Pay hike for school chief won't help public schools
A proposal to raise the salary of the next superintendent of education will not improve the schools, repair the buildings, raise student scores in English or math, or improve the quality of school graduates -- not when Hawaii's schools are ranked 50th (bottom) in funding for elementary and secondary education.No school superintendent could possibly overcome that serious handicap.
Thirty-five percent of the state's spending goes to schools, unlike other states where cities or counties pay for education.
That is why the Economic Revitalization Task Force plan to cut state spending will further damage our educational system.
Jerome G. Manis
DOT is crazy to hike speed limit on freeway
The Department of Transportation wants to raise the speed limit on Oahu freeways to 65 mph. I have a couple of questions: What are the names of the public employees who concocted this idea? Have they not yet filled their quota of "innocent dead people?"This week I drove on the H-1 viaduct toward the Nimitz exit. Two cars passed me travelling no less than twice my speed. They disappeared from sight in an instant.
Descending the off-ramp was frightening. I expected to see mangled steel and blood strewn across the road. How could two cars travelling over 100 mph possibly negotiate that ramp? Thankfully, no such wreckage was found.
The current 55-mph speed limit is interpreted by many drivers to mean 65 or 70. The proposed 65 mph speed limit will be interpreted by those drivers as 75 or 80.
What's the rush? We live on an island. There's nowhere to go. Relax and enjoy the ride. The view is fantastic.
The DOT needs a reality check right now -- and obviously some house cleaning.
David B. McDonough
Pearl City
Union members are behind task force proposals
The governor has been quoted as saying that a reduction in the state payroll is "unworkable." This makes succinctly clear to me what I have suspected all along: The Economic Revitalization Task Force was, in fact, put together by Gary Rodrigues of the United Public Workers and Russell Okata of the Hawaii Government Employees Association. The governor and other members of the task force were included as window dressing.Since when is it "unworkable" to reduce costs but "workable" to raise excise taxes and increase the types of revenues subjected to taxes?
Until we can reduce the state payroll to pre-Waihee-Cayetano days, there is little chance for economic recovery in this state, no matter what other schemes are proposed or implemented.
Robert M. Chapman
Exec teaches 10-year-old painful lesson on economy
As an HEI shareholder, my 10-year-old son read with interest the Feb. 20 letter to the editor by Robert F. Clarke, president and CEO of HEI. After reading it, my son said, "Gee, Dad, the Economic Revitalization Task Force Plan must be a good thing, because Mr. Clarke says it's going to benefit all of us."Then I showed him the summaries of the tax recommendations, which explain how HEI subsidiary American Savings Bank will have its franchise tax cut by 50 percent and its overall corporate income tax cut by 50 percent.
Then I showed him what the citizens will get in return -- about $100 in tax savings for each individual and more taxes to pay on everything they buy, thanks to an increase in the general excise tax!
Thanks to Clarke, my son has had a rather convincing lesson of the power- brokering greed that occurs when one political party, the labor unions and a few monopolistic businesses remain in power for 40-plus years.
What's really silly is the blatant disingenuousness of Clarke's plea. But, then again, after 40 years of the public accepting the oligarchy that he's part of, I can understand how Clarke thinks we will blindly accept this latest tax farce.
John Poole
Kailua
Clinton was hypocrite to go after Saddam
The seeming madness of the Clinton administration was demonstrated as it mounted a military mobilization against Iraq, a country already beset by the U.S. Gulf War in early 1991, and earlier bombings in 1993 and 1995.It was a pitiful excuse to charge that Iraq possesses "weapons of mass destruction" when, in fact, it is the U.S. that has the most weapons of mass destruction.
J.J. Kaufmann
Mayor Harris is the one who displayed cowardice
Mayor Jeremy Harris called City Councilman Mufi Hannemann a coward for not standing up to the opposition on the Home Depot project. It's funny but, to me, one person's view of political cowardice is another person's view of political leadership.Hannemann stood tall for his community and, in the end, did what was best for the people of this county.
The only coward in this instance was Harris. He did not speak out strongly in support of the project when allegations arose of the city's "special treatment" of Home Depot.
F. Leilani
Kailua students worry snappers are finished
Did you think there were lots of bottom fish available on the menu? Well, you're wrong. The Pacific snappers are vanishing, fast. Part of the problem is fishermen who are overfishing, although they are just trying to make a living.The University of Hawaii marine biologists are conducting an experiment to see if they can produce more of the fish in hatcheries on Coconut Island in Kaneohe Bay.
I, for one, am in favor of them and hope that they succeed. In the meantime, they could block off certain areas, restrict fishing, make special months for fishing, or limit the number of fish that can be caught.
If we don't act soon, the bottom fish could disappear from our menu. Do you want that to happen?
Amelia Burlingame
Pacific snappers, known as onaga and ehu, are endangered. Many fishermen are catching fish too small in size. This isn't right, because it takes 5-10 years for them to get to the size that they can reproduce.
We shouldn't make fishermen's lives harder than they already are. But scientists like Malia Chow, one of the UH's marine biologists, should make lots of hatcheries to increase the population of the bottom fish.
More projects like this should be funded by the state, so the fish can reproduce safely and we can continue enjoying them.
Janelle Chanin
I love to eat the scrumptious bottomfish from our Pacific Ocean, like ehu or onaga. These fish are a favorite on restaurant menus. However, they are being overhunted by fishermen and are rapidly disappearing.
Like all problems, this one has a solution. The government should put restrictions on the amount of these fish that fishermen can catch.
These restrictions should be discussed and quickly put into action by the government. We must save these fish at once!
Isaac Opedal
(Via the Internet)Editor's note: These students are sixth-graders at Enchanted Lake Elementary School in Kailua.
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