IMAGE OF ISLANDS

DON'T JUDGE HAWAI'I BY BOUNTY HUNTER'S SHOW

I have lived in the Islands for many years; my business takes me all over the world.

As my business will be finished in a few short months, I can return to the Islands that I love so much.

Everywhere I go, I hear people talking about changing their vacation plans from Hawai'i to places like Las Vegas because of the high drug and crime rate in Hawai'i, as publicized on A&E's hit series "Dog the Bounty Hunter."

I tell these people every time, that the Honolulu Police Department has some of the finest officers in the country.

I also tell them that the people of Hawai'i, the land, the spirit, and the aloha, are more wonderful than anywhere I've ever been.

You can't judge an entire state and its people by a television character. I hope that all the people come to their senses and enjoy the land, the spirit and the aloha, and all that Hawai'i has to give.

GOVERNMENT

CITY'S SOLUTIONS MEAN INCREASES IN FEES, TAXES

Has anyone else noticed how just about all of Mayor Mufi Hannemann's solutions (?) involve increases in fees or the raising of taxes?

Think about how much less you paid to get your car or truck registered before Hannemann became mayor. About half of what you pay now.

Any relief in property taxes? No real relief if the mayor has his way.

The largest increase ever at one time in excise taxes? For the mayor's personal monument to himself, a rail system that will not decrease traffic congestion, according to every meaningful study ever done. A system that won't even benefit the people of 'Ewa Beach.

MANOA

CARE-HOME CLUSTERING SHOULD BE PROHIBITED

It's not that care homes shouldn't exist. The issue is the right balance in residential areas.

More than 100 Manoa residents signed petitions not to ban the homes but for public notice, regulation and distance standards requiring that new care homes be no closer than 1,000 feet from existing ones.

Seven care homes already exist in a four-block radius in the College Hills subdivision of Manoa.

Without notice, inspection, consideration of impact on smaller streets (Mohala Way and McKinley Street) and without regulation of distance between care homes, an adjoining one is being built next to two connected care homes on Kamehameha Avenue.

They bring increased noise, deliveries blocking neighbors in their driveways, drifting medical waste and added traffic from staff and emergency vehicles. This affects everyone's quality of life.

Without an ordinance prohibiting clustering, whole blocks will convert into care homes, transforming residential neighborhoods into commercial zones.

Shall we just watch O'ahu follow the Joni Mitchell song "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot?"

PRIORITIES QUESTIONED

PET BILL VOTED ON; CIVIL UNION BILL DEFERRED

It is extremely telling to members of the gay, lesbian and transgendered community that Rep. Tommy Waters, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, finds that voting on pet animals (SB 1665) is more important than voting on equality for same-sex couples in the form of civil unions (HB 908), which was deferred until next year.

Pets are not protected by equal rights under Hawai'i's or the U.S. Constitution, yet gays, lesbians and transgendered people are.

MIDEAST

IRAQ WAR WILL BE SEEN AS HORRENDOUS ATROCITY

This week, the British government's scientists advised Prime Minister Tony Blair that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq's civilian death rate released last October was accurate and reliable. The study estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the U.S. and British pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The U.S. and British governments discounted the study but did not seek to verify it or scientifically to refute it.

And yet even the Iraq Study Group concluded in its report last year that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." Now, Blair's scientific advisors have concluded the study was validly done and used the best scientific and analytical methods.

The U.S. government has instigated and perpetrated a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet we seem callously indifferent to the magnitude of the killing and destruction wrought in Iraq.

The removal of George Bush and Tony Blair from office and their prosecution for war crimes seem imperative as a means of rousing ourselves from apathy and ending the war.

Future generations will see the Iraq war as a horrendous atrocity, the illict governmental strategy of pre-emptively killing hundreds of thousands of human beings — a policy sanctioned by lies, wasteful in the extreme and undertaken by the so-called civilized "democracies" of the U.S. and Britain.

SIGNAGE

MORE WARNING NEEDED FOR O'AHU ROAD WORK

Here's a terrific idea for the Nimitz road work crews:

Why not place lane closure signs with "Road Work Ahead" signs, instead of 3 feet from the actual project?

That would give motorists time to merge into the proper lane.

It's been a guessing game.