“Retooling of outdated taxicab rules gains supporters” proclaims the first page of the Star-Advertiser (Sept. 25).

The article makes perfectly clear that the government is responsible for taxi regulation to protect the public.

It also is plain that no one is to be held accountable for the sub-standard rules and/or enforcement that has been and is happening now.

Responsibility without attendant accountability will almost always result in no effective action at all.

Making that point, the article says the city official overseeing taxi regulation observed that she was powerless to deny a man with multiple criminal convictions a permit because the law gave her no leeway.

In other words, the exact wording of the law trumps any genuine protection of the customer.

That is obviously wrong. It is also typical.

Richard O. Rowland
Chairman and founder, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Planned Parenthood should be defunded

Now is the time to be involved in asking for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, especially now that all the terrible videos of the selling of baby parts have become public.

Our governor and our state legislators, as well as our members of Congress, have been contacted about defunding Planned Parenthood of Hawaii. They have been asked to stop any funding from federal tax dollars and Hawaii state taxes and to ban Planned Parenthood from any funding in the future.

They have also been asked to initiate an investigation into what the Planned Parenthood facilities of Hawaii have been doing.

At this time, nothing is being done, and in spite of the signatures that we have gathered, it appears that no one intends to do anything in response to our request.

The time is now.

Barbara J. Ferraro
Hawaii state director, Concerned Women for America
Hilo

Economy is doing well so topic didn’t come up

Columnist Byron York expressed surprise that so few questions on jobs and the state of the economy were asked at the second Republican presidential debate (“Debate hit lots of issues, but not most important one,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 24).

The reason for this, in my view, is that President Barack Obama has done such an excellent job at managing the economic recovery since the disastrous economic meltdown of 2008 that the acute feeling of crisis at the time has largely dissipated.

Unemployment is down close to pre-recession levels (it is down to less than 4 percent in Hawaii) and the level of anxiety for the future of the economy is mostly gone.

Ralph I. Sato
Wailupe

Carson correct about Muslims and politics

In her column claiming that Ben Carson and all Republicans were clueless and anti-Muslim, Kathleen Parker shows herself to be the clueless one (“Anti- Muslim Republicans flaunt their cluelessness,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 23).

A little research of the Koran, a discussion with a devout Muslim, or observation of countries where Islam is the dominant faith would show that under Islam there is, and cannot be, any separation between the religion, the governance of the people and the legal system under which all must abide.

They are all one, and must be conducted in accordance with the teachings of Mohamed as put forth in the Koran.

This is clearly incompatible with our Constitution, and that is all Ben Carson was trying to say.

Jim Wolery
Kaneohe