Bus ads will open Pandora’s Box

I am dismayed by letters to the editor in favor of bus ads, which say their visual blight is being overblown.

The letter-writers need to see that the problem with allowing bus ads is not the ads themselves, but the Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences that will arise from allowing them.

I urge them to rethink their position and see the big picture here.

Diane Harding
Kailua

Wos, Ais should team up for store

As a follow-up to Steve Fukunaga’sexcellent suggestion("Hawaii could use a furniture superstore," Star-Advertiser, May 5), I have the perfect namefor the store: "The AiWo Store."

Having been to a few IKEA storesover the past 25 years, I also enjoyed browsing and buying things from them. I hope the Wo and Ai familieswill get together and do it.

I’m getting too old to travel to those IKEA stores and want to buy local.

Clarence B.W. Ching
Nuuanu

Child-abuse case heartwrenching

I have followed the Naeem Williams trial since the inception of the story in your newspaper and have been profoundly affected.

Some readers have complained about the detailed coverage of the gruesome crimes he committed against Talia over and over again, but I felt it was justified. It was the first time I cried after reading a newspaper article.

I have pondered whether Williams should be put to death. I have supported the death penalty in the past but now, for the first time, I have followed a trial at a local level. Before, the whole idea of the death penalty was sort of abstract to me, but now I think the death penalty would be an easy way out for the things he did.

Some say it’s expensive to keep an inmate alive, and that for what he did, he deserves to die. That may be true, but he can pay his debt to society in other ways.

Mark Brislin
Makiki

Hydrogen cars deserve research

Hydrogen is readily obtained from solar-powered electrolyzers of water ("Hydrogen vehicles mount isle premiere," Star-Advertiser, May 5).

All conventional batteries degrade. Hydrogen fuel cells do not and will always work if fuel is available.

Gasoline and diesel vehicles cause pollution throughout Hawaii. Hydrogen vehicles offer over twice the range of electric vehicles and generate no pollution.

State lawmakers recently refused to fund hydrogen fuel-station development. This is an insult to the citizens of Hawaii.

Milton Allione
Kailua

Minimum wage criminalizes jobs

In the battle between good intentions and practical reality, practical reality is usually the loser.

This is definitely true of the policy debate regarding a minimum wage.

The practical effect of a $10-an-hour minimum wage is to make jobs that would pay $9.99 or less illegal.

How can a law that criminalizes employment have a positive effect on the job market? The best job training for unskilled workers is a job that gives them a chance to learn a skill. When you raise the price to hire unskilled workers, fewer unskilled workers are hired — that is a practical reality.

Raising a minimum wage does mean that some will make more than before. But it also means that others — mostly unskilled workers trying to enter the job market — will make drastically less money as a result of being unemployed.

Scott Moore
Mililani

Trying to get ID can be Catch-22

In addition to Teresa Tugadi’s license ID woes ("ID rules for driver’s license are too much," Star-Advertiser, Letters, April 27), I have an ultimate government Catch-22.

If a person loses all of his or her identification and Social Security card, it is impossible to replace them. ID requires a Social Security card and Social Security requires an ID. You can’t get one without the other. Each office tells me to call the other. Each blames Homeland Security for the rules. Calls to Homeland Security go nowhere.

There has to be a way for such people to get back on the "bus of life," but no agency will help. This is government at its worst.

Fred Metcalf
Kalihi