Exporting jobs seems to be
growth industry

It was bad enough when we received the State Librarian's $200,000 survey, done by some Utah company. Now we hear Bart Kane has contracted a North Carolina company to perform library work previously done by Hawaii residents. Kane claims that Governor Cayetano and the BOE approved of his plan to contract out work.

The governor is sending prison jobs out of state, and is now contracting out library jobs. The hypocritical Thumbs Up campaign couldn't even convince our government officials to keep jobs and taxpayers' money in Hawaii.

No wonder our local economy is in the dumps! At least we can still export something . . . our local jobs!

Ken Mumaw
Kailua

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Farrakhan doesn’t deserve to be
mocked and maligned

It seems like Louis Farrakhan is the man that your editorial writers just love to hate ("Farrakhan's message," Oct. 17). You strongly criticize him for visiting Libya, Iran and Iraq earlier this year, despite the fact that most of the countries he visited were U.S. allies and trading partners.

You and the U.S. government also don't like it that Gadhafi of Libya wants to assist African-American communities with financial help. However, you neglect to mention that the U.S. government has criminally destroyed these communities by trafficking in "crack" to finance the destruction and overthrow of sovereign governments abroad.

The purpose of the Million Man March was for its participants to atone for the past, to take responsibility for their actions and to support their families and communities. You continue to mock this event.

I don't always agree with what Farrakhan has to say. But your newspaper is blind to the hypocrisy of the federal government's lip service to democracy and its terroristic actions in practice.

Sean P. Porter

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Hospital gets accredited, but
more needs to be done

We are encouraged that the Hawaii State Hospital has finally improved its services for persons with serious mental illnesses enough to receive the national accreditation that it lost 22 years ago. We applaud the state's recent efforts, even if it is spurred by a federal court consent agreement.

However, too many of our family members, friends and neighbors with serious mental illnesses still must go to the State Hospital because the community mental health services they need are not there for them.

The state needs to meet the harder challenge of providing enough effective community mental health services with the same sense of urgency that it has for improving services at the State Hospital.

Dr. Brian K. Martin
President
Lisa T. Maruyama
Executive Director
Mental Health Association in Hawaii

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Local contractor wasn’t
‘discriminated’ against

This is necessitated by Rod Thompson's front-page article on Sept. 12, "Bidding law hurts local firms, contractor says," and your lead editorial of Sept. 14, "Discrimination against mainland contractors."

First, in no way can Guy Lam's new company be considered "basically the same as the old." For one thing the old company is very much alive and well, and apparently has been since its registration as a general partnership over 15 years ago. The partners are the well-established Kamehameha Investment Corp. and Keauhou Land Corp. In contrast, Lam's new company that you mention, Keauhou Construction Limited Partners, was formed and registered less than nine months ago, as a limited partnership, with the general partner being Keauhou Construction Corp. and the only limited partner being Lam himself.

Second, Lam was a principal in another construction company, Guy Lam & Associates Inc., which was incorporated on Jan. 19, 1990 and dissolved on Aug. 31, 1992. He was also the sole shareholder in yet another construction company, Guy Lam Construction Inc., capitalized at $10,000, incorporated on Feb. 22, 1992, and which changed its name to FGL Construction Inc. on March 5, 1992, but which apparently still publicly uses its old name.

Is this the way to "establish a track record"?

Cal Kawamoto
State Senate, 19th District