SALES

HAWAIIAN SEA WATER: SILLINESS CONTINUES

Hawaiian sea water must not be sold, cry some outraged souls. There's no such thing as exclusively Hawaiian sea water. The ocean circulates. What's here today is gone tomorrow.

Some examples: the messages in bottles that travel thousands of miles and make numerous round trips before coming ashore somewhere. Many years ago, hollow glass balls formerly used as floats by Japanese fishermen would come ashore on Hawai'i beaches. Some years back, Atlantic Coast ocean monitoring stations began finding bits of some strange fibrous material. Tracing ocean currents back, it was found to be toilet paper from Cuba.

About 20 years ago, canned "Hawaiian" air was actually being sold. There's no such thing as exclusively Hawaiian air either. What's here now is gone the next minute, part of the winds that circle the Earth.

Fads come and go. One around 20 years ago was bars of soap in the shape of a microphone to make happy the ones who like to sing in the shower.

Silliness abounds.

LIBRARY

PRISONERS ARE DENIED EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

I have been an inmate at the O'ahu Community Correctional Center for one year. When I got here, I thought OK, maybe I can study to better my Japanese skills. I was living and working in Waikiki before my arrest for third-degree assault. I put in a request for Japanese language books.

What a joke the system is. I got a reply that said, "Onsite recreational library services are no longer being provided since 1998."

They do have a satellite library twice a month, all paperback novels and the sort, but no educational books. And they wonder why so many inmates come back to jail.

Some guards told me that if you want to get an education, don't come to jail. But it says in their own Department of Social Services and Housing Corrections Division Policies and Procedures manual (library service): "The Corrections Division Library will provide reading materials that will help inmates prepare for vocations, enlarge their social, cultural and educational backgrounds and ready them for post-institution life."

By not following their own rules, they are creating a revolving door. Or is someone filling up their pockets with the money for the books?

I'm doing my time because I did the crime, but please let me better myself. I think it's time the government takes another look at how the state of Hawai'i is running the corrections department. We as inmates have rights also.

By only giving inmates novels, newspapers and love stories to read, how am I going to better myself? Education is the key. Or is reading novels, newspapers and love stories what the state calls readying inmates for post-institution life?

INTERNATIONAL

INVITATIONAL HULA FEST SHOULD NOT BE MISSED

Those of us who attended this year's World Invitational Hula Festival enjoyed probably the finest cultural performances to ever grace the stage of the Waikiki Shell.

Participants representing Mexico, Japan, Samoa, Alaska, California, Hawai'i, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, New York and Rhode Island displayed brilliant interpretations of hula, and it was a cultural treat.

A special highlight during intermission was a fabulous display of music and dances of our neighbor Mexico.

We need to support this outstanding annual event better. Mark your calendar now to not miss the 15th annual World Invitational Hula Festival next year.

WAIMEA VALLEY

CITY COUNCIL HAD BETTER GET ITS PRIORITIES RIGHT

The reason the five councilmen have given for not voting to save Waimea Valley was that the city doesn't have the money. So let's see — the city has $260,000 per year to spend on housing Santa and his friends. And the city has $500,000 to spend on videotaping and inventorying potholes. Just what we need.

What the people need are green open spaces. We need to preserve this special place for generations to come. We don't need more development, more cars, more noise, more pollution.

We need to contact our City Council member and tell him or her how we feel. If everyone took just a little time to do this, maybe, just maybe, they would figure out what the people want. Not what they think we need.

USAGE

ANOTHER WATERFRONT PARK WOULD BE BOON

Aaron Joyce (Letters, Nov. 28) asks, "Do we really need a 36 1/2-acre park along the waterfront that will neither be kept up or have user fees?" Of course we do! One has only to look at the use of Kapi'olani and Ala Moana parks to see how valuable they are to the community.

How many times are we told planning documents are just "guidelines" while developers are allowed to go on their merry way destroying our Islands?

It amazes me that government doesn't compute the value of open space to residents and visitors alike. Once it is gone, it is gone.

NOT 'CO-OPTED'

HEY, WE SHOULD SHARE SHAKA WITH THE WORLD

What's up with the irritation over the shaka? Come up with something new because you feel it's been "co-opted" by outsiders? Kinda selfish, don't ya think?

It's like saying Italians should stop eating spaghetti because Zippy's is pouring its delicious chili over it.

When I was in the Middle East, I saw a Kuwaiti soldier smile and flash me the shaka after learning my unit was from Hawai'i. How cool was that?

I like to think the shaka is Hawai'i's unique gift we share with the rest of the world. Now if everyone starts combining it with an "eye flash" or "lip point," then it's definitely time to reconsider. In the meantime, spread the shaka — and da aloha!

REFUNDS

STATE'S BOTTLE LAW IS NOTHING BUT SHAMEFUL

As a taxpaying resident of the U.S.A. since 1961, the last 31 years in Hawai'i, I have been aghast at how this state does things.

The state hires three times the workers than any private-sector entity does or can afford to for the same jobs, and yet the public work either never gets done or it is nothing but shoddy. And ironically, no one gets fired — ever.

The bottle law is a disgusting act of the self-serving Legislature, which must have catered and kowtowed to business in the grossest and most shameless manner. Little did most of us know that we are being looted a penny per bottle for some administrative charge, but the program still does not work.

Four and a half decades ago when I was in Wisconsin, the state, like many other states, had a bottle law, and anyone could go to any grocery store and turn in any soda bottle for 5 cents each, no questions asked. How come our Legislature did not require the sellers, each and every one of them, to accept any number of bottles and give refunds to the customers there and then? How could other states have been doing this for half a century and we cannot do it?

LONG TRIP, ROUGH WATER

WHY CRUISE LINES AVOID HAWAI'I

Regarding Mr. Otto Cleveland’s letter of Nov. 2 concerning why Hawai'i doesn’t get the number of cruise ship visits that a port like Skagway or Puerto Vallarta sees annually: There are a number of factors, most of which have nothing to do with the government.

First, Hawai'i is one of the most remote major island groups from any major continent — four or five sea days are involved in any cruise to or from Hawai'i, which makes a round-trip cruise a minimum of 12 to 15 days.

While many people enjoy sea days and cruises of this length, the most popular cruise length is seven days, which fits into more busy schedules.

Skagway is directly in the middle of the “Inside Passage” (a round trip from Vancouver or Seattle takes exactly seven days) and must be passed by any cruise ship that uses the passage — the most frequented area of the popular Alaska cruise season. Likewise, the Mexican ports on the Baja are all within a seven-day cruise from San Diego.

Second, Hawai'i has extremely rough water — two of the 10 most unnavigable stretches of water in the world are here in Hawai'i. Despite modern stabilizers, there may be motion that is unwelcome to many passengers.

A third reason involves a federal law known as the Jones Act. Unless, like NCL America’s current two ships, the ships are U.S.-flagged (which has its own set of problems inherent), cruise ships must touch a foreign port when beginning or ending a cruise on U.S. soil. Thus, a cruise ship going round trip from Hawai'i must either go to Fanning or Christmas Island in the Gilbert Island chain, or go all the way to Mexico and back.

In addition, most of our ports do not have the infrastructure to support more than one or two cruise ships at a time (happily Honolulu can now accommodate three, thanks to new construction).

A final problem does involve the Hawai'i state government, and should be reconsidered. No gambling is allowed on cruise ships that do round-trip cruises here, nor are the machines allowed to be in place. I have personally seen the state require a cruise line (Crystal) to physically remove and store its gambling machines in order to do a few round-trip Honolulu cruises at a cost of over $150,000. I feel strongly that this attitude is a deterrent to both the cruise lines and the many cruisers who consider the casino an important part of their cruise experience.

A final note of curiosity, which is the “No. 1 cruise line in the world” that won't come here that Mr. Cleveland mentions: To my knowledge, most major cruise lines come here occasionally, at least in transit.

AIWOHI CASE

DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATORS MUST JOIN IN SAVING FETUS

The Advertiser’s liberal bias was evident in its Dec. 1 editorial, “Court’s decision was correct in Aiwohi case.”

The editorial said, “The Hawai'i Supreme Court made the correct, if immensely difficult, call this week when it reversed the manslaughter conviction of a young woman for causing the death of her newborn because she used crystal methamphetamine during her pregnancy.”

From a strictly legal perspective, this call wasn’t difficult at all because the law in Hawai'i clearly says that fetuses, right up to the moment of birth, aren’t people at all and have no rights whatsoever. This wasn’t an oversight in drafting the law — the Democrats who rule the Legislature have repeatedly affirmed that this is the policy they want.
In fact, it isn’t even illegal in Hawai'i for a wife beater (or any other third person) to harm or kill a near-term fetus. The only consequences for such reprehensible behavior would be if the mother also was harmed in the process.

This liberal perspective was echoed in the Advertiser’s editorial, which excused women who harm their fetuses via drug use because they “would be fearful of seeking medical attention because they might face criminal consequences if their child suffered harm.”

By this logic, if a mugger beats someone so badly that the victim would be certain to die if left untreated, the mugger should be immune from prosecution for the assault because relieving muggers of those consequences might encourage them to seek medical help for their victim — even if in fact they don’t seek help, and actually do leave their victim to die.

Maybe I’m wrong — maybe our Democratic legislators aren’t being hypocritical when they talk about how compassionate they are and how much they love keiki. But hey, we’ll see this session. If they don’t sign on en masse to (Republican-sponsored) legislation to allow prosecution of third parties for harming near-term fetuses, we’ll know just how much they love unborn keiki.