Read our lips, Mr. Speaker:
Don’t go raising our taxes

Regarding House Speaker Joe Souki's comments on opening day of state Legislature: There is no need to raise taxes. Cut spending and do us all a favor.

Douglas L. Halsted
Hilo, Hawaii
(Via the Internet)

If teachers go on strike,
everybody will be losers

As the semester's end nears, teachers will continue to debate whether they should call a union strike. If they strike, they will have the pressure of semester grades to hold over the state, and there will be even more of an urgency to settle this sensitive issue quickly - for it will affect the grades of public school students statewide.

If the issue cannot be decided before the maximum number of days that a student can be absent, every student will be forced to repeat the same grade level again, and their graduation could be pushed back a year.

As a concerned student, as well as on behalf of my classmates, I hope that the strike does not occur. If it does, I hope that it is not long enough to force us to repeat a grade level.

In fact, this strike should not even be an option. If the Legislature appropriates enough funds for education and for teacher pay, students like us wouldn't have to worry about a strike in the middle of the school year.

When a strike occurs, nobody benefits. Teachers will lose money, students lose their education, and the state gets more paperwork. In the end, there is no "winner."

Evan Yamada
9th Grade, Mililani High

Family home is burglarized
and nothing is being done

The other night I received a phone call from my mom. She lives in Kailua, where I grew up. Her house was broken into and robbed. She felt alone and violated but I am 5,000 miles away, unable to help.

This is not the first time that someone from my family has had their drawers dumped out on the ground and their possessions sifted through by someone who has no right to do that.

I wish that I had faith in the Honolulu Police Department, and that its members were capable of helping my mother put an end to her fear, or at least to offer her some hope.

Yet they will not fingerprint the house, they will not give her any assurance that they will recover what was stolen. They seem to want this person to stay free.

They stole my baby things, my families' memories. And while that may not mean much to the police, it means the world to my mother. Her distress is felt 5,000 miles away.

Tiffany Farrell
Boston, Mass.
(Via the Internet)

Wounded surfer
thanks everyone who helped

The color of the water around me suddenly told me that the wound on the back of my left arm was very serious. I had just been gashed by the fin on my surfboard.

A surfer nearby helped in paddling this wounded body to shore. As I faded in and out of consciousness, several men and women packed me on my board and hiked me up the steep walkway at Diamond Head Park.

The Diamond Head firefighters were there in a few minutes and stabilized things until paramedics arrived. Dr. Patrick Murray and his staff at the emergency room at Queen's Medical Center saw to it that I would be alive and well.

To all of these men and women, my sincerest thanks and warm aloha.

Dr. Clyde Y. Uchida

New ways to discourage
use of illegal fireworks

Admittedly, there is no way to keep the wealthy from acquiring illegal fireworks (or getting around any other law), but it appears that most are being set off in the poorer neighborhoods. I have an idea that might help.

If those people who are buying illegal fireworks were required to fill out a form, declaring how much they paid for the noise/smoke/rubbish-makers and that amount were deducted from their welfare checks, it would put a real damper on the insanity of New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July.

And since the police say they cannot enforce the law, perhaps the state could confiscate a cargo ship or two, or a 747 air freighter or two, from the shipping companies and airlines that bring the illegal fireworks into Hawaii. That would soon dry up the supply.

Then we could use the ships and planes to bring in food and other products, forcing the local prices down.

The same thing could be applied to illegal drugs that come in via ship and plane. Confiscate a couple of ships and planes, and solve several of our problems in one fell swoop.

Keith Haugen
(Via the Internet)

---

Same-sex archive