DOGS ON CAMPUS

DRUG USE HAS RISEN AMONG STUDENTS

I would like to respond to Mr. Larry Gellar's letter about Lahaina Intermediate School's plan to use drug-sniffing dogs on its campus. In the letter, Mr. Gellar speaks of a decline in use of illicit drugs by students in Hawai'i for years.

Mr. Gellar, I have worked in the school system for the past five and a half years. Drug use has not gone down. The drug of preference has changed, but use of drugs is use of drugs. Drug use has gone up.

Furthermore, there should be no drug use by students, especially in schools. Schools should be praised for trying to make their campuses and students drug-free.

School officials have not failed because students use drugs. Parents have failed, and they should be held accountable.

DR. MATSUDA

DEFENSE OF UARC GOES BEYOND FACTS

Although Dr. Fujio Matsuda has written a persuasive essay for your paper (Feb. 12) supporting the Navy-financed University Affliated Research Center at the University of Hawai'i, he makes some very questionable assertions, including a major error of fact.

Although the Morrill Land Grant Act was an important milestone in the history of higher education, it is certainly not true, as Dr. Matsuda has claimed, that before the 1862 act, "only private colleges and universities existed in the U.S." when some great state universities were founded before the act, such as the University of Michigan (1837). Thomas Jefferson also earlier founded the University of Virginia with the idea of a university that would create leadership for his state.

The first Morrill Act was also engineered during the Civil War, when it was easier for the federal government to gain greater control of public education through money by excluding the Southern states.

Another faulty argument is the claim that UH will improve its reputation. It is difficult to separate research in the name of national defense from research for war, especially with our current political and military leaders opting for pre-emptory wars based on false or even intentionally manufactured arguments about defense against terrorism.

The University of Hawai'i enhances its worldwide reputation as a place for education and truth if it stands on the side of peace, by forgoing the money and the notoriety that comes with lucrative contracts.

NOT EFFICIENT

ETHANOL PRODUCTION TAKES TOO MUCH ENERGY

Turning biomass into ethanol takes energy because it requires a lot of steam and water. For every gallon that an ethanol manufacturing plant produces, it uses the equivalent of almost two-fifths of a gallon of fuel.

So in addition to the electricity the plant uses, there is the oil needed to make fertilizer for the crop, and the fuel needed to operate farm machinery to harvest the crop and to haul the ethanol to a filling station.

Considering the high cost of electricity and fuel as well as the scarcity of water here, I hope I will be forgiven if I don't see this as an energy-efficient process in Hawai'i.

TAX BURDEN

QUIT MAKING EXCUSES; FIRE MAJORITY PARTY

The Advertiser's Feb. 10 editorial "Tax burden debate requires sophistication" tries to defend our high tax load in this state by suggesting, "Is our relatively heavy burden simply that we demand much in the way of services from our government?"

This is so not the case.

Our public schools are failing — low test scores and high private school enrollment prove that. Our roads are not in great shape — anyone who drives knows that. Our police force is understaffed, and our prisons are overcrowded. Our state hospitals and public school special education systems had to operate under a federal consent decree because they are failing.

I, for one, would not mind the high taxes we pay if our state and county governments were delivering commensurately high-quality services. But clearly they're not.

So let's quit making excuses and in November, fire the majority party politicians who've squandered our taxes.

BLOOD TIES

MANY FALSELY CLAIM NATIVE HAWAIIAN TITLE

Some of Hawai'i's Asian-Americans and European-Americans having ancestors who immigrated to Hawai'i refer to themselves with the term "Native Hawaiian," although they are neither native nor indigenous to the aboriginal nation of Hawai'i.

They are indigenous to China or to Japan or to the Philippine Islands, to Okinawa, or even Norway, and so on, but not to Hawai'i. Their immigrant ancestors were not native to Hawai'i.

State and local governments have supported this deception, promoted primarily by missionary-era royalist land trusts. Hawai'i's obliging U.S. senators, using this made-up category, siphoned around $70 million a year since 1974 in federal taxpayer money state government is actually not eligible for and diverted it to insiders in Hawai'i, inserting this false claim into Native American appropriations.

This con is one of the major false claims of our generation, and it is unraveling. Making a false claim to obtain federal assistance is a civil fraud.

The only group of people indigenous to Hawai'i is the native Hawaiian of the blood present when Captain Cook arrived in 1778. These are the same people recognized by the U.S. Congress in 1921 and 1959. They are victims of the fraud, along with the public.

SHIFT CHANGE

CHIEF CORREA HASN'T GIVEN VALID REASON

A phrase to live by: "Don't fix it if it's not broken." Honolulu Police Chief Boisse Correa hasn't given one valid reason for the change in the police officers' work schedule.

He's said repeatedly the reason for changing the "3-12" schedule to a "5-8" is "an effort to increase officer contact with the community and streamline investigations." I fail to see how this will help.

The reason the "3-12" schedule was implemented was to maintain morale and bolster retention rates. Has this not happened? Furthermore, from an interview in the Jan. 26 Honolulu Advertiser, Chief Correa said, "The change is not about saving money." What is this really about?

To make this change even more degrading to the officers affected, they get paid on average $37,000 to $39,000. Chief Correa, you say, "This will be hard on officers with two jobs"; this is an understatement considering your salary is over $100,000.

Chief Correa says he is looking into compensating officers for their loss in pay. Put the compensation in place prior to implementing the change. Otherwise we will lose our officers to the Mainland simply because they were forced to leave.

BLIGHT

LEGISLATURE MUST STOP MOBILE ADVERTISERS

The Outdoor Circle's efforts to protect the beauty of our Islands by prohibiting paid advertising on vehicles is coming just in the nick of time (Advertiser, Feb. 13).

That's because advertisers have found a way to get around Hawai'i's sign laws by buying and selling advertising on vehicles. That means the kind of billboard and other advertising that is illegal on buildings or on the side of the road in Hawai'i are being placed on vehicles of all types driven around our roadways. Mobile advertising is rampant on the Mainland, and it's only a matter of time before the same thing happens here.

Hawai'i's incomparable scenic beauty is the state's most valuable resource. One of the things that separates Hawai'i from the rest of the country and world is the absence of ugly and inappropriate advertising. Anyone who has ever visited the Mainland knows that cities and countrysides are awash with billboards and other advertising eyesores that ruin the visual environment for everyone.

I hope our Legislature will recognize The Outdoor Circle's foresight and embrace the effort to stop mobile advertising before it gets out of hand. We cannot allow our advertisers to destroy Hawai'i's beauty so they and their clients can make more money.

BEST CANDIDATES

LEGISLATORS SHOULD OK 'CLEAN' ELECTIONS

To all of us who feel powerless in the face of governmental corruption and a society gone horribly wrong, there is hope.

"Clean" or "voter-owned" elections is the way to ensure that candidates like you and me, who have the good of the most people at heart, can get elected.

Please demand that your representatives support this legislation. It is the wave of the future, and those who do not surf it will wipe out.

'RIGOLETTO'

POIGNANCY MISSED

A comment on Ruth Bingham's Feb. 12 review about the opening performance of "Rigoletto" in her next-to-final paragraph: It is remarkable that a critic could miss the poignancy of the statuesque, stony-faced crowd ignoring Rigoletto's plea, a masterful piece of stage direction.

RESCIND APOLOGY

MORGAN VINDICATES OVERTHROW

Thanks to James Kawika Riley for helping publicize the Morgan Report (Advertiser, Feb. 13). That 808-page U.S. Senate report from 1894 is at morganreport.org, plus an annotated table of contents and historical commentaries.

Voluminous public testimony under oath with cross-examination proved U.S. Minister Stevens did not conspire beforehand with Honolulu residents who overthrew the monarchy. U.S. peacekeepers protected life and property while remaining scrupulously neutral. Morgan discredits a previous report by James Blount, political hatchet-man for isolationist President Cleveland.

Blount collected royalist opinions secretly, not under oath. Blount wanted to challenge the revolution's legitimacy, to slow growing congressional support for annexation. After Cleveland left office, Hawai'i's renewed offer of a treaty of annexation was accepted by vote of 42-21 in the Senate and 209-91 in the House.

Mr. Riley, a Bureau Fellow for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in Washington, understandably tries to discredit Morgan. OHA justifies race-based programs and the Akaka bill by pointing to Congress' 1993 resolution apologizing to Native Hawaiians for overthrowing the monarchy. But that resolution is based on false history, as the Morgan Report clearly proves. The U.S. did not overthrow the monarchy; armed local residents did it. The U.S. did not conspire beforehand, nor aid the revolution as it unfolded.

Native Hawaiians were already a minority in 1893. Most kingdom cabinet members, most government executives and many elected legislators had no Hawaiian native blood. So even if the U.S. wants to apologize for a revolution it did not cause, the apology should be addressed to all of Hawai'i's people and not to a racial group.

The best "apology" — the only kind that makes sense — was action during the same year as the revolution. President Cleveland, Lili'uokalani's friend, immediately withdrew a proposed treaty of annexation. He then tried hard to undo the revolution. U.S. diplomats secretly conspired with Lili'uokalani. Blount torpedoed negotiations between Hawai'i President Sanford Dole and ex-Queen Lili'uokalani (she offered to abdicate and support annexation in return for a government pension). Cleveland's official minister to Hawai'i ordered Dole to step down and restore the queen; but Dole refused (showing the provisional government was not a U.S. puppet).

Shortly thereafter, the Morgan Report was published. Cleveland accepted the verdict of Morgan, backed away from the Blount Report, recognized the legitimacy of the Dole government, and negotiated with it regarding further implementation of kingdom treaties.

Today, OHA and other powerful institutions want to blame the U.S. for the overthrow. They demand reparations forever, including a race-based government. They don't want us to know the U.S. did nothing wrong and actually tried to undo the revolution the same year it happened.

Former Sens. Slade Gorton and Hank Brown recently published their complaint that Sen. Daniel K. Inouye lied in 1993 when assuring his colleagues the Apology Resolution was a "simple apology" and would not be used to support demands for race-based reparations, communal land tenure or secession.

The apology resolution should be rescinded.