Dirty bus windows ruin beautiful views

I make several trips a year to Honolulu. I take the airport bus and transfer two times to the circle-island bus to Sunset Beach. Each time I have noticed how filthy the bus windows are.

Returning from Sunset Beach, there were half a dozen foreign tourists from Europe who were taking the circle-island trip. The windows were so dirty one could not see a thing. It was impossible to appreciate the beauty of the island.

I suggest members of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and Mayor Harris ride the bus someday. Minor things like clean buses and windows make a big difference. Not all visitors ride in limousines.

Jane T. Carlson
Wailua Homestead
Kapaa, Kauai

Ashcroft's gun stand not new or radical

Contrary to your May 11 editorial ("Ashcroft thumbs his nose at U.S. gun standard") Attorney General John Ashcroft's opinion that the Second Amendment is an individual right is not new. The original intent of the founders was that every citizen be armed, trained and able to act in defense of our "free state."

The authors of the Bill of Rights knew that our world was full of dangers, not the least being governments, and sought to preserve the authority of the people by ensuring that they would always be armed. R.J. Rummel, in Death By Government, chronicles the realization of what the founders feared, documenting that more than 165 million people were killed by their governments in the 20th century.

The first step those governments took to facilitate democide was gun control.

We have always had elements in our country who are mistrustful of our freedoms and who wish to restrict the rights of "undesirables." Gun control origins were in Jim Crow and anti-immigrant laws. The 21st-century reality is that there are still people who would harm us or enslave us if we were disarmed.

Brian Isaacson
Kailua

Inhumane treatment of animals must stop

While most of David Grimes' article about Britain's proposed legislation ("Bill of rights for pets has scary implications," Star-Bulletin, May 8) is an attempt at humor, Grimes also states, "While I am all in favor of humane treatment of pets and other animals, I worry that we could get carried away with this 'bill of rights' thing to the point that our pets have more rights than we do." I think he can rest assured this will not happen.

The abuse of "companion animals" is rampant. We look on them as our property, seemingly unaware that they are sentient beings who feel pain, experience fear and suffer just like you and I. And guess what? So do cows, pigs, chickens and all the other animals that we use for product testing, research and food.

About 300 animals per second are slaughtered for food. Many are kept in filthy environments, standing and lying in their own excrement, then shipped to processing plants where they suffer extremely painful deaths.

More than 70 million animals each year are used for experimentation; one animal dies every three seconds in U.S. labs. In a recent letter, Hawaii Congresswoman Patsy Mink told me that she recognizes product testing on animals is a form of cruelty, and she is researching alternative testing methods and the modernization of FDA regulations. This would be an important advancement.

Pamela Davis

Resorts kill Hawaii's essential character

It's depressing to see Ko Olina Resort lobbying Governor Cayetano for permission to build a hotel and condos in West Oahu. Big resort developments in the countryside do much more damage than good to our local way of life. They take power out of the hands of residents and deliver it to mainland developers and corporations. They knock down family-run businesses and replace them with outsider-run chain stores and malls that have no local character. They create big demands for limited water resources and transform the natural environment into an artificial one. They also artificialize the cultural environment, and provide only low-end service jobs for locals.

What makes visiting and living on Oahu worthwhile is that you can still get away to the country and be in the real Hawaii. It won't stay that way if developers like Jeff Stone of Ko Olina get what they want. Please don't let them.

Eric Rosenfeld

Japanese center bailout plan unethical

The surreptitious way that Sen. Brian Taniguchi inserted the $8 million bond authorization into the state budget to buy land under the Japanese Cultural Center is just plain unethical and naive on the senator's part.

The state should never use taxpayers' money to fix a financial dilemma brought about by one ethnic group without consent of the majority of the legislators.

Although I am one of the many contributors to the fund-raiser at the inception of the cultural center, I believe that those who were fiscally responsible should have taken timely action to prevent such an irreversible situation.

Toshio Chinen
Pearl City

Ba-Le owner shows the rewards of hard work

The entire state of Hawaii should congratulate Thanh Quoc Lam, owner of Ba-Le sandwich and bakery shops, for not only winning the local award as Small Business Person of the Year, but also the national honor, as well (Star-Bulletin, May 7). Only one other person from Hawaii has won before and it's been quite a number of years since then. Lam has shown the whole country, as well as the world, that with hard work and determination you can be successful, and do it in Hawaii.

Lam's success story is captivating and a tribute to the kind of special individual that he is. I had the privilege of overseeing the preparation of his nomination package for submission to Washington, D.C., for the finals on behalf of his nominator, Hawaii National Bank and the Small Business Administration office in Hawaii. To prepare the package, we had to get to know Lam and learn about his business in depth.

We found that he is a very good businessman who holds integrity at its highest level. He is a smart, hardworking and generous person who is deserving of this recognition. As the cliche goes, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Congratulations, Mr. Lam.

Patrick Bullard

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