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Gambling will generate more losers in Hawaii

The two dailies have started running expensive full page ads for "gaming" here in Hawaii. (Let's call it what it is, gambling. They don't play Trivial Pursuit in those casinos.)

The current ad shows a fresh-faced happy graduate, clutching her diploma, on her way to success in life thanks to a free college education provided by gambling.

Where do the tens of thousands of dollars for those ads come from? And the millions for this young lady's and other's "free" education if allowed to happen? From losers.

It's from the kid's lunch money, the rent payment, the car payment, the savings account, the Christmas fund, the maxed-out credit cards. From funds borrowed from friends and family. From the wholesale destruction of addicted human beings.

We don't need to generate more losers. It isn't worth it.

Jim Harwood

Cayetano has cast a cloud over company

Charles Memminger's Jan. 27 Honolulu Lite column, "Some fishy serendipity," correctly pointed out the corrupt appearance of the governor's trip to the Sun International casino in the Bahamas. He was accompanied by a longtime friend and a PR representative for Sun International.

Now it would be wrong to state that Cayetano is actually in the pockets of this company. But even a brash and confrontational politician like the governor has to realize that it looks as though he's setting up a sweetheart deal for Sun to get an exclusive gambling license in Hawaii.

The claim by the governor's staff that gambling issues were never discussed on this trip may be true, but it sounds like a bald-faced lie to me.

Cayetano has managed to drape a permanent cloud of suspicion over any activities by Sun International in Hawaii.

Should the company actually end up with a gambling casino here, we will nod knowingly, having solved the great question in current Hawaiian politics: "Now that the Bishop Estate isn't in the market, for whom will local politicians receive lucrative consulting contracts when they leave office?"

Peter Webb

Foolish decision will cost taxpayers millions

Just when you thought that the decisions of our politicians couldn't get any more absurd and totally beyond reason, we find out that city may have to pay $200 million in taxpayer dollars to preserve a barren piece of land (Star-Bulletin, Jan. 31).

This was to prevent a developer and Kamehameha Schools from building residential homes on this property. Am I missing something here? This money could have been used for needed raises for our teachers, schools and social programs, new buildings and other pressing needs.

And all because some people wanted to prevent the owner of the property from building homes, which would have lessened our housing shortage and provided much needed construction jobs. Yet Dave Matthews of the Save Sandy Beach Coalition still says, "To me, you can't put a price on that land." Oh yes, you can!

Too bad people didn't make the smart and obvious decision back then, and let the land owners develop the property with their own money. It would have created housing, construction jobs and something nice to look at on an otherwise barren Sandy Beach.

Colin Kau

"The fact that the strike may make me or this administration unpopular has no weight in my decisions." Governor Cayetano Saying that the threat of a walkout by University of Hawaii professors doesn't affect his stand on their pay increases and on other labor disputes with the faculty union "For (Cayetano) to use teaching load as an example to show whether faculty is working is so shortsighted. It shows he's out of touch with the faculty on campus." Susan Hippensteele UH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN THE WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAM Critical of the governor's statement that faculty members at Manoa may not be meeting their workload requirements

Install a pump at Natatorium pool

What the Natatorium needs is a pump to guarantee fresh ocean water continuously flowing through it. I swam at the "tank" for years and even competed there in the Western Regionals Olympic Swimming Trials in 1952.

A. Sonny Palabrica
San Francisco

Fluoridated water is health achievement

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century are vaccination, motor-vehicle safety, safer workplaces, control of infectious diseases, declines in death from coronary heart disease and stroke, safer and healthier foods, healthier mothers and babies, family planning, the recognition of tobacco as a health hazard, and -- Hawaii Legislature, take note -- the fluoridation of drinking water.

This information was published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, April 2, 1999, pages 241-243.

There is no reason for Hawaii's children to have such dreadful dental health. The hysteria and statistical distortions of those opposing this measure have been discredited by the truth fairy.

Our elected representatives can give all of our children beautiful smiles by adding fluoride to our drinking water. To delay one year longer would be irresponsible.

James Growney

Anti-Hawaiian advocate has racist agenda

Ken Conklin once again flaunts his true right-wing colors and perverted sense of history (Letters, Dec. 15).

Several months ago, he equated the Hawaiian human-rights movement with Hitler's Nazi Germany. Now he demeans the name of Martin Luther King Jr. by associating his own racist crusade with King's message of justice.

Conklin's smoke and mirrors cannot hide the fact that he stands on the side of oppression and injustice. Essentially, he speaks for thieves who advocate the continued theft of Hawaiian land, culture and political rights -- the cultural genocide of kanaka maoli. Being of Japanese ancestry, I see Conklin peddling the same evil as those who subjected my ancestors to the legal rape of internment.

Martin Luther King's message was always justice for the oppressed. He would have denounced Conklin's racist agenda right along with the KKK.

Kiyoshi Matsuda

Repeat offender 'struck out' long ago

Steven Michael Hauge had a total of 45 prior convictions, including nine felony convictions, before being arrested and arraigned in the death of an 81-year-old Canadian visitor (Star-Bulletin, Jan. 26).

Perhaps it's time for Hawaii to consider the popular "three strikes and you're out" program that would keep criminals behind bars on a third felony conviction.

Hauge has averaged a conviction every six months since he was of high school age. He has clearly demonstrated that he should not be allowed to roam free in public.

Robert Becker

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