NON-CITIZENS

PURCHASE PRICE SHOULD HAVE VALUE ADDED TAX

When purchasing a home in Hawai'i, the buyer gets the benefit of all amenities the previous owner's taxes paid for: infrastructure, public parks, water, electricity, public libraries, police and fire protection and roads. My suggestion to the state Legislature is to enact a value added tax on the purchase price of property purchased by a non-citizen.

Think of the money the state would have had from the foreign investment boom a few years ago! Such a law would contribute to our economic success without putting the onus on our citizens.

SCHOOLS

DAILY LIFE DIFFICULT WITH PEANUT ALLERGY

I was very grateful when I read Bev Creamer's Nov. 14 front-page article about "peanut-free" cafeterias in some elementary schools in Hawai'i. Far too many times, people do not take this allergy seriously enough.

My daughter has a severe peanut allergy and is now 14 years old, and it has been a rough road to keep her peanut-free. People cannot truly understand how difficult daily life can be concerning food until they have or know a child with this terrible allergy.

Kudos to the schools that are taking this allergy seriously and doing what they can to protect these children.

ACCIDENT

THANK YOU, ALL OF YOU WHO CAME TO MY AID

I was recently involved in an accident on H-2, and must express my sincerest and deepest appreciation and gratitude for the humongous-hearted people who stopped to help and offer support.

To be involved in an accident is scary, but to have your own children also involved, and be unable to help them, is beyond words.

A man in blue (unknown name) helped my girls, ages 5 and 2, out of the car and made sure they were OK. He gave them slippers off his own feet so they would not step on glass. "Chris," a military med tech, checked them and myself. "Tracy," a person of true aloha, stayed with me the entire time and also helped my husband clean out my car after the ambulance had taken me away.

Words cannot express how deeply touched we are by the kindness of these people. I hope, somehow, these words reach them. Thank you.

SCHOOLS

NEW GRADING SYSTEM COULD CAUSE PROBLEM

Regarding the Nov. 7 editorial "Finish up those new report cards": I sympathize with the teacher who comes across a communication gap between the school counselor and himself or herself.

The counselor may provide testing information on a student, but it is often a place or rank revealed by an NRT (norm referenced test). The teacher is interested in knowing the student's level of proficiency. The teacher cannot know where to begin if told that a student's grade equivalent score of 2.7 in reading tells that his or her reading ability equals that of the average second-grader after seven months in the second grade. The teacher knows that a student has proficiency at grade level if he or she had 80 percent mastery of a skill.

This information from a CRT (criterion referenced test) will close the gap between teacher and school counselor.

Teachers and parents are as much heedful now about students becoming good citizens as they are concerned about assigning grades. But this new grading system will possibly cause a national communication gap when students are ready to enter a college that uses the older evaluation systems.

OIL DRILLING

SHAME ON SENATORS FOR THEIR REFUGE VOTE

Shame! Shame on Sens. Inouye and Akaka. Politics wins out over all. And I'm sad to say The Advertiser felt no need to highlight the fact — that both Akaka and Inouye voted against deleting language buried in a Senate budget-cutting bill authorizing needless and destructive oil and gas drilling in the pristine Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Their two votes were the swing votes in defeating the measure. Only to support the manic Sen. Stevens of Alaska in his never-ending quest for federal moneys and needless pork (see multimillion-dollar bridge to nowhere).

Politics at any cost is ruining our country. Not that either of them cares — once elected, our congressional members seem to have a guaranteed life term — but I'll never vote for either of them again.

AKAKA BILL

COLOR THE DEBATE RED, WHITE AND BROWN

Being part-Hawaiian, I didn't want to get involved with the Akaka bill debate because I knew the role color played would eventually come to the surface, and here it is.

Letters by Rolf Nordahl, Bob Gould and Thurston Twigg-Smith that deny Americans overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy remind me of how some people deny that the Holocaust ever happened.

And maybe the American warship Boston, docked in Honolulu's harbor, was sitting there to intimidate the white businessmen (or "revolutionists," as Twigg-Smith likes to refer to them) into giving up their economic grip over Hawai'i and its people.

Thinking back to that era when women and blacks were denied even the basic rights of citizenship, and civilized "white" Americans slept well with the indigenous "red" Americans safely placed on Indian reservations, it's hard for me to believe that the president of that era would go against his people's popular way of thinking to put the concerns of poor "brown" Hawaiians over those of rich "white" businessmen. He may have denounced the businessmen (i.e. revolutionists), but he did nothing to reconcile their actions.

The USS Boston, in plain view of the Hawaiian people, was a constant reminder of the power behind these businessmen. To suggest that Hawaiians didn't notice this overt "presence of military might" can only be attributed to someone's overly developed sense of denial. The indirect use of military might not only played a vital part in the overthrow, it secured it.

STANDARDS

ORGANIC FARMING IS GAINING IN ACCEPTANCE

I am delighted to see that the University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources will dedicate a portion of its Web site to organic farming (www.ctahr.hawaii.edu).

A growing number of Americans are now choosing to eat organic food and increasing the sales by 20 percent per year.

The federal government, through National Organic Program standards, continues to decrease and degrade organic standards. The public should be watching the proposed and real devaluing of this industry.

There are many "prohibited substances" (i.e., pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, synthetic fertilizers) that organic farmers may not apply to crops. All the organic farmers I know use organically approved substances (soap, boric acid, sulfur, sticky traps, water, etc.) only when needed, relying instead on building soil health.

Organic farmers know that returning and recycling organic nutrients to the soil, mulching to prevent degrading humus in the soil, and wise use of irrigation are the real keys to creating ecological and sustainable health on the farm and healthy food for the consumer.

BUS HUB-SPOKE

UNLIMITED TRANSFERS NEEDED IN NEW SYSTEM

I was pleased to read in the Nov. 9 Advertiser that the city is making progress toward implementing the hub-spoke system for TheBus. This promises to make TheBus faster and more efficient for its riders as well as more cost-effective to operate.

However, it will also mean that riders will often make two or more transfers to complete their trip as they move from a local spoke bus to an express bus between hubs and back to a local bus to get to their final destination.

Unfortunately, when the City Council raised bus fares after the strike in 2003, it limited the number of free transfers to one per paid fare. Previously, riders could transfer an unlimited number of times within a two-hour period.

As the mayor goes ahead with implementing the hub-spoke system, I hope he will urge the City Council to restore the unlimited transfer policy so that riders may complete their point A to point B trips within the system for a single $2 fare.

OPERATION UPLIFT WAS UPLIFTING

On Veterans Day, I went to Ala Moana like so many others to check out the sales. While there I happened upon a table with two young women. They gently asked if I would like to write a note to a soldier for Operation Uplift. I was happy to do so; however, while I was there, I heard some of the other responses to their requests. I was ashamed of my fellow citizens as they curtly declined.

I stayed and talked to these young women and found out they both had husbands serving in Iraq. As they spoke, their tears kept in practiced check, they asked me why it was so hard for someone to give two seconds of their time to bring some message of aloha from home to someone so far from home.

The fact that it was Veterans Day and the very reason they had the day off seemed lost on those who passed. What was harder still were the negative remarks these women endured — these women, whose service was to stand and wait ... and worry, day in and day out.

I came back the next day with my sister-in-law in tow. I had intended to stay for an hour or two but instead we stayed all day. I was heartened by those who stopped and wrote something on the cards the women supplied, and deeply ashamed of those who would not.

I would like to thank Ala Moana management for giving Operation Uplift the space to work in. No matter which side of the issue you fall, these are our own, and political rancor has no place.