hawaiian people through federal recognition — like American Indians and Alaskan Natives in over 500 nation-to-nation compacts across the continental United States. Nothing more, nothing less. How more democratic can justice and fairness be?

Finally, there are no threats by the Hawaiian community, implied or otherwise, to throw any opponents of the Akaka bill over the Pali.

Photograph captured joyful family reunion

The June 17 photo taken by Rebecca Breyer of Sgt. Dennis Gilbert returning from Afghanistan and being greeted by his 2-year-old twin children was delightful. The joy of the family reuniting just jumped out of this photo. I kept going back to look at it and it made me smile every time.

Dick Adair definitely made the right choice in drawing this young family to represent Father's Day in the Sunday edition.

24-hour service is key for rail transit

I have to agree with those past letters on using public mass transit to lessen the number of cars on the road. I also have noticed in past letters that the use of a rail system in other cities has proven to be effective. What makes these rail systems so popular is the fact that they operate on a 24-hour timetable.

Unlike those cities, Honolulu's city buses do not provide around-the-clock service throughout O'ahu. This makes us even more dependent on a car.

For example, living on the Windward side, I cannot rely on the bus to take me home after attending an evening show in Waikiki.

Until the people of O'ahu are provided around-the-clock public transportation, we will not give up owning and operating our private vehicles.

More hours aren't making a difference

Over the past two months, I have let my bottles and cans accumulate, filling multiple bags in my shed. I do not like to take them to a redemption center unless there are enough to make it worth the trip. Why go through the hassle for $2? I can only return them on Saturday, the only day of the week my wife and I do not work.

I was happy to read that the drop-off hours have expanded. Now I could take them in until 5 p.m., even on Saturday. Hopefully I would not have to wait in line for an hour like the previous two times I returned my cans.

So, I arrived at the Mililani drop-off truck at 2 p.m. The workers informed me they were full and were not accepting cans for the rest of the day. No lines, but they were full three hours before they were to close.

The cans are back on my lanai, where they will sit until another Saturday. I wonder what time the truck will fill up next week. Or, will they run out of money, as happened on a previous trip? Will I make it on time, or will I be turned away again?

Medical marijuana patient cooperative would work

I would like to commend Hawai'i's U.S. attorney, Ed Kubo, for his common sense and humanity in establishing an official policy of tolerance by federal law enforcement in Hawai'i toward those sick and injured persons who use marijuana for medicine, as well as for their physicians who recommend its use.

It is also commendable that Kubo be concerned about the budding problems with Hawai'i's medical marijuana law. Recently, we have seen West Coast profiteers advertising in local papers promising a state of Hawai'i medical marijuana certificate for a fee of $250. We have also received reports that in Pa'ia on Maui, a storefront "dispensary" is selling marijuana at street prices, $20 a gram, more expensive than gold, under the guise of medical marijuana.

Those who would take advantage of the suffering of Hawai'i's AIDS and cancer patients, to name just two categories, are bloodsuckers, and I share Kubo's concern about what they are up to.

Unfortunately, reality for the overwhelming majority of patients in Honolulu is that it is very difficult, if not actually impossible, to grow their own marijuana. The result is that they are forced to use the black market, where the price is extortionate and its therapeutic properties are questionable, not to mention what sort of pesticide residues they may be consuming due to unscrupulous growers trying to minimize losses.

With the beginning of a new federal law enforcement policy of tolerance in Hawai'i toward medical marijuana patients and physicians, it is time for all parties involved to put our heads together and figure out a solution to how we can help our sick and injured grow their own medicine. I would suggest a not-for-profit patients cooperative that practices collective gardening under the supervision of the Department of Health. This way the medicine produced would be of consistent therapeutic strength and supply, minimum expense and free of any dangerous poisons .

Just say no to Bush's agenda

Tuition hikes for UH are proposed to double over the next five years, and students, faculty, UH administration and state officials are in conflict over the problem. I don't buy the old ruse of blaming it on negotiated pay raises for employees, and it seems that a purported state budget surplus could be spent on many areas of critical need.

Clearly, much more relevant to the shortfall of funds for education are actions taken on the federal level. The slashing of Pell Grants by the Bush administration is cutting off aid to a hefty chunk of needy students previously supported in their education (which means 14 percent of all undergraduate students in Hawai'i). This dumps on the state system, with UH trying to take up some of the slack.

UH-Hilo financial aid office director Jeff Scofield has commented, "There isn't the political will in Washington to spend the money on education." This is demonstrated further by lack of congressional financial support for the local changes required to meet the No Child Left Behind-on-the-Assembly Line-Can't-Be-Called-Education-Teacher's-Nightmare Act.

And there goes more state money, to take care of a nationally imposed program that has nothing to do with real education.

The writing is on the wall, not the blackboard. We citizens of the richest country in the world with the biggest military budget in the world are being allowed to scramble and scrap for funding for education while military funding enriches private contractors and megacorporations in U.S. efforts to expand global military control and fossil fuel dominance.

Hawai'i is part of the mad expansion, too. We are losing sons and husbands or seeing some return with disabling wounds. On O'ahu and especially on the Big Island near Pohakuloa, the U.S. military is trying to expand the juggernaut Stryker program on a land already contaminated with toxic munitions debris with what Jim Albertini calls "the biggest military land grab in Hawai'i since WWII."

Scofield's comment puts the problem in a rather benign light. What kind of government would issue declarations of concern for freedom and democracy, vote in the largest multibillion-dollar military budget, but get stingy when it comes to educating our children?

Evidently the Bush administration doesn't know that democracy can't exist without an educated populace or, even worse, doesn't care. And fighting for freedom? This is not World War II. Afghanistan is in shambles, the entire Mideast has been destabilized by our ongoing support of Israel against captive Palestine and our most recent war on Iraq, and the United States is in greater danger than ever of a terrorist attack, unfortunately of a more horrific nature than 9/11.

What kind of a society would permit such a twisted set of values? Citizens are piecing together crumbs of support for their educational (substitute "medical," "environment," "human services," "art and culture," "fire and police citizen protection") system while their beloved country goes on with its bloody, costly, never-ending war.

There's not only got to be another way, there is another way. It's called, just say "no" to a type of government that will tell you it's against big government and will swear the tax breaks are for you (when you know it's Big Brother, and the holding companies get the breaks).

It's up to each one of us how we figure out how we say "no," but we have to say it together. No further, no more, no deal, no way, no joke; it's time to take it back.