Regarding the story, “HPD tells commission arrest of 10-year-old girl ‘reasonable,’ ‘necessary’” (Star-Advertiser, Nov. 4): lf I am not mistaken, in the past, there was a decision that no uniformed police officer should come to a school to escort a student off campus, because of embarrassment or misinterpretations by peers. Only a plainclothes officer was allowed to do this.

There was a case for this policy. If this school has protocols to handle issues internally, it should have refused the protesting mother’s friend’s request to call the police onto school grounds. Being called does not give the police the right to intervene in a school’s autonomous right to handle internal issues.

The police are clueless to the rights of the people, much less a 10-year-old child.

Ken Chang

Kaneohe

Nothing ‘reasonable’ about arresting a kid

Oh, for crying out loud! You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Handcuffing a 10-year-old is child abuse and far from any such jargon as “reasonable” (“HPD tells commission arrest of 10-year-old girl ‘reasonable,’ ‘necessary’,” Star-Advertiser, Nov. 4). Anyone with the brains of a mango fly knows that. What next? Lock her in jail and throw away the key?

Gimme a break. She is just a kid.

Wylma C. S. Robinson

Kakaako

Build new UH stadium on Manoa campus

University of Hawaii athletics needs its own football stadium on campus. Period. The Warriors had effectively been kicked to the curb by the current state administration.

Aloha Stadium was condemned with no prior notice, without a solution for the 2021 season and beyond. There was zero aloha for our student-athletes and fans, but also gross negligence by state administrators to allow this to even happen.

The recent commentary, “’Hail Mary’ for housing,” was spot-on (Star-Advertiser, Insight, Oct. 31). Congratulations to Athletics Director David Matlin and his team for what was accomplished in just eight months at the Clarence T.C. Ching Complex. Truly amazing — on time and on budget, something the current state administration does not know how to do on any large-scale projects.

I echo the proposal to give the approved funds for a new stadium to Matlin and his team to build an on-campus 25,000-seat stadium. The state can then focus on the Halawa parcel for its housing, retail and hotel plans without the stadium in the equation.

Joey Ayres

Kaimuki

Americans overconsume products from China

There has been a lot of news about the cargo ships stuck off the mainland’s West Coast, and about the climate change conference, but no one has made a connection between the two.

The cargo ship traffic jam shows how ridiculously overconsumptive Americans are, and how much of our stuff comes from China. At the climate conference, everyone is pointing fingers at China for being the No. 1 greenhouse gas emitter. They do not mention that many thousands of U.S. companies own factories in China, nor that per capita, Chinese emissions are less than half those of the U.S.

Regina Gregory

Makiki

High court should have banned gut and replace

The Star-Advertiser’s headline, “Supreme Court strikes down gut and replace” (Nov. 5), appears misleading.

After reading the entire article, my understanding is the court did not strike down gut and replace. What the court said was that Act 84 did not receive the required three readings in each house of the Legislature after its contents were entirely gutted and replaced.

It would have been great if the court did decide gut and replace was illegal, but it did not. What is also disturbing is that two judges disagreed with the decision. In other words, what the Legislature did came that close to being allowed.

Gut and replace should never be allowed, even after three readings in each chamber. It seems like our Legislature never will make it illegal on its own, so citizens need to rally for a constitutional amendment to disallow the practice of gut and replace legislation.

Phil Alencastre

St. Louis Heights

Court finally curbs abuses by Legislature

Historic. Long overdue.

I refer to the Hawaii Supreme Court decision invalidating the Legislature’s “gut and replace” practice, which made a mockery of citizen participation in the legislative process (“Hawaii Supreme Court strikes down ‘gut and replace’ legislative lawmaking practice,” Star-Advertiser, Nov. 5).

Despite months of hearings, one never knew what might emerge in the session’s closing hours. It was a deplorable abuse of power.

Common Cause Hawaii and the League of Women Voters deserve our thanks for bringing this case.

Carl H. Zimmerman

Salt Lake

Thomas should rethink ‘voodoo economics’

Cal Thomas is hiding a message in his column (“Trick spending bills are ‘voodoo economics II’” Star-Advertiser, Nov. 2).

He mentions climate change, “free” daycare, child care and pre-K, Obamacare tax credit, child and earned income tax credit and wealth tax, along with Heritage Foundation misinformation including supposed financial and sociological costs, which are totally inconsequential because of the opportunities and the revenues these proposals would generate.

Thomas calls the Democrats’ proposals voodoo economics, but — this is the real takeaway — Thomas knows that President Ronald Reagan’s voodoo economics, although he may have gone about in the wrong way, actually worked.

Melvin Sakamoto

Palolo

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