FOREIGN TRIP

WHEN WILL LINGLE RETURN THE BIG BUCKS?

Your editorial comments about the Isle Democrats' campaign finances were fascinating. I hope, however, that you would show some proportionality.

From your paper, I learned that the Isle Democrats returned the money (around $6,000) they received from Maine. On the other hand, the Lingle administration received over $850,000 from Hawai'i's Big Businesses seeking favorable access to foreign officials. But, I've yet to read that the $850,000 boondoggle was returned to the Big Business folks who traveled with Gov. Lingle. What happened?

I believe Hawai'i's citizens want to know when the $850,000 will be returned.

Your paper also stated that Lingle's campaign fund exceeds $5 million, much of it Mainland money. We the people of Hawai'i are not dumb! No one gives away big money for free!

Upton Sinclair (one of the foremost muckrakers/investigative reporters) used to say, "Follow the campaign money and you'll find the muck!" Muck is defined by Webster as "soft, moist, farmyard manure." Where is Bob Watada to look into the muck?

SEN. MENOR

NEW GAS CAP BILL IS BOTCHED COMPROMISE

Reading The Advertiser's coverage of the latest state Senate gas cap proposal, one might think that this was a bill to suspend the gas cap. Nothing of the sort has occurred.

If you read the committee report accompanying this legislation, Sen. Ron Menor admits that he has created a flawed bill that compromises between what he wants (further tweaking of a government-set gas-pricing formula) and what the House wants (suspension of the gas cap until the November elections are safely over, and then maybe a repeal depending on voter sentiment expressed in those elections).

Is this any rational way to set prices for a basic, vital commodity — a flawed compromise hammered out in a flurry of conference committee meetings run by politicians unfamiliar with the complexities of the gasoline industry or even basic economic theory?

In the worst-case scenario under Menor's compromise plan, we could be whipsawed between gasoline shortages during the socialist phase (as refiners throttle back production and delivery in anticipation of the next phase), followed by price spikes during the free-market phase (as refiners try to recoup revenues lost during the prior two weeks).

Let's accurately name this latest attempt by Sen. Menor "The Manic-Depressive Gas Pricing Act of 2006."

CONCERT SINGER

RENÉE FLEMING IS TRUE AMERICAN IDOL

When God said "This is what a human voice can sound like at its finest," he created Renée!

Those who attended Renée Fleming's concerts this past weekend heard the true American Idol (try International Idol). The beauty of tone, the intensity of feeling and the perfect presentation stunned my sensory capacities to the point where miraculous incredibility became the norm.

I will never be the same after experiencing the magic spell called Renée Fleming.

PRESCRIPTIONS

PSYCHOLOGISTS SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN POWER

Do Hawaiians in rural areas deserve to have unqualified people give them potentially harmful medications? Let's call a spade a spade.

Psychologists, trained in talk therapy and in giving psychological tests, are lobbying hard to win the legal ability to prescribe psychiatric medications to Hawai'i's poor mental health consumers under the notion that it increases access to medications.

Truly, it increases access to danger since House Bill 2589 does not ensure that psychologists get as good medical training as advanced practice nurses or even physicians' assistants.

Family doctors in rural communities are the current prescribers for mostly depression and anxiety, while psychiatrists care for more complex psychiatric cases in rural communities. Community Health Centers are choosing to hire family practice doctors to get more bang for their buck, leaving no funding for psychiatrists there. Do Hawaiians want more prescribers?

What is needed is more access to reimbursed kupuna services, more housing and funding for indigent mentally ill, more dual diagnosis treatment programs and, most especially, more respect for Hawai'i's mentally ill on our Neighbor Islands.

CROWING

THERE'S NO WAY TO WIN AGAINST A ROOSTER

This is in response to Theodore York's March 27 letter, which bemoaned that "a Makiki cock crows no more within the sterile city."

At a recent party, I complained about my neighbor's pet rooster, which liked to come into my Foster Village yard and crow loudly at all hours of the day and night. One morning, I took a broom and tried to hit the rooster with it. To my shock, the rooster flew onto my roof, then over the fence into my neighbor's yard. Who knew roosters could fly?

My aunt laughed and recounted her tale. She was working in her Manoa Valley home and happened to look out the window. A rooster was in the front yard, cocking its head and staring at her. It began to crow. When it wouldn't stop, Aunty went out and threw a shoe at the rooster. It fluttered away, then came back and resumed its crowing.

Aunty was so annoyed, she got a kitchen knife and threw it at the bird, but missed. She chased the rooster from the yard and down the street. Thinking it had left for good, she returned to her home and again looked out. There was the rooster in the same spot, crowing at her.

Aunty gave up. You can't win with a rooster!

AVIAN FLU

WE'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THOSE PESKY ROOSTERS

I have no sympathy for Mr. Theodore York of Makiki. He only has a single rooster? Come to my 'Aiea Heights home and enjoy 20 or 30 of them, 60 or 70 hens and hundreds of yellow baby chicks that, with our luck, will grow to be roosters.

They start at 2 a.m. and don't stop crowing until midnight. We are probably the only people on this island praying for more rain — they are more quiet during a downpour.

My biggest concern is avian flu. If it should come to the island via migratory birds, it will hit these wild animals first, then perhaps infect our domestic animals. What will we do then? Will the City Council continue to listen to the bleeding hearts who say chickens are their pets?

Enough, already. The city and state need to clean up their parks — they have the money and they have the means. Give us some peace and quiet. We certainly pay enough in taxes to demand it.

FUNDRAISER

OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE IS A GOOD NEIGHBOR

On March 4, Outback Steakhouse did a fundraiser for the Washington Middle School Band. The band will be preforming in Disneyland in May.

Outback Steakhouse came to the school with six wonderful employees and did a splendid job. Not only did they provide everything, but they were gracious people who served the party with big smiles.

If a company ever deserved recognition for being a good neighbor and donating to the community, it is because of the dedicated employees from Outback Steakhouse in Waikiki. A big mahalo to Outback for its generosity and thoughtfulness.

SCHOOL REFORM

CORE CURRICULUM JUST ONE MORE WRONG STEP

The recent commentary by David H. Rolf promotes the common belief that everyone should have a say in what is good for public schools. In a perfect world, even automobile dealers would have partnerships with local schools to provide vocational experience for students.

But the world is not perfect, and it will never be perfect. So, in the imperfect, broken and obsolete public school system that does exist, please know that if a core curriculum is adopted, it would simply be one more step in the wrong direction of public school reform.

If a bowl is cracked and full of chipped glass, no amount or flavor of ice cream will fix it.

MENTAL HEALTH

CONSENT DECREES AIM TOO HIGH

Your recent coverage of the federal consent decree on the state's mental health services (March 23 and 24) and the state's response by the attorney general and Health Department (March 27) have compelled me to comment.

When I became director of health in December 1994, the state had just been found in contempt of the 1991 federal consent decree that found inpatient care at the Hawai'i State Hospital so inadequate as to be unconstitutional. In our initiatives to improve services, it quickly became apparent that without adequate community-based facilities for patients discharged from the hospital and little control over judge-ordered admissions from the criminal justice system, the hospital would almost always be over capacity.

I thought, however, that we would still be able to overcome the original reason for the consent decree — i.e., that the level of inpatient care had been found unconstitutional in 1991.

The federal attorneys and especially their consultants, however, seized upon the contempt finding to force the state to develop an exemplary mental health system, as they continue to do so now. While that may be an admirable goal for the state to achieve voluntarily, it hardly comports with the requirements of the consent decree, as Attorney General Mark Bennett has also concluded (March 24).

I made a similar, though futile, argument with the state attorneys when the federal attorneys began to press the state to include community-based services under the consent decree. Judge David Ezra has since commented that the state had volunteered to include community-based services under the decree, implying to me that it was not required to do so.

The Felix Consent Decree of October 1994 was another instance of its use to force the state to develop a system way beyond what was required, as well as of the timidity of the state's attorneys. When I arrived in December 1994, I found that the state had consented to developing a system of care based on broad, general principles with, incredibly, no specific, measurable goals. That meant the court-appointed monitor, Ivor Groves, had the sole authority to decide what was measurable success, and he and his consultants also set forth to make Hawai'i an exemplary system.

The public policy process is a balancing act among many competing interests and an acute awareness of finite resources. When it breaks down and is replaced by adversarial-based oversight, original goals are obscured, overreaching is common, and only the needs of the case before the court are considered, regardless of costs.

HAWAIIANS

BEWARE PROPERTY CLAIMS TO FUND RACIAL SEPARATISM

Barry L. Sooalo's lengthy commentary of March 19 said "New kind of mahele under way." He claims non-natives are (once again) stealing from natives. He claims ethnic Hawaiians should have a group right to property. He uses war words like "gauntlet has been thrown down" and "rules of engagement" and "battle."

Indeed, Hawai'i is threatened by a new mahele. We're in a civil war, albeit velvet-gloved. "Indigenous" is the latest buzzword to justify race-based group property rights as a way to engineer and finance racial separatism. This dividing up of land, money and political power based on race alone is a mahele we all should resist.

In 1819, Kamehameha II, his regent, Ka'ahumanu, and high-priest Hewahewa exercised sovereignty by abolishing the old Hawaiian religion, destroying the heiau and burning the idols — the year before the missionaries came. Diehard dead-enders fought a civil war to defend the old ways and lost in the Battle of Kuamo'o. Some zealots today want to fight that battle again.

Today's Hawaiian activists claim they are indigenous, demanding the same special protections, group ownership and group conformity as the Amazon tribe. But they are fully civilized and assimilated individuals, living scattered throughout all neighborhoods and owning property on the same basis as everyone else. They should not be treated as possessors of indigenous property rights.

It's doubtful today's ethnic Hawaiians are descended from Hawai'i's "first people." But anyway, they long ago abandoned the religion, culture, lifestyle, group cohesiveness and naivete that once upon a time might have justified special protections for communal property.

Asserting indigenous rights is a political ploy by Hawaiian activists seeking racial separatism or ethnic nationalism. The Akaka bill authorizes reimposing indigenous status and group authority on individuals of an attenuated racial minority. The Akaka bill might help assert claims to group property rights, but only at the expense of taking today's fully equal citizens out of a unified multiethnic society and placing them under government wardship based on race.

Threats of a new mahele need to be taken seriously.