Americans should display U.N. flags

Today we see American flags on clothing, on cars, on houses and in public places. The danger of narrow, self-centered nationalism is all too real.

I have often wondered: Why not display the United Nations flag to show that we are all world citizens, as well?

In December I was privileged to worship in a church in Claremont, Calif. A U.N. flag was on display in the church sanctuary, along with an American flag and a "Christian" flag.

Surely now is the time for us to symbolize and demonstrate somehow that we are world citizens as well as citizens of the United States.

Armin H. Kroehler

How about fair wages for everyone else?

Governor Lingle says she had difficulty attracting high-caliber people to her cabinet because of low pay. She also says the need for a quality tourism liaison is such a huge question of pay equity and a "fairness issue" that private money is needed.

How about being fair to our 17,000 working families who earn minimum wage and live below the poverty line? Just this year the minimum wage went to $6.25 per hour. That's $13,200 a year on average for a 40-hour week. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines show that a family of three in Hawaii is still in poverty at $17,280.

Lingle's top cabinet member gets about $85,000 per year, but that's not enough. She wants the tourism liaison to match industry standards (the Hawaii Tourism Authority executive director gets $240,000); that would be a 282 percent increase in salary! Will Lingle propose raising the minimum wage from $6.25 to $17.62 as a "fairness issue"?

Probably not. But at the very least, fairness calls for raising minimum wages in Hawaii to above the poverty line.

Patrick Stanley

Drug tests will teach students responsibility

The Makanis are blowing. Change already has begun. The Department of Human Services and the Department of Health now are working together. A new mental-health court has begun in Hilo. It's nice to see positive changes so soon after the election.

We should demand that our schools be drug free. The ice epidemic is so huge that no family is immune. There is nothing wrong with expecting our children to obey the law and to learn early that illegal behavior has serious consequences. Only when you admit and identify the problem can you begin to search for an answer, and get them the help they need. Our kids deserve no less.

Pauline Arellano
Mililani

Lousy schools keep high-tech money away

I just read the first of Susan Essoyan's four-part series on education in Hawaii ("Schools Under Stress," Star-Bulletin, Jan. 27). Using parents' desire for free child care as a factor in deciding when a child starts school is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard.

I am a former resident of Hawaii and will be returning when I retire. It boggles my mind that anyone can seriously think that high-tech businesses will locate there when the school system is so lousy. People in that industry simply will not subject their children to that environment. They also know they will not be able to recruit well-educated employees.

I think you could make a case for parents suing the state because they have not been provided adequate public education. Liberty House would have been bankrupt much earlier if it had provided the kind of service the Department of Education gives its "customers." Doesn't anyone get it? We are in the learning business.

Maybe the whole Hawaii K-12 system needs to be privatized.

Tom Foster
Associate dean
Grossmont College
El Cajon, Calif.

TV, radio push voters toward conservatives

How were voters persuaded to elect a conservative Congress and president? Since the late 1980s, most radio and TV news reports have had a conservative bias, leading voters to believe they were doing the right thing.

During the Reagan era, conservatives appointed to the Federal Communications Commission decided that voters no longer needed to get both sides of an issue from the broadcast media. If you were a broadcaster, would you want liberal or anti-business voices on the air offending sponsors?

But TV and radio are licensed to use the public airwaves and are obligated to give you the full story, not just what helps their sponsors. If we don't get both sides of the story, we may end up starring in a sequel to the movie "Wag the Dog." Are you ready to play the part of collateral damage?

My thanks to this newspaper for printing both sides of the story.

Smoky Guerrero

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