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If refuse workers aren't needed, why have them?

I see that United Public Workers leader Gary Rodrigues has said that, in the event of a strike, refuse workers need not be deemed "essential," thereby declaring them as candidates for lay-offs/termination.

The employers will be very happy to reduce their pay now and let the public deal with their own garbage since Rodrigues said no garbage pick-up is only an inconvenience, not a health hazard. Mr. UPW, please choose your words more carefully.

S. Shirai
Lihue, Kauai

Drunk teens were allowed to drive away

I'm a concerned 29-year-old citizen who is very confused. About a week ago, my sister-in-law and I went to the movies in Mililani. We left the theater about 12:30 a.m. We were walking to our car, parked in front of City Mill in the shopping center, when we noticed 30-40 teen-agers around my vehicle. Some were even sitting on it.

As we got closer, we saw beer bottles and beer cans on the ground and noticed the kids drinking alcoholic beverages. My sister-in-law used her cell phone to call police.

Five police cars showed up 10 minutes later. The police told the kids to leave. But this is what upset me: How could they knowingly put these kids back on the road after they'd been drinking?

When I asked one of the officers, he said it was private property and the police couldn't do anything else. He also said that, because he didn't actually see any of them take a drink, he couldn't do a thing about it. He also said he couldn't smell any alcohol on them but I could smell it as I was walking to the car.

Can someone explain this to me? The police put lives in danger by letting underaged drinkers drive away in their cars.

RaeAnn Gaumer

SUV drivers shouldn't get insurance breaks

Hot on the heels of the failure of the global warming summit comes the introduction of lower insurance premiums for drivers of SUVs (stupid urban vehicles). Oversized and ugly, they are visually polluting, air-polluting and gas-guzzling, representing the worst in overconsumption.

Any support of them, including by insurance companies, merely contributes to global warming.

Lois Raynor

Akaka bill deserves more consideration

The Akaka bill now before the U.S. Senate would bring about the creation of a separate native Hawaiian government, like an Indian tribe.

During my yearly pilgrimage to Las Vegas, I always purchase cigars at the Paiute Tribal Indian Smoke Shop on Main Street a mile north of the California Hotel. There's always a line there with people buying cigarettes.

Federal, state and local taxes don't apply so they undercut the competition. Cigars are half off or less than what I find downtown. Business is so good the smoke shop has a drive-through window.

If ABC Stores, Foodland, Longs Drugs and other local retailers, especially those selling tobacco, liquor and petroleum products, believe that a Hawaiian/Indian reservation could not squeeze into a half block of Waikiki, all they need to do is look at a street map of Las Vegas.

The area of the Indian Smoke Shop is colored pink in a one block area on the map indicating an Indian reservation. Shouldn't local businesses ask some serious questions about the Akaka bill?

Earl Arakaki
Ewa Beach

Retailing that caters to tourists isn't so bad

In her Nov. 24 letter, Emma Howard recommended a shift away from Japanese customers to a more local-friendly economy. Yet no matter what we promote, we will always be subject to a consumer economy.

Buyers get what they want and if what they want is $500 handbags, by golly, that's what someone will find a way to sell them.

This is not an anti-local issue so much as about high-end and low-end retailing. Low-end buyers aren't catered to in high-end stores and vice versa. It's not discrimination, just niche marketing.

We shouldn't expect stores to put local people first. If they have a target market that doesn't include me, fine. I can shop at Kahala Mall or Pearlridge Center.

But if a "20-year-old size zero" wants to keep "buying, buying, buying," she should have a place where she feels comfortable, as long as we can still get those tax revenues. Face it: We can either learn to live with the tourists or learn to live without them.

Bryan Langley

Doesn't Santa myth hurt kids more?

Talk about mixed messages! If "lying is never acceptable," why is Frances J.U. Segundo (Letters, Nov. 29) complaining about "Santa lies" instead of the promotion of a fantastic Santa?

Which lie affects impressionable children more: discovering that Santa lies or that parents do?

Rico Leffanta

Pohai Nani epitomizes best in elder care

Japan is turning to Hawaii to learn how to design and operate its first home for senior citizens. However, its retirement community will house 4,560 residents -- well over 10 times as many people housed in any local retirement facility.

Japan is catching up in this field in a big way. Planners from that country recently visited Pohai Nani. They talked to management, visited departments and produced a video.

Pohai Nani, which means "surrounded by beauty," is Hawaii's oldest retirement home. It began service in 1963.

Japanese planners learned how management details are refined to the individual satisfaction of each resident, and that a helpful, highly professional staff is the strength of such a place.

The Japanese facility, to be built on Okinawa, will house a library, cultural school, restaurant, shopping center, golf course, hospital, nursing home and entertainment of all sorts -- everything a person could need.

E. Alvey Wright
Kailua

Quotables "I was telling my sister-in-law, they never going to send us to the camps because we're (U.S.) citizens but no, citizens or not, anyone with a Japanese name was sent -- no trial or anything." Edward Yanagisako 90-YEAR-OLD MILILANI RESIDENT Recalling how he and other Japanese Americans during World War II were interned and then imprisoned for draft evasion because they refused to fight while their families were still held in mainland internment camps "It's rewarding. We are able to restore patients' eyesight and see how happy they are."s Dr. Jorge Camara HONOLULU OPHTHALMOLOGIST Who will receive an award for his work from the president of the Philippines

Cartoon to the editor

By Sandy Ritz, Honolulu

AT&T should remove antennas without delay

Are there no limits to what a company such as AT&T will do to reap profits? Will it do so at the expense of our health, our children's health and our future?

In the last couple of months, AT&T erected huge cellular phone antennae as close as 15 feet from our Mililani Mauka homes.

We are emotionally devastated as we continue to learn more about the alleged health hazards linked with antenna radio frequency (RF) radiation. These include cancer, brain damage, Alzheimer's, leukemia, heart disorders, birth defects and a litany of others.

We fear for our children because it is common knowledge they are the most vulnerable to environmental health hazards. How much radiation can little bodies take when they are zapped 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Common sense says only bad things can happen.

Now that it has been confirmed that AT&T constructed these antennae illegally on agricultural-zoned lands, we want them removed from our neighborhood immediately. It is the only right thing to do.

Jill and Brett Carter
Mililani Mauka

Ed Case is union-buster, not crusader

A Star-Bulletin Nov. 17 editorial praises Rep. Ed Case and depicts him as a champion of change against the tyranny of public worker unions. Yes, unions like the Hawaii Government Employees Association and United Public Workers need a change in leadership and a rebirth of internal democracy.

But Case, a born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth corporate lawyer, has no interest in this kind of reform. His real agenda is to cripple the unions, reduce wages for public and private workers alike, and undermine the governmental programs that working people so dearly need in an age of ruthless globalization and market economy run amok.

If Democrats in Hawaii have a future, it is in moving in the opposite direction -- reinventing themselves as the party which fights for the rights and aspirations of working and small business people, native Hawaiians, thoughtful professionals and disadvantaged minorities.

Meanwhile, Case, Cayetano and other politicos -- who in any state but Hawaii would be mainstream, business-loving Republicans -- should be encouraged to go to their true home: the headquarters of the GOP.

Noel Jacob Kent

Waihee wasn't first Hawaiian governor

Am I nitpicking? Perhaps. But your reporter is only partly correct in your Nov. 10 story when identifying Democrat John Waihee as Hawaii's first governor of part-Hawaiian ancestry. Our first part-Hawaiian governor -- although appointed to the post -- was Samuel Wilder King, a Republican.

Kaupena Wong
Waianae

Governor flunks out in setting priorities

Didn't Governor Cayetano suggest using $50 million to build an aquarium? If there is this much money around for such an ill-conceived idea, why not use it to fix our public schools?

Many of them look like ghettos, yet Cayetano wants to build an aquarium. Keep this up and our students won't even know how to spell "aquarium."

Steve Tayama
Waimanalo

Don't begrudge nominal raise to any worker

Donald Allen alleges in his Nov. 29 letter that "teachers show their true colors" when they want a pay raise in the upcoming contract negotiations because the administration supposedly says there is not enough money for both their raises and the children (of course, that is another issue called priorities).

I have a few questions for Mr. Allen. How long have you gone without a pay raise? How does someone living in an area with a high cost of living pay the mortgage and bills on a third-rate salary?

Just curious. And if you're curious, I am not a teacher but a worker who feels that at least cost-of-living adjustments to salary levels equal to the consumer price index are warranted just to stay even.

R.D. Greenamyer
Mililani

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More election reflections

Florida's election system brings nostalgia for Hawaii

As a former Hawaii resident who's had the misfortune of being relocated to West Palm Beach, I'd like to inform the folks in my former home just how this presidential election is viewed from a resident's perspective.

I have friends who worked the polls from 7 a.m. until they closed at 7 p.m. They told me of voters who, when they removed their punch card from the holder, were surprised to learn they had cast a vote for Pat Buchanan and not Al Gore.

Additionally, despite being a legally registered voter in Florida, I was denied the right to vote myself.

I moved to Palm Beach from a neighboring county in August. I changed my voter registration at the same time I renewed my driver's license on Aug. 9. Yet I never received a new voter registration card.

Telephone calls to the elections supervisor went unanswered so I was unable to vote. I was legally registered in one county, but a resident of another -- a situation not allowed under the law.

I stood in line with several other people in the office of the elections supervisor on Nov. 7, trying desperately to vote, but to no avail. I was appalled to be told that my registration was probably "in the box in the back that we didn't get to."

My registration was changed three months in advance of the election. Other people in line had similar stories.

I later learned that problems with the "butterfly" ballot and with voter registration irregularities in Palm Beach County have been longstanding. Each elections season, the same problems are reported.

Whether one is a Gore or Bush supporter, as a victim of Florida's election system I believe that a revote, or at least manual recounts, should be authorized. Our secretary of state, Katherine Harris, should not have certified an election with so many obvious problems.

Apparently, I should have kept my Hawaii residency and voted absentee.

Genifer J. Johnson
West Palm Beach, Fla.

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Florida has made mockery of democracy

I can't believe my eyes and my ears. I thought that lawful votes were thrown out only in totalitarian countries.

When this post-election drama started, it looked like a good civics lesson that would convince us that every vote counts. Now Florida has shown us this is not true; some votes are more equal than others.

Who will bother to vote now? Florida has shown that those who control the vote count are the ones who hold real power.

Jean Toyama

Gore's attitude is insulting to American people

Having Al Gore say things like "full, fair and accurate count" makes me wonder if he thinks common folks have the word "dumb" etched on their foreheads. Partisans have eliminated anything close to an accurate count -- even Ralph Nader's recent words about flipping a coin have greater meaning.

For Gore to use the word "democracy" as a substitute for the words "Democratic Party" is an insult to our country and to Gore's intelligence.

Steve Good
Ewa Beach

Bush changes his tune depending on the outcome

George W. Bush wanted the popular vote to decide the election until the winner of the popular vote became Al Gore. If Bush gains popular vote after all, will he change his mind again?

Jane A. Harvill
Kapaa, Kauai

Gore doesn't really care about fairness

Your Nov. 28 editorial said, "At this point, Bush is not the president-elect. He may achieve that designation at some point in the near future, but his attempt to create the illusion now is nothing more that putting an inappropriate spin on what remains an undecided election."

Is it your newspaper that is trying to spin this to perpetuate the continued confusion Al Gore's camp has been emotionally blackmailing us with since Nov. 7.

George W. Bush is, indeed, our president-elect. No attempt to create the illusion of votes (dimpled chads are an illusion!) will change the fact that Bush won.

If Gore's camp had been sincere about accuracy, it would be asking for a recount on ALL "undervotes" throughout the nation instead of selective Democratic counties.

Donna Rewick
Kaneohe

U.S. Supreme Court should order new election

It would be excellent if the U.S. Supreme Court decides on a new presidential election in Florida -- ordering the Republican and Democratic parties to meet and devise a new ballot, closely supervise the election, and accept the results of the new election.

Then the decision of Florida voters should be accepted by the American people and should be recorded as a historic event. Internationally, it will enhance the high court's reputation.

How Tim Chang

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