North Shore will need wider road

In response to your editorial on North Shore development, I feel that a number of issues are at stake, but the overriding concern is traffic ("North Shore’s future at stake," Star-Advertiser, Our View, Aug. 24).

Let’s bite the bullet here and admit that the Kamehameha Highway is not up to the job of carrying today’s traffic. It will be worse after development and a few Band-Aids are not going to fix things.

If we want to develop the North Shore further, we need to widen the highway to four lanes all the way from Wahiawa to perhaps all the way along the Windward coast. Homes would have to be commandeered and purchased, and lots of long-established families would have to be displaced, unwillingly, no doubt. There would be lots of resistance and pain, but we must face this issue and make the choice.

My vote: No four-lane highway, no development. No more wishy-washy proposals.

Ken Rubenstein
Haleiwa

Illegal B&Bs are just that — illegal

Please deal with the problem of illegal bed-and-breakfast operations.

The commercial use of residential property is wrong and undermines the financial stability of our residential neighborhoods. The unbelieveable influx of tourists using the B&Bs has overtaxed all our infrastructure.

The owners of the illegal B&Bs need to understand that the illegal use of their property as a vacation rental will no longer be tolerated or encouraged.

If an activity is illegal, it should not be allowed, and many of us purchased property in residential neighborhoods believing the planning and zoning restrictions would be enforced.

Officials, please do what is right for the majority of the citizens in our residential neighborhoods who simply want to be able to fully enjoy the properties they purchased as residential properties — not as commercial vacation properties.

Bob Watts
Kailua

Social studies should not be cut

As a social studies education professor, I am concerned about the Department of Education’s recommendation to the Board of Education to reduce the social studies high school graduation requirements.

I recently attended a school board meeting and was thrilled to see many concerned citizens — teachers, students, parents, professors and community leaders — all opposing reduced social studies.

The president’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and our governor’s wife, Nancie Caraway, also testified on behalf of social studies education.

In total, there were about 50 people who provided oral testimony, all in opposition to the DOE’s recommendation. Not one person testified in favor of reducing social studies.

Reducing social studies undermines the DOE’s own vision of the public school graduate who will "possess the attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary to contribute positively and compete in a global society" and will "exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship."

This public outcry sends a strong message that reducing social studies moves public education in the wrong direction.

Patricia Espiritu Halagao
Member, Aloha POSSE (Preserving Social Studies Education)

Politics thrives on ‘donations’

I do wish Ruben Reyes good luck in trying to eliminate bribes to elected politicians disguised as political donations ("Political donations can be disguised bribes," Star-Advertiser, Letters, Aug. 6).

Could he ever straighten out our corrupted political system? Perhaps one may say good-naturedly, "May the good Lord save the good man’s naiveté."

Why does he think former Mayor Mufi Hannemann was pushing for rail? Reyes may want to Google the donations just from rail-related engineering contractors to Hannemann’s war chest for his various recent election runs. He would be in for some shock.

Pat Lohr
Honolulu

Corporations pay plenty of taxes

Keith Haugen’s assertion that "I pay more tax each day than General Electric pays in a year" is absurd on its face ("Don’t raise taxes; close loopholes," Star-Advertiser, Letters, Aug. 22).

Even in a year when General Electric may not have a federal corporate income tax liability due to a money-losing year, it pays hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll taxes and property taxes annually. These are only two of the many governmental taxes, fees and levies that all businesses must pay for the privilege of doing business and providing livelihoods to millions of Americans.

Equally ridiculous is Haugen’s suggestion that a program modeled after Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) is what we need to get our economy moving again. The WPA and other misguided Roosevelt programs are what exacerbated the Great Depression, extending it until the greatest make-work project in history intervened. That project was called World War II.

Jack M. Schmidt Jr.
Kailua

Disney Resort seems expensive

Four hundred dollars a night for the Disney Resort; $35 a day to park?

For many Americans, $400 is a week’s pay before taxes. For a family of four, with two rooms (one for mom and dad, one for the teens), that’s $1,000 a day with taxes, plus meals (maybe another $500 a day). For five days, that’s $7,500 plus air fare (let’s say $3,000).

We’re talking $10,000 for a five-day stay. Maybe Uncle Scrooge can afford that vacation, but not Mickey and Minnie.

I’m curious to see if they add a "resort fee" to use the swimming pool.

Creighton W. Goldsmith
Nuuanu