Kioni Dudley should run for Board of Education
I have no idea if Kioni Dudley would make a good lieutenant governor, but I'm not sure Dudley knows either. The Republican candidate recently began running ads saying if we want to improve education in Hawaii, we must elect a teacher (Dudley) as lieutenant governor.The problem is the lieutenant governor has virtually no control over the quality of education in Hawaii, even less than the governor, who has very little. In fact, Dudley would have as much influence over education as a private citizen.
Dudley could concentrate on the Board of Education election. This body is elected by the voters.
Mazie Hirono has been a fine lieutenant governor. She has streamlined her office and eliminated the conflict of interests of previous lieutenant governors by removing elections oversight from her control. Mazie knows what the lieutenant governor does, and she does it well.
Ken Armstrong
Kailua
(Via the Internet)
Other states can learn from annexation history
News of the ceremony at Iolani Palace marking the 100th anniversary of the annexation of the Hawaiian monarchy found its way to our local paper, the Arizona Daily Star. The Hawaiian sovereignty movement will hopefully engender some real solutions for the welfare of all of Hawaii's citizens -- not just the native Hawaiian community -- as the state struggles through these economic hard times.Traditional Hawaiian values focusing on community and sustainable use of the land, combined with farsighted political leadership and a well-informed citizenry, can hopefully lead to routes other than Japanese resort investment or commercial development.
Mainland communities with substantial Native American communities, such as here in southern Arizona, can also learn from Hawaiians that there is more to sovereignty than casino development.
Stuart Williams
Graduate Student
University of Arizona
(Via the Internet)
Maili Elementary needs help from the community
I have been a resident of Waianae since 1967. I am a product of our Waianae public schools and am proud to be a 1981 graduate of Waianae High.I have been teaching at Maili Elementary for eight years. Two of my own children are students here.
Since I have been teaching here, I have seen many, many break-ins. We have an alarm system, but it doesn't seem to deter thieves much. It just makes them move quicker. As a result, usually half of a portable classroom's windows are boarded up. This cuts down on the air flow to these already sweltering rooms.
Some of our classrooms have security screens on them and these seem to be a terrific deterrent. I would like to start a project involving the community to complete the job. Maybe if all the windows were screened, we could take the boards off our windows and the fear off our children's faces.
If you would like to help, please contact me at 697-7150. If our community works together, the Waianae Coast can truly have the best schools in the state. We already have the best students!
Julie Patten-Wong
Fourth-grade teacher
Maili Elementary
All the president's problems
We must send clear signal that Clinton should resign
I am urging all Americans to wear black ribbons to show Bill Clinton that we want him out of the White House.Gayla Delgado
Kalaoa, Hawaii
Respect for presidency is dropping all over world
My level of disgust rises each day with revelations of the Monica-Bill liaison. And yes, our world problems proliferate, even as America has been weakened even before the Monica episode.After Clinton obsequiously buttered up the Chinese during his $40-million plus trip, the world exploded as it developed that the president gave secret missile information to China.
India fired off nuclear devices, Pakistan followed, and now the bombings in Africa. Make no mistake, our enemies (and they are many) know a weak president when they see one, and Saddam Hussein again tweaks the president's nose.
Janice Judd
It isn't just sex scandal that brought Clinton so low
If Bill Clinton was a honest man, who also kept his pants on while being tempted, we would have the $40 million spent by Ken Starr to use for more important things. Alas, some people think Clinton's failings are always someone else's fault. In that regard Clinton has done an excellent job as president.I wonder what shocks people today. America must draw the line on these types of scandals. If we allow them to be brushed aside, then the trust, respect and admiration America and the world, have for the office of the president will be lost. There are more important issues here than Clinton's inability to control himself in front of a woman, or to tell the truth.
The respect for the presidency is more important than any individual that holds that office. Nixon failed in that duty. Clinton is on his way to failing in that duty, and not because of Lewinsky. It is because of the long list of scandals in the Clinton administration that the Clinton presidency is considered a joke.
People have been flim-flammed by the president's cohorts for six years, and I am amazed that a great many people still have not figured it out yet.
Brian Benton
(Via the Internet)
Still learning lessons from Salem witch trials
It was 1692 in Massachusetts when two pre-pubescent girls experienced hysterical fits so alarming to their community that the specter of sorcery was raised.Upon visiting the scene of this disturbance, the colony's acting governor made a fateful decision. He elected to establish a special magistrate, William Stoughton, to investigate. The results were the Salem witch trials, surely one of the low points in American jurisprudence.
Historians point to the similarities of this case to those of more recent times when prosecuting authorities set out to prove one case only to trigger mass hysteria. The initial mistake at Salem was to set aside the ordinary processes of the law in favor of a special counsel, a "star chamber," if you will, to weigh the matter; not surprisingly Stoughton found culprits galore to justify his appointment.
Three hundred years go by and in 1992 another special magistrate is appointed to get to the bottom of a murky, failed Arkansas real estate promotion of years past.
After slogging through the matter at length and at far greater cost than the original sums involved in the case, this official in 1998 happens on a diversion.
He drops his original objective to pursue the prurient tales of a young woman of adolescent judgment.
Increase Mather, Harvard's president during the Salem episode, was instrumental in restoring community sanity by preaching the high risks to moral order of public delusions. We could heed his warning in our present day. Sic an extraordinary, special-purpose hound-dog on the Chief Magistrate of the Land and -- given enough time and money -- some extraordinary bones inevitably will be dug up. But at what cost to the commonweal?
E. J. Greaney
(Via the Internet)
Like the president, gays too are hounded about sex lives
It is apparent that the "don't ask, don't tell" rule definitely does not work, even for the president of the United States. The fact is that the president has no privacy in his own bedroom either.Now perhaps the president of the United States can finally experience first hand what gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people have been going through all their lives. Even though two adults can have private sex, behind closed doors, it does not matter. If some factions do not like it, they will open that door and expose you, harass you and destroy you if they can.
Just ask our president.
D.J. Trovato
(Via the Internet)
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