Improve service for bus riders

In face of rising fuel costs and increased traffic congestion, bus ridership will and should be encouraged.

Bus riders need our support by improving, not cutting, bus routes, and by considering more, not fewer, express buses that save much-needed time for commuters.

Bus riders are an important part of the traffic solution; they help to ease congestion.

The proposed bus routes will cause hardship for many riders.There will be more time spent in transfers, which will add to commuting time, and take time away from riders’ families. This will discourage many from using the bus, and will encourage instead many to use their cars. For those who have no other choice, their quality of life will decrease dramatically.

Please support the bus riders by not decreasing sorely needed services. Instead, increase and improve services with more express buses.

Audrey Lum
Honolulu

Cayetano just being who he is

Asking former Gov. Ben Cayetano to be nice is like asking a leopard to change its spots. It’s not going to happen.

Cayetano doesn’t believe that politicians should be surprised or offended by political comments and rhetoric. I tend to agree with him because this is what the public is continuously subjected to in crucial political races.

If Sen. Daniel K. Inouye is truly offended, he can give Cayetano the whammy treatment and support one of the other candidates for mayor.

John Tamashiro
Pearl City

Demonizing not socially helpful

Some people think Republicans are mean for advocating policies that will prevent us from becoming like several near-bankrupt European nations. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget cuts a mere 5 percent from the projected increases in the budget.

Name-calling is easy; thinking is not.We should be asking our congressional delegation why they voted for Obamacare, which includes cuts in Medicare and a new tax on medical devices. Medicare Senior Advantage plans will be gutted. It also unleashes new IRS agents to monitor our personal finances in order to assess fines. Each week, we discover new provisions in Obamacare that will severely affect not only seniors but future generations.

It is the air of moral superiority by progressives that grates. It prevents them from actually making substantive arguments. Demonizing their opponents is so much easier than dealing with facts.

Carol R. White
Honolulu

Logic lacking in recent events

Hawaiian Electric Co. has questionable priorities, if it can pay its executives enormous salaries but can’t afford to hire more inspectors to get photovoltaic systems up and running.

We all are paying for those fancy pro-rail ads on TV whether or not we support the project.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, a seasoned politician, is exaggerating his distress over former Gov. Ben Cayetano’s mild observation that the senator is out of touch.

What’s wrong with these pictures? It seem to me they are out of focus.

Mary Louise O’Brien
Kaneohe

Biodegradable bags just as good

I applaud the efforts of all who are following the Three Rs: recycle, reuse and reduce.

Our biodegradable bags that were featured in Friday’s story by Gordon Pang can be recycled and reused ("City bans plastic bags that will not decay," Star-Advertiser, May 11). They do not decompose until you put them into contact with soil or expose them to the elements, as they require interaction with microorganisms.

You may use the biodegradable bags the same way as you have used plastic bags in the past.

David Hong
President, Island Plastic Bags Inc.

Fish farming needs regulation

Recently President Barack Obama’s Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning group stated that increased human use of ocean resources requires sustainable, beneficial ocean practices: efficiency, consistency, transparency and environmental awareness.

Increasing Hawaii’s seafood resources via extensive aquaculture, especially seacage farming, requires strict guidelines. Unlike the mainland, Hawaii does not yet have huge amounts of noxious industrial and human wastes being discharged daily into our coastal waters and habitats.

However, alarmingly rapid increases of viral and bacterial pathogens do occur, and whenever aquaculture and seacage farming are in close proximity, there is a high risk to human health. Stringent regular oversight of pathogensis critical to avoid dangerous consequences.

If oyster farming, with its unique manner of feeding, is permitted here, it is essential that FDA regulations are followed. Our coastal marine waters and habitats are too valuable for indiscriminate, poorly applied regulations.

Endangering our major industry, tourism and the health of Hawaii’s citizens are not options.

Philip C. Loh
Emeritus professor, Epidemiological Sciences, Virology, University of Hawaii

We can get back to a healthy diet

The HBO show "Weight of the Nation" says that 68.8 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. This is alarming news.

Yes, companies put profitability before health most of the time. What should be done? Pass a national law like California’s new law that bans trans fats in restaurants. Ban junk food, fried food and soda in schools.

There’s a simple way to try to eat healthy: If your 90-year-old grandma did not eat it in her youth, you shouldn’t eat it. Chemical-laden food is one of the main reasons we are so fat.

Try to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. Try to eat meat only once a week. Walk at least 30 minutes every day and remember what Mom said: Eat your veggies.

Tom Sebas
Waikiki

Akaka Bill will cause poverty

Nicholas Kristof tells a horrible but familiar story of government incompetence and the resulting perpetuation of individual poverty and despair on Indian reservations throughout the U.S. ("Hopelessness and despair on Pine Ridge Reservation," Star-Advertiser, May 12).

Yet most of our political leaders want to put our fellow Hawaii citizens of Native Hawaiian ancestry in grave danger — via the proposed Akaka bill — of falling into that same tribal trap.

It is certain that those leaders will deny that allegation. Our response should be: "Then guarantee that such a fate will not occur."

If there is no such guarantee, then there is no genuine regard for our fellows of native Hawaiian ancestry. The danger is gruesomely, repeatedly, inexcusably real and cannot be dodged if the Akaka Bill becomes law. Support for it will have to be recorded in history as an intended consequence.

Richard O. Rowland
President, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii