Mayor must protect city’s uniqueness

Let’s not give in to Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s proposal to degrade our city by selling exterior advertising on city buses.

The ban on billboards and outdoor advertising is one our most enlightened laws.

The mayor’s job is to protect our city’s uniqueness and sense of place. If he needs more funds for the bus system, it’s his job to come up with them without blighting our public spaces.

I’m reminded of our slogan when we rallied the community 25 years ago to protect open space on the Sandy Beach coastline: "If we lose the beauty of our shoreline, we lose what it means to live in Hawaii."

The same goes for our city’s streets: If we commercialize them with rolling billboards, we will make our city commonplace instead of special.

The last thing we need are sales pitches yelling to us from buses in all parts of our city.

Phil Estermann
Hawaii Kai

Kauai factions pitted against each other

The GMO, biotech, poison-everything industry appears to be winning the war on Kauai.

CEOs must be chuckling in their enclaves as they watch this "civil war" unfold — one shore against the other.

It looks a lot like the time-tested strategy of "divide and conquer" at work here. Pit one faction against another, then watch as they rip each other apart. When it’s over, come in, sweep up the pieces and take ownership of the situation. It works every time.

Jobs versus the environment; North versus South, locals versus newcomers (or let’s just say "haoles"). It’s the same old boring story. It seems in some places it never ends.

For resolution, someone may need to carry a peace pipe across the island, sit for a powwow, discuss the merits of invaders in general, and come prepared with alternative solutions.

There has to be some common ground there.

Richard Morse
Makiki

Kauai’s problems are not about race

Tim Hurley’s article, "Seeds of Division," perfectly illustrates how class warfare on Kauai can be misconstrued to describe the island as a racially charged sociopolitical and socioeconomic environment (Star-Advertiser, Dec. 15).

Skin color is the easiest (and erroneous) causal explanation for the roots of activism anywhere. However, Kauai’s cost of living and economic barriers are the real wedges between us locally born-and-raised residents and our political participation.

With us local families working multiple jobs to survive, we are socially isolated and politically marginalized. Kauai’s political scene is merely emblematic of the growing disparity between the island’s lower- and upper-middle classes, and unequal access (i.e. "free time") to become educated and a political force.

Michael Miranda
Lihue

Brooks has only himself to blame

David Brooks advises us that "we’re better off when the presidency is strong than when rentier groups are strong" ("Stronger executive branch could cure America’s ills," Star-Advertiser, Dec. 16).

A truer statement is hard to imagine, but it would carry more weight if Mr. Brooks had not spent the last 30 years demanding the shrinking of government and the deregulating and unleashing of the very same "rentier" interests he now blames for our troubles.

Methinks "the latter end of his commonwealth forgets its beginning" (William Shakespeare, "The Tempest").

Larry Tool
Kaunakakai

Turn off more lights along H-3 freeway

I drive the H-3 freeway at night several times a week from Pearl City to Kaneohe, and lately, I have been delighted that the first two miles have no overhead lights.

I am able to see stars and the moon, and I am not blinded by blaring lights. I wish we could turn off the other two miles before the tunnel.

Usually with all the lighting, it almost seems like daylight at 10 p.m. Can’t we turn off more of these lights, and save energy?

Colleen Soares
Kaneohe

Honolulu may soon look like Hong Kong

As a Realtor, former Kailua Neighborhood Board member and Hawaii citizen since 1969, I have not been this embarrassed by our elected officials as I watch them trip over themselves to secure new single-family home and especially condo developments for developers.

Is it the campaign contribution money they hope to receive, or the increased tax revenue from property taxes on the "rich" so we can increase our state’s social welfare beyond 20 percent of our state budget?

Are we going to turn Kakaako into Hong Kong? Are we soon to be painted into a corner where there is no way we cannot afford to approve gambling on the farmland now taken from us in the Ewa area?

When are we going to start doing something right, and create jobs and put an end to the annoying taxes we face at every turn? What is it going to take: voting every legislator who supports developers and higher taxes out of office?

Mike Gallagher
Kailua