MOVE ON

GIVE HARBIN A CHANCE; CHARACTER SHOWS GRIT

As a small-business owner and resident of Rep. Bev Harbin's district, it is somewhat comforting to find a person who has experienced and survived some of life's worst hardships and found a way to climb above the mess and move on, with tenacity. We have all made mistakes and it appears that Rep. Harbin has learned from those mistakes and now has an opportunity to provide a greater voice for her district.

When will the media begin to ask the questions concerning her legislative positions and give her the opportunity to voice a response? I am more interested in her position and stance of pending issues than her history, as it appears that she has every legal right to be our representative.

Give her a chance to address her legislative positions with the space and time to perform. Let her constituents decide for themselves if we want her as our representative at the next election based on her legislative record. What if this appointment is the best mistake that ever happened to our district?

BEV HARBIN

NO SHAME TO THE GAME

Geez, Rep. Bev Harbin, no shame, or what?

I can only hope that 100 percent of your salary is withheld to pay back what you owe.

And shame on you, Gov. Linda Lingle, for appointing such an opportunist — a sudden "Democrat" three days after Rep. Ken Hiraki leaves office.

If it all wasn't so sad, it would surely be funny.

KAHEKILI

CONTRAFLOW LANE WOULD MAKE TRAVEL SMOOTHER

I am trying to understand the logic of the opposition to the Kahekili Highway contraflow lane mentioned in Monday's article "Could contraflow spoil Kahalu'u?"

This seems to be an exercise in fourth-grade math. How does the same number of cars traveling in three lanes instead of two create more traffic? Thankfully, the cars with three available lanes might travel a little more smoothly instead of being backed up for miles.

Living close to Temple Valley, I really do appreciate the country feel, but I would enjoy it more if these cars stuck in traffic were not just sitting there spewing noxious fumes instead of passing by.

As far as the ogre of new development, unless the City Council or the state does some rezoning, there is no available land until you pass 'Ahuimanu. With the constant closure of Kamehameha in bad weather and for other reasons, why would a working person want to live that far away?

And by the way, since Kamehameha is the only eastern road to the North Shore, Kahekili traffic on weekends can be just as bad and backed up as in weekday commute hours.

MINIMUM WAGE

CORPORATE CRONYISM DETERMINES CEO PAY

Cliff Slater's denigration of minimum-wage laws betrays his evident ignorance of the way our national economy works — i.e., free lunch for CEOs, free market, more or less, for everyone else.

CEO pay, supposedly earned by merit, shows no correlation with job performance. In one recent year, with profits falling some 10 percent, CEO pay rose by some 15 percent. That's a negative correlation with job performance.

Compared with CEO pay in 1980, CEO pay has increased 10 times in terms of workers' pay. Compared with 40 times the average worker pay in 1980, CEOs today get 400 times the average worker pay. U.S. CEOs make roughly 20 times the pay of CEOs from Britain, Japan, France, Germany and those of other industrial nations. Can anyone seriously suggest that these tremendous disparities indicate the true worth of U.S. CEOs?

What these disparities do indicate is the self-interested actions of compliant boards of directors, concerned not with shareholders' interests, but with the bosses on whose good will their sinecures depend.

Like the Bush administration's political cronyism, corporate cronyism determines CEO pay. Why shouldn't low-skilled workers, paid less in a year than the average CEO is paid for two hours, get some slight aid from socially beneficent legislation?

IRAQ TRIP

THIN LINE BETWEEN LIBERATOR, TERRORIST

Recently I was listening to U.S. Rep. Ed Case speak on the radio about his trip to Iraq. He was commenting on how much progress has been made. As evidence he spoke of the "tour" that the congressmen took and how they questioned the top brass there.

Can he be that naive? Naturally they will present only the prettiest picture. They want continued funding from Congress because "Freedom is on the march."

I wonder how many Iraqis he talked to. He also cited the fact that only four out of 18 provinces were having problems. All of the resistance stemmed from only four. What he didn't bother to say is that the great majority of the population (more than 50 percent) resides in those very four provinces. The vast majority of the population exists in the very areas where the problems exist.

I would suggest, however unpopular, that the line between liberator and terrorist is very thin. Of course we did not go into Iraq as terrorists, but at what point, when it becomes clear that the people want us out, do we become the terrorist? It all depends on which end of the barrel you are looking down.

I think it is time we Americans get a grip. We cannot "save" the world from itself. We have enough problems to solve at home, in our own backyard. Let's get off our soap boxes!

WIND FARMS

HERE'S AN IDEAL LOCATION

Wind farms? One word: Kaho'olawe.

EAGLES TICKETS

BUY DVD TO SAVE MONEY ON CONCERT

I agree that the cost of tickets to the Eagles concert are outrageous. Tickets for the Eagles on the Mainland are averaging $40 to $150! I checked Ticketmaster and apparently there's a third show scheduled on Dec. 2. I guess that's if the first two shows sell out.

Here's a tip. Go buy the "Live from Melbourne" DVD. It costs $20 and it's probably the same concert they'll give when they get here. Save $200 and buy the DVD.

There's also a rumor that the Rolling Stones may play here next year. Tickets are going for $60 to $400! Mick Jagger joked at a recent concert that some of the concertgoers had to dip into their kids' college funds to see them.

Why these acts continue to charge so much mystifies me. They're all multimillionaires. But I guess they've forgotten how they got there. Yes, it was their talent, but it was also people like you and me who've bought their music that placed them there. How about they start giving back a little to us?

ACQUITTAL RATE

STATISTICS MISSED BIG PICTURE

Long before I became Honolulu's prosecuting attorney, I took "Statistics 101" in college. I learned that by being selective with statistics you can miss the big picture or, if you want, prove just about anything.

In two lengthy articles, Advertiser reporter Rob Perez suggested there are questions and concerns about Honolulu's felony trial acquittal rate and how cases are screened before they are taken to trial. He reported a number of statistics. I'd like to add a few others.

The initial article detailed the outcomes of 10,712 felony cases accepted for prosecution from 2000 to 2004. Perez focused on 951 of these cases and the 317 of these cases that resulted in acquittals. So the statistic he stressed was a 33 percent acquittal rate in 951 cases.

Another way of looking at the 10,712 felony cases is to look at all of them. An analysis of all the cases indicates that 97.04 percent resulted in convictions while only 2.96 percent of the cases ended in acquittals.

In courtroom parlance, it could be argued that Perez created "questions" and "concerns" by separating out the fraction of cases that went to trial from the vast bulk of cases that were resolved by the defendant pleading guilty.

Perez also reported that given the expense of trials taxpayers should be concerned about the 33 percent acquittal rate. A statistic that taxpayers might also want to consider is that the number of cases that went to trial as opposed to cases that ended in pleas has decreased in Honolulu from 13 percent in 1997 to 8 percent in 2004.

That is a 41 percent decrease in the number of trials. It is hard to understand why taxpayers should be concerned with a reduction of expensive trials by 41 percent.

Perez reported claims that the office recently lost a huge amount of prosecutorial experience and pointed to the fact that in the past year 16 out of 107 attorneys resigned instead of the average of 13 resignations in "recent" years.

That is a tiny increase in resignations, not exactly a staggering exodus. Moreover, if you compare resignations during the eight years of my administration with resignations during the years of the prior administration, you will see that there has been a decrease in resignations of 26 percent during my tenure.

If you look at the statistics, the big picture in Honolulu seems to be that lots more criminals have gone to prison, crime rates are down and there have been a tremendous reduction in serious crimes.

Certainly crime rates are determined by more than just the work of this office. The efforts of the nationally accredited Honolulu Police Department, the Department of Public Safety, federal agencies, judges who sentence repeat offenders to prison and community involvement come quickly to mind.

However, it is also true that the work of this office does play a role in such rates. The reason overall crime rates are more important to me than trial acquittal rates is because when overall crime rates go down there are fewer victims, less theft and destruction of property and a greater level of public safety.

UNFAIR IF AIRLINES' FINANCES REST SOLELY ON LABOR GROUPS

We all know that the American airline industry is in pretty bad shape right now. In fact, four of the largest airlines in the world are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and not all of them may survive. There are thousands of employees out of work, and those who do still have their jobs are in many cases working more hours for less pay.

What upsets me the most about the current climate in the airline industry is the media coverage regarding airline labor. Most articles I have read cited the biggest problems with America's airlines as the cost of jet fuel and labor costs. Jet fuel is extremely expensive and most definitely a contributing factor to the financial losses that most airlines are experiencing. Labor costs at most airlines have done nothing but plummet since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Labor groups have watched their pensions disappear, their paychecks get smaller and their work hours go up. In fact, it is safe to say that at most airlines, labor has taken cuts across the board. Has management? No.

Northwest Airlines is creating a new low in labor relations. It has replaced striking mechanics with nonunionized scab workers who do the job for less. It is now planning to outsource flight attendant jobs on all foreign routes to lower-paid, nonunion foreigners. It is doing all of this to cut costs. It is planning to lay off another 400-some odd pilots, and have the remaining pilots take pay cuts. Why is all of this necessary? To lower costs.

Recently it was announced that Northwest is requesting $20 million to give bonuses to its management team. It claims that the reason is to persuade its upper management to remain at Northwest, rather than seek employment elsewhere. Am I the only one who sees this as ridiculous?

Don Carty did something similar at American Airlines (asked for employee concessions, while planning to reward upper management with bonuses). The media reported it, and Carty subsequently resigned. Since then, it has become a common practice, and no one bothers to question the ethics of these executives.

Is it fair that the airline's finances rest solely on the shoulders of labor? If employees value the company they work for, then all employees (including the bigwigs) should share the burden of helping it stay afloat. I certainly hope that every working man and woman is as outraged by this as I am.