More coverage is needed on changes to city charter
News coverage of the City Charter Commission's discussions to date has been sparse and disappointingly shallow.It is disturbing that the document that determines the core structure, functions and powers of our government can be drastically altered and revised with so little fanfare.
The public deserves to be thoroughly and accurately informed of this historic undertaking.
The commissioners must be committed to improving Honolulu's government in a thoughtful, unbiased and comprehensive manner. They must ensure the public interest by considering and weighing all reasonable options in a venue that is completely free from political and personal motivations.
The convening of a charter commission is an opportunity to make creative, innovative and important decisions that will guide our city into the new millennium and the process should be given the full significance and stature that it deserves.
Kathleen Kudo
(Via the Internet)
Antibiotics are present in meat, dairy products
While I agreed with your Aug. 8 editorial, "Fighting bacteria," which warned about drug-resistant bacteria, I was disappointed at no mention of the meat and dairy industries.As I noted in an April 1995 View Point column, "The myth about milk," of 80 antibiotics found in milk, the states only tests for four of them.
And the General Accounting Office of Congress discovered that 64 antibiotics in milk were at levels which raise health concerns.
Just this year, scientists reported that a strain of salmonella, resistant to five antibiotics, was running rampant in England and the U.S., making thousands of people sick. Salmonella generally originates from cattle or chicken.
When people eat meat or dairy products, they are consuming antibiotics. That's a major reason why we are headed toward an extremely dangerous crisis.
Eric Bahrt
Mahalo from Chilean sailors who visited during Rimpac
As the commanding officer of the Chilean Frigate PFG Condell, I want to express our thanks and best wishes to all the people in Oahu for being such good hosts. Our ship came to Pearl Harbor as the Chilean Navy unit that took part in Exercise Rimpac-98, hosted and directed by U.S. Com. Third Fleet, off the Hawaiian coast.Apart from many professional highlights, the exercise permitted us to visit your island. My officers and sailors toured Waikiki, Waimea and places with other Polynesian names that have become familiar. When we arrive home, we will tell our beloveds how wonderful Hawaii is.
Cdr. Jorge Chubretovich
Chilean Navy
Vinna del Mar, Chile
(Via the Internet)
Taking away rights poses question of who's next
Many of those who support the constitutional amendment that would take power away from the courts and give it to the Legislature do so on religious grounds.Is there any reason to create an exception to our Constitution's system of checks and balances other than to impose one's personal religious convictions on all others?
When Islamic legislators in the Middle East pass laws restricting the rights of their Christian minorities, it is correctly viewed as human-rights abuse. When those in Hawaii attempt to pass legislation targeting an unpopular group, they call it "saving traditional marriage." I call it hijacking the Constitution.
It sets a bad precedent. What will be next? Will those who don't like the PASH decision honoring native Hawaiian gathering rights decide to "save traditional Western property rights?"
Larry Baczeski
Child support agency needs some discipline itself!
I received a letter from the Child Support Enforcement Agency stating that it was initiating an action against me for child support for my youngest son. I wasn't surprised -- even though my youngest son has been living with me for four years.You see, over the past four years, the agency has stopped my tax returns twice, claiming I owed support for my two sons, who are both living with me. Both times, my ex-wife and I supplied proof that the kids were with me, and my returns were released.
After receiving this latest letter and spending many frustrating hours trying to reach someone at the agency on their new Keiki Hotline, I decided to go down to its office.
When I arrived, I was asked to pass through a metal detector, saw an armed guard sitting in the waiting room, and waited for two hours before being seen.
In the meantime, I met a man who was being pursued for support for a child who was not his, a woman being asked for support for children who were already grown up, and another man who had waited for hours the previous day, only to be told to come back in the morning. When he returned, the lady he had spoken to had gone on vacation.
Come on Michael Meaney! We had all hoped that you would be better than Norma Sparks, but apparently you're not.
Lee Muller
Aiea
(Via the Internet)
Double standard exists for people and president
What basis is there for law and order, if our president can defy the law? How can I be punished for lying on my taxes or on the job? How can I explain to my children that lying is wrong? If he remains in office, what kind of country are we?Ted Peck
(Via the Internet)
Republicans are hypocrites to complain abut Clinton
Bill Clinton's latest admission does much to diminish his stature as president, but does little to suggest impeachment. The president has womanized, again, and has hidden the affair. Whether Clinton committed perjury in covering up his affair is questionable, at best.His Republican critics should examine their own presidential history of impeachable offenses. President Nixon lied, may have destroyed evidence (tapes), oversaw a criminal enterprise (the Plumbers), stole the medical files of his opponents, and obstructed justice.
After Congress voted to cut off aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, President Reagan sold military supplies to a foreign power and secretly used the profits to arm the Contras. This explicitly violates the Constitution by circumventing Congress' sole role in voting funds for government programs. The American public did not know that its chief executive was running a secret money-laundering scheme to fund what Congress had lawfully disavowed.
Self-righteous calls from Republicans to hold hearings on Clinton's impeachment, given their own sorry past, reek of partisan politics and hypocrisy.
Khal Spencer
(Via the Internet)
Clinton's lying leads to loss of credibility
We knew we were getting a liar when then-presidential candidate Clinton was forced to admit that he'd smoked marijuana but that he hadn't inhaled. He has always obscured his lying through semantics and only the most naive observers expected his denial of sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky to be any different.My question is, what does Congresswoman Mahoney of New York have to say now? During an interview about the Aberdeen sexual harassment scandal, she declared that "there is no such thing as consensual sex between supervisor and subordinate. All sex under such circumstances constitutes rape."
She and other radical feminists now have to choose between condemning a political ally or admitting that their definition of what constitutes sexual harassers and sexual misconduct is based not on a set of behavioral standards but rather on their judgment of the perpetrator's or victim's political beliefs.
More important, if the president used semantics to hide his sexual misbehavior, how can we trust his word on health care, Bosnia, Iraq or other issues where human lives are at stake?
E.L. Schulz
Kailua
(Via the Internet)
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