From everything I have read over the past several years, one can only believe the vast majority of people living in Hawai'i want to keep the status quo and not make waves in order to continue the mass production of a working force of uneducated worker ants.

It is a pathetic situation, but not one limited to the state of Hawai'i.

LINEKONA

FILIPINO ARTISTS ALSO HAD EXHIBIT IN 2003

Derek Paiva's article on Filipino entertainers was most welcome and great to read by this Filipina. I salute the personalities Paiva mentioned in his generous recognition.

The article mentions in a boxed announcement that an Art Talk will be given by T. Gonzalves at the Contemporary Museum at Makiki Heights, plus an exhibit. Most welcome news.

What could be added here is that in 2003, the Honolulu Academy of Arts did an exhibit of Filipino artists at Linekona. Among the paintings displayed were pieces by artists from Manila, New York, Hawai'i and California. Some were name artists such as Manuel Ocampo, Arturo Luz, Manansala J. Zobel, Anita Magsaysay Ho and Hernando Ocampo. From Hawai'i were Mandel Andres, Romolo Valencia and Jeff Baysa.

A local major newspaper described the presentation as "bold, the graphic images often brutal, political and sexual, making social and personal commentary with humor."

LIBERAL BIAS

A 'GREAT' LEGISLATIVE YEAR? DON'T BET ON IT

The Advertiser's liberal bias was shamelessly displayed in its front-page May 5 article, "Legislators close out 'a great year.' " The article goes on to characterize it as a "richly productive session" where one could be "confident that voters would agree (legislators) used a $600 million budget surplus to achieve a balance between infrastructure improvements and tax relief."

If you read the stuff buried on page A2 giving distinctly less glowing appraisal of what happened at the Legislature, you might conclude that overall this was a balanced article that gave both sides. But many, if not most, Advertiser readers wouldn't get that far — they'd scan the front page and then dash off to work, unaware that what they thought was the front page was a de facto editorial.

The reality is that this session was only "richly productive" in the sense that majority party legislators spent all the riches of the budget surplus. And there wasn't any "balance" between spending and tax relief because we didn't get any tax relief at all this year or next. That's right, the tax relief is scheduled to start two years from now — after the November elections and after the new Legislature has had ample opportunity to quietly kill or further scale back the already paltry future tax relief.

NO VETO

LINGLE IS TWO-FACED ON THE GAS CAP LAW

Gov. Lingle, as usual, wants to have it both ways. She now says that the gas cap law was a "failed experiment" and a "bad law." If so, why didn't she veto the bill and instead let it become law without her signature?

It's simple. If gas prices went down, she could say she supported it. If they went up, she could say she didn't. Talk about spin.

So what's her solution after four years in office? She says she will introduce a resolution in 2007 calling for a study. Someone should tell her that she has to get re-elected to do so.

HEALTH

NEW SMOKING BAN GREATLY APPRECIATED

Hooray to our Legislature for passing the bill that bans smoking within 20 feet of any public entrance. We need to encourage our governor (who does support this bill) to sign this into law ASAP.

Just because a large number of people have a bad habit does not give them the right to inflict that bad habit on others, especially if it affects our health. What's the sense of having smoking banned in public places when smokers can just smoke at the entrance?

STEEP-SLOPE DEVELOPMENT

NU'UANU BUILDING CLAIMS FALSE

I write this as president of the Nu'uanu Valley Association. In her May 4 Island Voices column, attorney Julia Kane painted Nu'uanu Valley as a den of NIMBYs crushing the dreams of innocent developers, costing taxpayers needless millions and distracting city leaders from more important matters.

Like a painter, Kane was using her imagination at the expense of accuracy.

The Nu'uanu Valley Association was not formed to stop development in the Dowsett area. Its charter is to preserve, maintain and enhance the beauty, safety, lifestyle and sense of community in the valley.

Its membership is not limited to the Dowsett area and is not limited to people "having important contacts, money and education." Our members are basically middle-class, working-class and elderly fixed-income folks of diverse ethnicity.

The "nine-lot subdivision" Kane described as "slopes buffered by gently sloping gullies and well-defined ravines is in reality a long, narrow 45-acre parcel with sheer valley walls, steep ravines that channel huge amounts of water down from the upper reaches of the valley and hills formed of materials that have tumbled or slid from high in the valley.

The tests required by the city are totally inadequate to determine whether the land is stable enough to sustain construction. Its average slope exceeds 50 percent, and in some places is an almost-vertical 70 percent.

The 1964 General Plan for O'ahu identified the use intended for this land as "preservation." It should have been downzoned accordingly. Instead, in some smoke-filled room, the land use of property was redesignated as residential in the 1977 development plan.

The present zoning would permit well over 200 homes on the parcel. That there are "nine lots" in the application submitted by Kane's client is meaningless because each lot may be further subdivided into eight homes per acre.

In 2003, the O'ahu Civil Defense Agency suggested that the city may already have gone too far in allowing steep-slope development and recommended more stringent standards for approving development of such lands and/or that such lands be downzoned to lower densities or to preservation land. The same recommendations are contained in the 2004 Development Plan for O'ahu's primary urban core.

With all of its supposed "contacts," "influence," "money" and "education," the NVA has been unable to cause the city to comply with the Civil Defense development plan recommendations.

The cozy game between the Department of Planning and Permitting and developers trumps the rights and concerns of ordinary people whose lives and property are placed at risk by mountainside development.

Kane warns that the city would have to pay her client if the land were downzoned consistent with the Civil Defense recommendation. Yet a much greater liability would arise if lives and property were lost because the city ignored the recommendations of the agency and its own development plan.

The NVA is in the vanguard of a movement that will reach around the island as citizens realize how poorly their lives and property are safeguarded by the city's current let's-pretend approach to approving subdivisions on steep slopes. Together, we can and will change the balance of power in the city in favor of public safety.