Brainstorm! Challenge

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Bad parenting helps create future crooks

When it comes to drugs, alcohol and criminal behavior, all of our children one day will have to make a choice. That choice can have life-destroying consequences.

Situational and peer pressure often mitigate good sense. It is important that the parent has given his or her children the protection factors they will need to make the right choices. Protection factors are learned, promoted by good parenting skills.

Children must be taught the difference between external and internal "self-esteem." By learning that they are who they are because of their inner selves, children build confidence rather than dependence upon material items to determine self-worth.

Tolerance helps children learn emotional inexcitability. Tolerance promotes self-control. Children become aware of cause, effect and consequence through experience, discipline and parental role models.

Resilience is the result of inner self-esteem, tolerance and a healthy, nurturing environment. Although it is a risk factor, poverty alone does not make a criminal. Other risk factors are abuse, neglect and bad role models. Families that have regular outings and promote individual responsibility, cultural awareness and moral values give their children resilience.

When parents are too busy to be good parents, their children might not develop the self-esteem, tolerance or resilience to make the right choices in life.

Michael Spiker
Inmate
Waiawa Correctional Facility

Bush should open up about Saudi influence

Investigative journalist Bob Woodward has raised a number of disturbing questions about the president's relationship with the Saudi royal family. Can we now surmise that President Bush has a secret deal with the Saudis to influence the November elections by manipulating gas prices -- a deal that is costing Americans at the pump?

If Bush can make deals with OPEC nations to lower gas prices, why isn't he doing it now, while Americans face record prices at the pump, instead of using that influence to manipulate the election?

I think Bush needs to answer other questions about his relationship with Saudi Arabia, too, including why he revealed secret war plans to Saudi Prince Bandar before he showed Secretary of State Colin Powell.

It's time for Bush to stop the stonewall and come clean about his relationship with the Saudi royal family and their plan to manipulate the elections of our country. We must demand the truth from our leadership or the future of this great nation will be in deep trouble with other nations of the world, and the freedoms we so cherish will not be available for the generations that follow.

Let us act now!

Chad Deal
Princeville, Kauai

It makes more sense not to revive van cams

I don't think that we should bring back van cams. We should do something about all the speeding, but this is just not the solution. First, they said if they bring back the van cams they will have police officers running them. Why don't we just have more police officers giving out tickets? Isn't that part of their job? Second, the van cams just get a picture of the license plate and send the ticket to the car owner, not the person who was driving. This isn't accurate.

My advice would be just to have more police officers out there who can catch the people who are speeding right in the act. The citation can be given at the instant of the infraction, not later. Van cams are just not the solution.

Angela Vitro
Kaneohe

FEC should not change rules for nonprofits

The Federal Elections Commission is set to make a decision in the coming weeks that would profoundly affect the free speech rights of nonprofit organizations that work to hold our government accountable to the people -- and, in effect, change the rules in the midst of an election year.

The proposed rules go far beyond the new McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and could transform overnight many nonprofit groups into federally regulated political committees for merely expressing opinions about federal officeholders' policies or views. Many nonprofit organizations -- from corporations to charities, advocacy organizations to labor unions -- would be forced to choose between ceasing normal operations or facing crippling restrictions on fund raising. Advocates on a variety of issues from across the political spectrum -- abortion rights or restrictions, cancer research, gun rights or restrictions, tax reform, the environment, civil rights -- would be severely limited. The rule changes would impoverish the political debate and could act as a gag on public policy viewpoints just when we need them most.

Changing the rules would unfairly penalize those who have worked to comply with election reform rules already on the books. Given the impact that these proposed changes pose to First Amendment rights, Congress -- not the FEC -- is the proper body to consider such changes. Therefore, the FEC should reject the proposed rules, deferring instead to congressional action on the matter.

Dillon Naber
Wahiawa

Isle immigration staff speeds up the process

Regarding "Immigration is backlogged" (Star-Bulletin, April 20): I've long been a critic of the federal bureaucracy and especially the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now called the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service), but when my wife's extension of her green card was about to expire and we'd gone through all the hocus-pocus of trying to get it renewed, we found salvation at the immigration service office here on Ala Moana Boulevard.

Yes, the wait was an hour-plus, but when we showed the clerk the passport she left the window and in less than two minutes she was back with the passport stamped, extending my wife's visa privileges for a year. The cost? None, the clerk said it was not our fault as the agency was slow in responding!

Robert E. Lansing
Honolulu

Let's honor leader Sanford B. Dole's 160th birthday

Sanford B. Dole was native-born at Punahou School on April 23, 1844, and grew up at Koloa, Kauai, until age 22. He adopted a native girl (perhaps his biological child) whose descendants are Hawaiian community leaders today. He was elected to the kingdom legislature 1884-86 from Koloa. In 1887 he led the protest forcing King Kalakaua to sign a new Constitution. Kalakaua later appointed Dole to the Supreme Court.

In 1893, he resigned before the revolution; then led the provisional government afterward. U.S. President Grover Cleveland ordered him to undo the revolution and reinstate the queen. Dole wrote a powerful refusal, confirming that Hawaii desired annexation but was not a puppet regime. Dole then became the only president of the Republic of Hawaii through four more years as an independent nation.

When U.S. President McKinley came into office, President Dole again sought annexation but drove a hard bargain. The United States paid the accumulated national debt of the Kingdom and Republic (more than the ceded lands were worth). Dole also required the United States to hold the ceded lands as a public trust for the benefit of all Hawaii residents. In 1900, he became Hawaii's first territorial governor. In 1903, he became judge of the U.S. District Court (Honolulu). Dole died in 1926 after years of charitable works.

Dole protected Liliuokalani's safety during the 1893 revolution. Unlike monarchs beheaded and shot during the French and Russian revolutions, Liliuokalani simply walked a block to her private home. Rifles and bombs in her flower bed during the Wilcox revolt earned her "imprisonment" at Iolani Palace with a full-time servant and sewing and writing supplies.

After a few months, President Dole pardoned her, allowing her to speak, write and travel freely. She organized a petition drive against Dole's most cherished goal of annexation, and he let her go to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress.

Sanford B. Dole was Hawaii's longest-ruling chief executive at Iolani Palace (1893-1903) and the last head of an independent nation of Hawaii. For more, see www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/dole.html

Kenneth R. Conklin
Kaneohe

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