Letters to the Editor

Others would love that 'lousy' $70,000 salary

Governor Cayetano criticized Daniel Mollway, director of the State Ethics Commission, for making public comments "outside his jurisdiction." The governor felt that Senate reappointment of Joe Blanco, his executive assistant, to the University of Hawaii Board of Regents was "tainted" by Mollway's remarks.

Mollway was quick to apologize for his remarks, which he called unfortunate and unintended. Probably a small issue, I guess.

But what really troubled me was the governor's comment to reporters that Blanco's salary as an aide was a "lousy $70,000 a year."

Seventy grand a year is hardly a "lousy" income. The majority of us earn far less. Is this the same governor wielding the job-cutting ax through state employment and so many state-funded programs?

Watch out for "unintended remarks."

JOE TALANOA

West Oahu would be just another mediocre school

A new West Oahu College campus would be a great boon to a bloated construction industry subsidized by massive public projects like H-3, but we cannot afford it.

Recently a television station reported a $270 million maintenance backlog in our public schools. UH-Manoa has a $33 million backlog. It is no coincidence that both our public schools and our university now consistently appear near the bottom in national rankings. As a Roosevelt grad and UH alumnus, I find this slide into sub-mediocrity painful to watch.

Excellence takes money, and the state has shown in budget after budget, year after year, that it does not support excellence in the educational institutions it already has. Given this reality, Senator Kanno's description of an imaginary West Oahu College as "world renowned" is a naive fantasy.

The developers stand to benefit the most from West Oahu. Let them use some of those profits to lure BYU, Chaminade or Hawaii Pacific to open a branch campus in Ewa with land grants and financial incentives.

JAN BECKET


Hawaii should join fight against big tobacco firms

Recently the Liggett Group has offered to settle the legal landmark tobacco liability suits with five states. Hawaii is not a party in the suit, therefore, Hawaii will not share in the settlement. Why didn't Hawaii participate? Hawaii should join the other states in a class-action suit against these other tobacco corporations!

HOW TIM CHANG

Marriage has been clearly defined for opposite sexes

There is no such a thing as same-sex marriage. In fact, same-sex marriage is a semantic, logical and legal impossibility. Marriage is by common and virtually universal acceptance and unarguably defined as the state of two persons of opposite sex being united as husband and wife (Webster's Third International Dictionary, and without doubt every other dictionary in the English language).

It is impossible for persons of the same sex to marry when the word marriage is so defined. Consequently there can exist no constitutional right for persons of the same sex to enter the marital state.

Justices Moon and Levinson, in finding the existence of a right which cannot by its definition exist, have asserted that their decision is not reviewable by the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately, in this case at least, our justices are not elected. Unbelievably we have considered providing for a constitutional amendment to define what needs no definition.

Perhaps what we are dealing with is the same situation Alice faced when Humpty Dumpty said to her, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less."

A. LEIOMALAMA SOLOMON
Senator, First District



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