KATRINA

WILL HAWAI'I WAIT OR HEED THE WARNING?

I've spent the last two days watching fellow Americans endure the horror of a hurricane. A disaster beyond imagination.

Government was unprepared for the movement of people required to take them out of harm's way. State agencies' warnings weren't strong enough, and the facilities were incapable of handling the numbers of people involved. Authorities knew the storm was coming and had time, but didn't get the job done. If they had, thousands of lives would have been saved.

What would we do and where would we go if we were about to be assaulted by a hurricane of this magnitude on O'ahu, the heart of Hawai'i? Unfortunately, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

Frankly, I know I should buy water, batteries and canned food, and that's it. We can't evacuate, our shelters can't even begin to compare to the Superdome, and our highways would instantly clog.

We need a plan that we understand in advance. A plan that can be put into play instantly.

We can wait, or we can heed the warning.

REAL STORY

TWIGG-SMITH'S VIEW OF HAWAIIANS SKEWED

Thurston Twigg-Smith needs to come down from his Makiki Heights museum and visit the Hawaiian communities he says are "doing quite well by any standard" (Advertiser letter, Aug. 26).

In the Hawaiian communities, he will find the real story, not the one being spun by his Grassroot Institute cohorts in their desperate attempt to kill the Akaka bill. If he goes, he will find the Hawaiians who, by and large, are nowhere near privileged.

If he doesn't want to make a personal visit, he could go on-line and check out a host of Web sites proving that Hawaiians remain at the top of all the wrong lists. In addition to other information, he will find statistics kept by the Center on the Family at UH-Manoa (uhfamily.hawaii.edu /index.asp). There he will see numbers showing Hawaiian children with the highest percentages on free and reduced lunch, the lowest SAT scores, and the highest teen birth and child abuse and neglect rate. Recently, I learned that large numbers of Hawaiian children are in the foster care program due to neglect and abuse.

Twigg-Smith makes another outlandish assertion, writing, "Is there really a class of people called 'Hawaiians'? Not really." Such insensitivity! Where has he been?

Twigg-Smith wants to kill the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and all the programs OHA administers. The eventual goal among his fellow litigators and attorneys is to eliminate all programs that help Native Hawaiians, including the $70 million a year provided by the federal government through 160 acts of Congress. In their efforts to accomplish this, he and his Grassroot friends continue to try to rewrite history.

WE NEED THEM

THERE'S NO EXCUSE FOR NOT PLANTING TREES

Whenever I say how disappointed I am about the removal of trees in Waikiki, someone responds with arguments about safety, roots, etc.

I'll give the mayor the benefit of the doubt, but let me ask a different question: How many trees has the mayor planted? So far I count that he's authorized the removal of nearly a hundred trees, dozens of them mature. Some of the trees were diseased, but why weren't they replaced with healthy ones?

That said, I really must take issue with the safety argument. Suppose we banned all vehicular traffic in Waikiki, then we could put an end to traffic accidents there. If it saves one life, it's worth doing, isn't it? Or is safety merely one of many important aspects in protecting the public welfare?

Planting trees is no less important than fixing potholes. Do we need trees? Yes, we do. Can we afford them? If we can afford a billion-dollar train, then don't tell me we can't afford trees on our streets. Can we maintain them? Compared to maintaining roads, or a new train, maintaining trees is cheap.

VOYAGERS

SHAKA SIGN WAS USED AS A CELESTIAL MAP

The shaka sign has been related to me as a kid growing up in Hawai'i as being a sign (a measure) that the Polynesians used to guide their canoes to the Hawaiian Islands on their long journey.

Raise your hand to the heavens in the sign of the shaka and the star above Hawai'i is your final destination from where these early pioneers began their journey (thumb to little finger was the entire journey); they followed the celestial map, the shaka sign.

PARKS

DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT HOMELESS, HELP THEM

Regarding the Aug. 31 letter from John Burns: Although I agree with much of what Mr. Burns says, I disagree about the homeless and the parks. The homeless have no place to go. That's why they are called homeless.

I know you want to close the park and move them along; however, there is no place to move them along to. They need a place to sleep and a bathroom to take care of basic needs, until you can come up with a solution to the situation.

The fact that it offends your sensitivity is minor compared to their suffering. So get over it. Better yet, volunteer at a shelter or food bank. Get right up close to the smell.

Mahalo to those doing the gut work day to day, caring for and being of good service.

BLOOD QUANTUM

IS KAMEHAMEHA REALLY HELPING HAWAIIANS?

I am very glad that the appeals court came down on Kamehameha Schools. It should give Kamehameha an wakening. Kamehameha should be a Hawaiians-only school, according to the wishes of Pauahi Bishop. But is Kamehameha's acceptance policy really accepting Hawaiians?

My niece and nephew attend Kamehameha. However, I would not consider them Hawaiian since both are 1/32 Hawaiian and 31/32 Chinese. Their parents have well-paying jobs and can afford the pricier schools.

What percentage of Hawaiians does Kamehameha accept from areas like Waimanalo, Papakolea, Wai'anae, Nanakuli and any other area that has a high concentration of Hawaiians? These are the Hawaiians who would profit from Kamehameha. These are the Hawaiians that Kamehameha should be helping. These Hawaiians live on homestead land. Their parents are at least 50 percent Hawaiian. Most are at the poverty level, and given the right environment and educational opportunities, they would profit from a Kamehameha education.

These are the Hawaiians whom Princess Pauahi Bishop wanted to help. Is Kamehameha with its present policy really helping these Hawaiians?

GAS CAP

STATE HAS GOOD REASON TO PROTECT AGAINST GOUGING

If there is a problem with our law capping gasoline prices, it is that we know that gasoline producers and sellers throughout the U.S. will do everything they can to sabotage our law and try to show that it won't work.

George Saunders, the man who served as the commissioner of Newfoundland's successful gasoline price cap law, warned us that the gas companies would mount a campaign to discredit our program. But he also believed that our program can be successful.

As to the argument, a favorite of Sens. Fred Hemmings and Sam Slom, that mucking with the market is a commie/socialist strategy — the fact is that it is clear, and has actually been determined in a federal court decision by Judge Susan Mollway (later overturned on other grounds), and affirmed in the Stillwater Report, that we are in an oligopoly-style market where the few actors — the refiners and other wholesalers — do not actually compete with each other. Somehow — perhaps by "conscious parallelism" — they arrive at similarly high prices without actually violating the antitrust laws.

In other words, there is no competitive market among the refiners and wholesalers. In that situation, the state government has good reason to protect the public against unfair price gouging, and that is what the gas cap is doing.

This is not much different from the state's Public Utilities Commission regulating the prices that electric companies, like HECO, can charge. Where there is no real competitive market for modern-day necessities like electricity and gasoline, the state should step in to protect the public from gouging. That is what has been done here.

IRAQ WAR

BUSH LEARNED WELL FROM HISTORY

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This famous quote came from Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana. In my mind, this is one of the most profound but simplified statements of fact in our modern world.

From history and from the memories of people who lived in the era of World War II, it has come to my attention that the majority of American people were reluctant to get involved in the European conflict that the Nazis and other fascists were waging. Adolf Hitler was a madman who somehow managed to convince millions to follow him in his rage of mayhem and world dominance.

Imagine what the world would be like today if the Japanese had played their cards a little smarter and had not attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Of course we would have eventually gotten into the war, but it probably would have been many months later and could have been because we would have been attacked on both coasts by the Germans and Japanese simultaneously. I wonder if we would have had the strength to win in that situation.

The victory that we attained with our allies was a great one, but what if we had stopped Hitler sooner, maybe at the time he invaded France? How many millions of lives could have been saved? It is hard to say how different decisions would affect the future, but I think it is safe to say that stopping a tyrant in his tracks will most likely have a better outcome than letting him continue on.

Saddam Hussein is a character in history who parallels Hitler's legacy in many ways. He was a tyrant who tortured and killed innocent people in his own country. He invaded his neighbors in Iran and Kuwait, and he had dreams of dominance of the Middle East. We stopped him in Kuwait and put sanctions on him that were supposedly to be enforced by the United Nations. Those sanctions were slowly beginning to fall apart as greedy U.N. officials started siphoning monies from programs like the "oil for food" project that was designed to help the Iraqi people.

Meantime, Saddam was building up his arsenal of weapons. We found that out when we discovered the mass of explosives and conventional weapons that we uncovered in our invasion of Iraq. Our mistake was not to put more emphasis on controlling and destroying those weapons, which are being used against us now.

President Bush will never get credit for winning a big war as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill received for the victory in World War II. But the reality is that he probably changed the course of history in the Middle East by planting the seeds of democracy.

There are many potential problems that still exist in the Middle East, but I think that the lessons of history have taught us that it is better to start solving them before they erupt into world conflicts. World wars occur when people become complacent and selfish with their own nation's safety and wealth. Everybody deserves the right to freedom, including the people of Iraq and other nations.