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Speaker loses out with gambling push

House Speaker Calvin Say has a reputation for fairness and openness. I trust he will carefully reconsider the trial balloon introducing four commercial casinos as reported in your Nov. 18 issue.

If the well-intentioned speaker decides to pursue gambling as a means of paying for long-term care, then the real social and economic costs to the counties and state must be understood.

The imagined benefits seem to be pulled out of thin air -- for example, the $100 million for each of the four licenses paid for by the casino industry. As with most gambling proposals, there is no factual cost-benefit analysis.

Have we forgotten that the Ewa Villages scandal, in part caused by a city's official gambling habit, was the largest theft from the public treasury in Hawaii's history? Or that Bank of Honolulu had to be rescued due to its own gambling executive? Counties with casinos have a 9 percent higher crime rate than non-casino counties all across the country.

I urge legislators to carefully consider the human tragedies that casino gambling would bring to this state. Don't gamble with aloha!

Robert T. Bobilin

Backers of gambling should be recalled

A new term is gearing up in the state House and, already, legislators are talking about the need for legalized gambling. Again? Whoa!

Time after time, sensible people and organizations in Hawaii -- including social services, law and legal authorities, educators, tourism officials and common, ordinary citizens -- have demonstrated through reports, surveys, statistics, personal experiences and other informative and accurate documentation that gambling is not the way to go. We haven't needed it in the past and we don't need it in the future.

Gerald Bohnet
Laie

Quotables "Let us stop these ruinous activities and other protests that seriously hurt our economy because those who will suffer are the majority of Filipino masses." Joseph Estrada PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES Urging an end to angry demonstrations demanding his ouster "It's not a freeway, but the way they drive, it's like a freeway." Jaime Go A STORE CLERK AT THE PALAMA GROCERY, LIQUOR AND VEGETABLE STORE ON NORTH KING STREET Describing the way motorists speed on North King, the scene of a fatal pedestrian crossing last Friday

Defeated candidate clings to lost power

Losing school board candidate Garrett Toguchi should be careful. His determination to remain on the board or to act on board matters, despite losing the election, is a symptom of excessive attachment to power and influence.

Toguchi reminds me of a ghost unwilling to admit that it has died and therefore continues to haunt the house it used to inhabit. Board of Education members will have a hard enough job without having to deal with such ghosts.

Mike Henrietta
Kailua

It's not hard to expand the pool of teachers

The public schools have a teacher shortage. Therefore, we are told that teacher salaries must be raised in order to hire more. Instead, why don't our elected officials find prudent and economical alternative solutions?

For example, why not use the many University of Hawaii graduates with degrees in mathematics and sciences, language and literature, and history, etc.? They possess special knowledge that is far superior to that of a graduate with a general education degree.

Educating our children is of foremost importance. We must start now! If elected government representatives are unwilling or incapable of doing the job of educating our children, they should step aside and let new people with fresh ideas and energy take over. Our kids are more important than continuing the failed education policies of the past.

Roy M. Iwamoto

Electoral votes are based on pure faith

Don Evans, George W. Bush's campaign chairman, does not seem to understand how the electoral process works. Contrary to his Nov. 17 statement that "win or lose, this election will be over" after the absentee ballots are counted, the election will be decided by faith.

"Faithless electors" are members of the Electoral College who have voted against their state's popular vote. Although rare, this has happened five times in the past 40 years, most recently in 1988.

The faithless electors' votes have never been a deciding factor in prior elections because the margins were wide enough to render them mere protest votes. Yet, if Florida goes to Bush, there will only be two votes that differentiate a close victory from a runoff in the House of Representatives.

Granted, it is improbable. Electors are usually well established within their parties and 26 states have laws designed to prevent faithlessness. Yet Gore's home state of Tennessee has no such law, and among 271 electors Gore would need only a 1 percent defection rate to win.

More than legal clout in the Florida Supreme Court, luck in Palm Beach recounts or dual citizen Israeli-Floridians living overseas (and how large a group could they be?), the winning candidate will need something more: faith in the electors.

Bryan Langley

Current dilemma shows electoral system is best

With the current momentary confusion surrounding the presidential election, many have come up with the supposed fix: abolishing the Electoral College. Aside from the fundamental change that it would make in our 211-year-old government, based on a combination of one person/one vote and state sovereignty, it could be worse than what we have.

Right now, in a close presidential election, we have a recount in the states (or states) where the votes are extremely close. If there were no electoral college -- and if there were only a 200,000-vote separation between the popular vote for the two leading candidates, like we have now -- we'd find ourselves recounting all 100 million votes cast across the nation. What a mess that would be!

If it ain't broke, and no one has demonstrated that it is, don't even think about trying to "fix" it. This passing problem will solve itself, given time and patience.

Dick O'Connell

Good news about survival of Star-Bulletin

Congratulations to you all on the sale of the Star-Bulletin to David Black. I have been reading your online edition daily for some months now. I get a lot of laughs from the letters to the editor.

You're a great newspaper. Keep up the good work.

Howard Lee Kilby

Hot Springs National Park, Ark.

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Bulletin closing archive

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