Just raise bus fares once and for all

If City Council members had to cave in to a pay hike for the bus strikers then why did they wait so long? Why didn't they just give in to whatever the union asked for before the strike? They wasted every rider's time. Just increase the cost of a monthly pass to $100 and get it over with. Once that is done, then we can work on an alternate transit system.

Von Dent
Aiea

Have bean-counters ridden the bus?

Here I am, standing in a full city bus and reading a story in the daily newspaper about bus ridership being down 15 percent. The bus management should ride the bus with us instead of solely relying of a set on numbers to see first-hand the true quality of life on the bus.

Michael Nomura
Kailua

Kill predators before they kill and eat you

With reference to Paul D'Argent's letter ("It's pointless to seek revenge from nature," Star-Bulletin, Nov. 12): It's about time people take responsibility for their own actions (or inaction) as concerns wild animals, fishes and predators in general. As a born and raised in Hawaii Hawaiian, who is now successfully retired in Arizona and Hawaii, I believe the absurd viewpoint of predators being "blameless" for their natural predator instincts is absurd. Case in point: The numerous mountain lion attacks in southern California wherein joggers were hunted down, killed and eaten were caused by naive, pseudo-intellectual and quasi-scientific state legislation eliminating the annual hunting seasons on mountain lions. Subsequently, predators lose their fear of man, resulting in children on the menu of some hungry mountain lion or bear as has been the case in the Southwest.

Let's grow up and get real about predators. They are at the top of the biological food chain and will even feed on humans, given the chance, so hunt them down or they'll hunt (and eat) you!

Mahalo from a Hawaiian big-game hunter and fisherman.

William A.K. Kuamoo
Scottsdale, Ariz.

Dems make mockery of U.S. Constitution

Now that some 39 continuous hours of debate in the U.S. Senate have come to an end, three things have been made abundantly clear:

>> Democrats fear the constitutional requirement for a straight up or down majority vote whether to advise and consent to presidential judicial nominees.

>> Democrats fear the Constitution.

>> Democrats fear the American people.

And no wonder. Democrats have come to fear democracy itself.

Thomas E. Stuart
Kapaau, Hawaii

Let parents decide if students need P.E.

The idea that the Department of Education wants to change the graduation requirements to better suit the increasingly higher requirements of a saturated job market is commendable (Star-Bulletin, Nov. 12).

I believe the DOE should first look at what its competition is doing and make changes that have been proven effective by those it is competing against. Can't we, like many private schools, set a standard for physical development for graduation and allow the parent and student the choice to decide whether they need a P.E. class to meet that criterion?

Hawaii in general is so ready to change our current educational system that it will go so far as to overlook the things that are great about it just to make sure that we improve on the SATs.

I wonder if they checked Bill Gates' SAT score before they let him become a multibillionaire?

Brett Bulseco
Pearl City

Individual attention offers best education

The Nov. 13 editorial proposing to lengthen school days, while a worthy sentiment, misses the point regarding difficulties our schools have educating kids. The hours in a day are too long right now as can easily be demonstrated by visiting almost any class room.

The difficulty schools are having relates to managing class time and providing an appropriate curriculum for each child. The lack of individual attention and assessments of a child's strengths are limiting the potential of the child and causing the schools to waste an incredible amount of effort.

Denying that children are different is at the root of the problem. We have three children who were each educated according to their own needs in public, private and home school settings. The home school days never extended beyond a three-hour study time. Much more was learned in that time than is ever learned in a normal school day.

As a result of their educations our three children are a doctor, a sound engineer and an aspiring athlete -- each to their own talent, not to our vision for them but to their own vision of themselves.

Greg Rush
Naalehu, Hawaii