Cross was 'inappropriate,'
not ruled unconstitutional

Webster's Dictionary defines a myth as "a traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis." Such is the case of the periodic news reports of the court ruling on the Camp Smith cross.

The court did not rule, as stated in your Sept. 11 report on the Kolekole cross, that "as a Christian icon, it (the Camp Smith cross) violated the constitutional separation of church and state."

The cross was merely ruled to be "inappropriate." The ruling was not challenged. Therefore, the constitutionality of the cross has never been determined.

Janice Pechauer

Governor's spokesman
dispensed double-talk

In response to Rich Budnick's Sept. 11 letter about how Cayetano is helping small business:

The Small Business Task Force was mandated by the Legislature. The governor did not voluntarily form it. It was already in place before he took office, and the members were asked to resign. He did not re-establish it.

I hope the new Web site does more than Budnick indicated. Getting a GET has never been difficult. Trade name registration has never been difficult. Staying in business is difficult.

Why should the state open a downtown one-stop business center? Why isn't the Business Development Division's Business Assistance Branch at 250 S. Hotel St. (No. 1 Capitol District) a one-stop business center?

So the governor has "big hopes that the Economic Revitalization Task Force will develop good proposals for legislative action that will plant the seeds of prosperity." This is the same task force that has been criticized by the business community because it is made up of union leaders and bank officials and not small-business owners.

Cayetano may have "big hopes" but what has he been doing all the years he has been in leadership positions to stop the decline and fall of Hawaii's economy? "Planting seeds of prosperity" will do no good unless the soil is nurtured, tilled, watered and weeded.

A good application of Weed-B-Gone around the state Capitol would benefit small business more than all the task force proposals and big hopes the governor could ever dream up.

Shirley Hasenyager
Kailua

Twigg-Smith is trying
to rewrite local history

A descendant of a 19th-century seditionist is seeking to revise Hawaiian history (Letters, Star-Bulletin, Sept. 4). Readers should not be misled.

Many planters and businessmen were opposed to ideas of annexation, largely because they knew the practices of conscripting and indenturing cheap foreign labor would not be possible under U.S. laws.

However, following imposition of the disastrous McKinley Tariff act, sugar profits plummeted. This, coupled with the queen's proposal to frame a new constitution to return power to the Hawaiian monarchy, led most to decide a stable market was more desirable than cheap labor in the long run.

What the business community wanted was assured profits for sugar. Any national affiliation willing to guarantee this would do.

There was little, if any, respect held for either native commoner or alii. Nothing in the written records of the provisional government or the Republic of Hawaii credibly supports Thurston Twigg-Smith's claim that the traitors to the nation were clamoring for "the right to vote for everyone."

Muriel B. Seto
Kailua

Mother Teresa didn't
deserve such accolades

Mother Teresa has been accorded worldwide significance for her humanitarian work. Yet those who acknowledge this reputation do so based on illusion and ignorance.

Who exactly was she, and what has she done to benefit mankind?

She opposed any form of limiting the increase of the world's population.

She stated many times, "AIDS is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct."

Her reply to problems facing Calcutta: "It is too distant from Jesus." And on poverty, "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. The world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

To examine the medical practices subscribed to in Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, I reviewed The Lancet, a respected British medical journal. A physician who visited the facility wrote that he was disturbed by misdiagnoses and administration of inappropriate medications.

Particularly appalling was the absence of strong analgesics for the control of pain, repeatedly using the same injection needles without the benefit of sterilization, and the blatant refusal to send to the hospital those patients in dire need of surgery.

I suspect my detractors will offer, in response to such vile criticism of their idol, "What have you done for humanity?" That is not the issue. The issue is accountability. I am glad that I was never a patient at the Missionaries of Charities.

Michael L. Last
Naalehu, Hawaii

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Same-sex archive

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