Mayor is keeping his promises
A big thank you to Mayor Mufi Hannemann for fixing the crumbling infrastructure he inherited. As promised, he dedicated the lion's share of his first three CIP budgets to the much-needed sewer repairs all over the island. We in East Honolulu are usually not grateful about these less glamorous projects that the city has ignored up until now. The mayor delivers and gets things done. He even fixed our cracked Hawaii Kai sign. Way to go, Mayor!
Robyn Alfonso
Honolulu
Youths get wrong message about sex
From Barry Raff's letter Sunday, he would have you believe that the single reason for a continued high incidence of teen pregnancy is abstinence education. Let me point out some other highly dangerous contributing factors.
Parents do not take time to invest in their children's education, or are even aware of what they are doing in their spare time. Morals are set at home by parents. Our children are bombarded by mass media glamorizing sex. Children are being brainwashed that looking and acting sexual is the mark of a mature and successful person. Our male children are being taught that sex is the stepping stone to manhood, and dominance over women is the natural course of the world. Planned Parenthood's solution to this problem is the use of abortion as a method of birth control.
Raff says our children need sexuality education in order for them to make responsible decisions. Our underage children cannot make responsible decisions in regard to abortion as long as we throw media at them that argues that life is meaningless and worthless. Parental, family or church involvement and education is the only way to reduce unwanted teenage pregnancies. Young men must be taught they are just as responsible for preventing teen pregnancies as young women.
Advocating abortion as a form of birth control does not account for this issue, it puts all the responsibility and guilt on the young women.
Our young people must be taught to recognize and value the life of an unborn child; it is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.
James Roller
Mililani
How can we handle another 600,000 cars?
In the first three quarters of 2007, almost 46,000 new cars were sold and registered in Hawaii, according to the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association. Extrapolating that would mean almost 60,000 new cars would "take up residence" in Hawaii in 2007. Taking this through the next 10 years, there will be more than 600,000 new cars. Where in the world will they park, let alone drive? Traffic jams occur daily now, just wait till you add 600,000 more cars.
Maybe it's time for one old/used car to be removed from the islands for every new car arrival? HOT lanes won't solve the traffic jams from the additional 600,000 cars. And I doubt that people will ride the proposed train or the existing bus system rather than buy a new car. In fact, the bus system is being gutted now (fewer bus stops and routes, dirty and unusable bus stops) in favor of the proposed train.
And yes, this affects you folks on Kauai, Maui, Hawaii, Lanai and Molokai. You will get your share of the new car population and traffic jams. And it won't be because of the Superferry!
Ann Ruby
Honolulu
Doesn't cheating steal pride of achievement?
Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, has been accused of taking steroids. Oh, no! Say it isn't so!
The next thing you know, they'll be saying our president has been on drugs (which would explain a lot) or that the vice president got drunk while hunting (if you had his boss, you'd drink, too) and accidentally shot someone, or that Santa is only a myth.
Can anyone explain, how do people who cheat to achieve their goals feel any personal satisfaction or pride?
Smoky Guerrero
Mililani
Smoking ban hasn't hurt tourism figures
Hard economic data shows us that clean air is good for our health and for business. Hawaii's smoke-free law has our workers, residents and business people smiling.
Recently we've seen misrepresentations of information collected by the Liquor Commission. To set the record straight, renewals of bar licenses are similar to what they were before the law was passed. In fact, Oahu bar revenues are looking like they will be higher for 2007.
In Fred Remington's inventive letter (Star-Bulletin, Dec. 10), other key pieces of the picture are omitted. He failed to mention that Japanese tourism has been "down" nearly every month for the past two years, well before Hawaii's smoke-free law was enacted. This summer, we got the good news that June, July and August 2007 gave us the first months of positive Japanese visitor growth since December 2005.
The Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawaii and its member organizations, including the American Lung Association, American Heart Association and Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, as well as the American Cancer Society, strongly support our state's healthy and vital worker protections from secondhand tobacco smoke, and are reassured by good news since the law was passed.
Deborah Zysman
Executive director
Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawaii