Editorials
Tuesday, November 5, 1996
Crash victims were
working for democracy
SOME of the excitement has gone out of the elections for Hawaii, replaced by numbing shock. The death of five Maui community leaders in a small plane crash on Molokai Friday night while returning from a Democratic campaign rally has cast a pall over the elections on Maui and elsewhere in the islands.
Political campaigning can be strenuous, but it is rarely thought of as life-threatening. Nor did the people on that ill-fated flight think they were doing something particularly dangerous. Yet they would be alive today if they had not been involved in the campaign.
Democracy requires citizen participation. The dead in the Molokai crash - Councilman Tom Morrow, Council candidate Alfred Deloso, county Democratic chairman Robert McCarthy and party supporters Mitchell and Suzanne Katz - were doing their part for the democratic process.
Russia’s mob influence
AMERICAN businessmen in Russia who assumed they were immune from mob activity, which has gained a dangerous foothold in that emerging market economy, have learned otherwise. Paul Tatum, a 41-year-old Oklahoman who was locked in a dispute over control of a Moscow luxury hotel, was gunned down Sunday in a pedestrian underpass. The apparent contract killing sent chills through Russia's foreign business community.
Tax evasion by companies is a major problem in Russia's struggling economy and has led to exorbitant taxes on those who do pay. Under pressure by the World Bank for loans, President Boris Yeltsin has initiated a crackdown on tax evaders. But further leverage from the international community may be needed to force Russia to free business from gangster rule.
Electric power lines
FEAR that exposure to electric and magnetic fields from power lines near homes presents a health hazard provoked a campaign a few years ago by residents of the Village Park subdivision in Waipahu to force Hawaiian Electric Co. to put new power lines underground, at great cost to consumers. Those concerns should be eased by a report issued by a committee of the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, that there is no convincing evidence that exposure to electric and magnetic fields from power lines - or from home appliances - causes cancer, adverse neurobehavioral effects or reproductive and developmental effects.
Poll on crime policy
RESPONDENTS to the latest Star-Bulletin Poll would rather add police officers than build more prisons to combat crime. But as Hawaii County Deputy Chief James Correa observed, "Even if you have more police arresting more criminals, what are you going to do with them if there's no prison space? We need both." Unfortunately most voters don't seem to have gotten the message.
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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor