Task force
members disappoint

I write as a small-businessman.

Although I am glad that, at last, Governor Cayetano has started to seriously address the issue of reviving the economy, I am disappointed in the selection of members of the economic revitalization task force.

A lot of these people recently foisted on us the unimaginative "Thumbs Up" campaign, an insult to Hawaii's collective intelligence. The sponsors vividly showed that they did not understand Hawaii's economic situation.

Many of these people who should be leaders in our community are not. They are too busy diversifying out of Hawaii. Also, they are for the most part unwilling to stand up and speak out and say what has to be said. They are afraid of upsetting politicians. Many of us have lost faith in the heads of our largest businesses.

Stanley Hong of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii is not qualified to speak out on small business. Although I am a member of the Chamber, its small business council is not very active or aggressive. The perception and reality is that the Chamber represents big business.

As you know, Small Business Hawaii and NFIB represent small business better than any other organizations, but presumably Sam Slom and Bette Tatum are not acceptable politically.

We need representatives from only one bank, one supermarket and one union. There is no representative from small business except Omnitrak. There is no representative from technology companies.

We need some fundamental new thinking by business, unions, independent or nonprofit sector and government. I don't see many people on this task force who are going to generate new thinking.

Business is not monolithic. Big business learns to live with big government and big unions and pay its dues as the success of Cayetano's fund-raisers attest. Small business thinks in very different ways and that thinking is not well represented on this task force.

The one thing the governor could do, but has not done in 21/2 years, is really streamline and shakeup government. The quality of service has not increased one iota and it is not a budget problem; it is usually an attitude problem.

A good example is the Bureau of Conveyances. All it wants to do is plunder for the general fund the excess revenues over expenses and then increase those revenues again by raising fees earlier this year. Some of these fees will go into an automation fund but it will be a miracle if anything happens before the end of this century.

As a businessman, I just wish the state government could run a first-class, customer-oriented Bureau of Conveyances.

Public school education is still mediocre after 14 years from the wake-up call report, "A National at Risk." We are like a Third World country and low on the international scale of developed countries.

If the governor really wants to help the people of Hawaii and as a by-product help economic development, then he should instill a real sense of urgency in the public school system. Will it have high performance standards by the year 2000? 2005? Ever?

Desmond Byrne

Editor's note: Desmond Byrne is owner of Honolulu Information
Service and chairman of Common Cause Hawaii.

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Good luck, UPS strikers,
in getting want you want

Listening to the anger, hurt and commitment of the strikers around UPS offices across the country, I am grateful that these workers, at their own risk, are speaking out for all the people in Hawaii and in the other 49 states trapped in the daily cycle of part-time jobs, part-time pay rates, part-time benefits and part-time pensions.

Six years ago, the Episcopal Church in Hawaii decided to pay full-time benefits, pensions and salary rates to its part-time staff and workers. Oh, there were howls of pain and dire prophecies of doom, that such a program would be impossible, but it isn't!

In the experience of my parish on Maui, we have more security, more efficiency and more gifts of extra effort than we've ever had from part-timers. May those who have ears, hear.

Layton P. Zimmer
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
Wailuku, Maui
(Via the Internet)

Akaka and his supporters
are playing the race card

I take exception to Alan Murakami's Aug. 2 View Point column. Sen. Dan Akaka did not make a "bold stand" with his remarks in the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. To the contrary, Akaka looked like a Pavlovian dog salivating for his master, the Democratic Party leadership, to divert attention away from the real issue: foreign financial influence on this nation's internal politics.

I reject Murakami's assertion that Asian Americans are so fragile in their political participation. He would have us believe that this current scandal will send every American of Asian ancestry running away from their legal right to political participation.

It is an assertion without merit. I also find insulting Murakami's accusation that Americans of other ancestry can't tell the difference between an Asian American and foreigners.

Murakami sells all of us short and for what purpose? He writes of his worry that the race card will be played, then plays it himself. Such harsh rhetoric on such a serious matter is dangerous.

Vince Shahayda
(Via the Internet)

Scoreboard on back page
preserves a marriage...

Thanks for putting the Scoreboard section on the back page of the sports section. I've been hoping that some day it would happen!

Every day when the newspaper comes, and because everyone else always wants other parts of the paper, I cut out the sports section with a razor blade since it is the only thing handy. I have ruined three tablecloths, and my wife said she would kill me if I ruined another one.

Thanks, you saved my life.

Mike Pcola

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Same-sex archive

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