Lawmakers should buy their own laptops

Do our state legislators live on planet Earth? One hundred and five thousand dollars for laptop computers (Star-Bulletin, March 11) -- give me a break! Those purchases were supposedly justified because they were purchased in bulk (at a discount, no less) and a nonelected bureaucrat believed the House was able to afford them through personnel savings, which were promulgated by our legislators over the past seven years. "Savings" ... that's a novel idea for our elected officials to ponder.

Our state legislators are well compensated. Let them buy their own computers. I'm all for modernizing government, but I think it would be much less expensive to taxpayers if our elected officials simply took their heads out of the sand.

Stephen N. Bischoff

Airlines don't need more exemptions

While other financially strapped airlines are trying to stay in business by cutting fares to encourage travel, Hawaiian and Aloha airlines have been raising fares and cutting back on flight schedules.

Our interisland carriers are now asking our legislators to support them by urging the government to grant additional exemptions from federal antitrust laws so they can legally collaborate. Translation: Less competition means higher airfares and fewer available seats.

Some politicians will doubtless argue that we need to support the airlines because our state's economy depends on them. While giving Hawaiian and Aloha a competitive advantage will help them survive, higher airfares and fewer available seats will hurt neighbor island businesses and will not help the state's economy.

Enlightened legislators interested in long-term solutions will vote against giving them more competitive advantages. That will signal our emergence from a protectionist environment to one supporting a free and competitive marketplace that will encourage other airlines, and perhaps a ferry company or two, to enter the interisland transportation market.

Roy Yanagihara
Kaneohe

Let experts decide on animal quarantine

I'm a veterinarian who worked for the state of Hawaii as a veterinary medical officer caring for the pets in the Halawa quarantine facility from 1986-1990. I then worked in private practice for 10 years. I am pro-quarantine for the following reasons:

>> Rabies is an extremely serious fatal disease with no cure once symptoms develop in humans or animals.

>> The rabies vaccine does not protect dogs and cats from all types of the rabies virus, e.g. the African strain. Vaccines are not foolproof.

>> If rabies entered Hawaii's feral cat or mongoose population it would be unlikely we could ever eradicate the disease here.

>> The added costs for animal control, mandatory vaccinations and medical care would fall on Hawaii residents. Post-exposure rabies prophylaxis is more than $1,000 a person exposed or bitten by a stray or wild animal.

>> Decisions about quarantine should be made by qualified experts in the fields of veterinary medicine, human medicine and epidemiology, not by politicians or lay persons with a personal agenda or unfortunate experience with the quarantine station.

Leilani W. Sim-Godbehere
Doctor of Veterinary Medicine

3-strikes law would require more prisons

Rep. Bud Stonebraker says of a proposed three-strikes law: "Everybody wants this except career criminals and the Democrat leadership." Has he so few intelligent arguments for his position that he must resort to low-ball, ad hominem ranting to win his point?

Most of us, failing to qualify either as Democratic leaders or career criminals, are just ordinary citizens. But we can see that it was politicians like Stonebraker, playing on peoples' normal fear of crime by proposing appealing but unfundable schemes, who got us into our present law-enforcement mess. Our state is almost broke. We're already one prison short of a full deck. Do we really want to swell the prison population further by mandating life terms for petty criminals?

I recommend changing legislative procedure. Anyone proposing additional prisons, which is what Stonebraker and his kind are really doing, should have to identify, in the same bill, which taxes they're willing to raise, or which schools, hospitals, road repairs or other public services they suggest should be closed down to pay for them.

Jerry Dupont
Kaneohe

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