Task force will solicit
small-business ideas

Your Aug. 6 editorial, which criticizes the make-up of the Economic Revitalization Task Force, is small-minded. It's unfortunate that you choose to be part of the problem rather than the solution in helping to revitalize Hawaii's economy.

Governor Cayetano said that to get anything done, we must include key decision-makers. Change depends on having a core group of Hawaii leaders who recognize that the past is behind us, and significant changes must be made if we are to plant the seeds of prosperity, boost our economy, make businesses profitable again and create jobs.

To say that the same people have been picked is unjustified. For example, Richard Kelley is an outspoken critic who has called for change.

Why did the governor invite representatives from the media like Honolulu Advertiser Publisher Larry Fuller and Contributing Editor A.A. "Bud" Smyser, if he were not committed to change? Even your publisher was invited to join the task force, but he has not yet had the opportunity to respond.

How can your newspaper ignore those persons on the task force from small business, like Charles Kawakami, president of Big Save; Patricia Loui, president of Omnitrak Group; Barry Taniguchi, president and CEO of KTA Super Stores; and Don Malcolm of Maui Land & Pine? And if Stanley Hong of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii doesn't represent thousands of small businesses, then who?

The task force will provide ample opportunity through a series of working groups for small-business people to develop proposals and share ideas and solutions to be considered by the task force. To be announced at a later date is the process for receiving ideas from small businesses and the public.

As usual, the Star-Bulletin seems to parrot the voice of critics like Lowell Kalapa of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. Very seldom is there a positive word for state government and never do any of you offer constructive criticism, suggestions or useful ideas.

Perhaps the Bulletin should join critics like Kalapa and Sen. Sam Slom to form your own task force.

Kathleen Racuya-Markrich
Press Secretary
Office of the Governor

Editor's note: John Flanagan, Star-Bulletin publisher,
and A.A. Smyser, contributing editor, declined invitations
to join the governor's task force.

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Bishop Estate should lose
its tax-exempt status

Regarding your Aug. 9 articles about the Bishop Estate trustees, the Internal Revenue Service should take away its nonprofit status. Direct business dealings in Texas methane gas, involving both trustee personal money plus $85 million of estate money, and in the golf course/country club, should place the estate in a for-profit corporation status.

The estate should pay all federal, state and county taxes as small-business owners are required to do. By Bishop Estate's exemptions, it appears that the majority of taxpayers are not being treated fairly by government entities. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, treat it like a duck.

Wilbert W.W. Wong

Dear Santa: Bring me
what Bishop Estate has

I know it is only August, but I wanted to beat the rush. For Christmas, please bring me a brand-new, shiny tax-exempt status, just like the one you bring Bishop Estate every year.

I promise to love it and pet it and never, ever abuse it. Please, Santa? Pretty please?

Stephen Foster Williams
Waimanalo

Four trustees should lose
their jobs for misbehavior

I hope the state attorney general nails every one of the Bishop Estate trustees, save for Oswald Stender, to the wall ("Isle leaders urge state to probe Bishop Estate," Aug. 9).

My blood pressure has been steadily growing with each report I've read in your newspaper regarding the mismanagement, Gestapo tactics, browbeating, threatening and McCarthy-like maneuverings of nearly all the trustees against anyone who dares speak out against their actions -- even students. This is deplorable, unacceptable behavior.

An investigation should've happened yesterday. These trustees are abusing the over-inflated privilege of their positions. Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop is probably rolling in her grave right now.

Remove all of them except Stender. Give that brave man a gold medal of honor.

Carol Banks Weber
(Via the Internet)

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Same-sex archive

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