Have UH host match every year

Mahalo to the Wahine and USC for great volleyball. The Wahine played spectacularly — best match of the year — and were well prepared by our excellent coaching staff. The best fans in the country gave their all in support, witnessing an unforgettable display of skill and heart.

But why wait years for NCAA to allow the University of Hawaii to host again? Establish the Hawaii Invitational Tournament, inviting the real top seven teams (decided by coaches) plus UH as host. Make it double elimination, the winner beating all the best over four days. Allow video review of controversial calls.

TV coverage (not just Internet) by our great local crews, joined by guest announcers from participating schools, broadcast here and to all others.

Travel partners could create attractive tour packages to host visiting teams and their fans.

Let’s see this every year.

Robert Boom
Makiki

Media coverage was excellent

Like so many, I was a very proud fan of this year’s wonderful Wahine volleyball team and want to thank the players and coaches for another great season.

But I also want to express my appreciation to the local media for the excellent quality of the volleyball reporting. Star-Advertiser reporter Ann Miller managed to capture the underlying narrative of each match so well, and I’m a big fan of the informative "Volleyshots" blog that Cindy Luis runs.

The excellent TV coverage by Oceanic Cable makes ESPN look like they’re bumbling amateurs, and they know how to satisfy their customers, which is something the ESPN TV executives don’t seem to care about.

ESPN 1420 radio is another story — their coverage is outstanding. Just don’t get me started on the poor seeding by NCAA selection committee.

Go Bows!

David Kemble
Kailua

Big Q needed third answer

I object to the phrasing of your polling question, "Have you stopped texting on the cellphone while driving?" (Star-Advertiser, The Big Q, Nov. 12).

This is the classic "Have you stopped beating your wife" question.

If you say yes, it means that you were but are not doing it anymore. If you say no, it means that you were doing it and still are.

In either case, the implicit assumption is that you were doing it in the first place. There needs to be a third possible answer: "Never Did."

I am sure that the answer distribution would be much different if that third option was available.

Raleigh Ferdun
Manoa

Change rules for special elections

The controversy regarding City Council member Tom Berg calls into question the City Charter provision regarding filling of vacancies on the Council.

The current Charter requires that a special election be held within 70 days of a resignation, if the remaining term of office is more than one year.

Special elections are winner-take-all and sometimes require costly mail-in ballots.

For terms less than one year, the Charter provides that the Council appoint a successor.

Tom Berg was elected with just 2,308 votes in a district with 54,000 voters, and other votes were split between 13 other candidates. The Charter should be amended so that if there is a general election scheduled within one one year’s time of a resignation, the Council should appoint a temporary member.

Potential candidates for the remaining two-year term could run in the primary election. If no candidate received a 50 percent plurality, the remaining two candidates with the most votes would face off in the general election.

Roger Morton
Hawaii Kai

Being a jerk is not a crime

Lee Cataluna seems to have taken the mind-boggling position that Tom Berg deserved to be arrested for the way he conducted himself with Secret Service agents near a secure area at one of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation events ("Very Important Councilman loves to fuss, fight, rant, rave," Star-Advertiser, Lee Cataluna, Nov. 11).

I reviewed the video and agree with Cataluna that Berg acted like a petulant jerk. But he never threatened anybody and appeared to just be venting — conduct generally protected by the First Amendment.

Like Berg, Cataluna often derides people in her columns, but even though I wish she would stop polluting your paper with her xenophobic rants, I do not believe she should be arrested for her speech.

If only she could recognize that her right to publish her distasteful columns is protected by the same provision of our Constitution that protects Berg’s right to say things she disagrees with.

Patrick K. Shea
Kailua

GMO fear based on false premise

Legislative attempts to require labeling of all genetically modified organism (GMO) foods is merely a bone tossed into the politically correct arena to attract votes.

All food are genetically modified, whether by ancient hunter-gathers who harvested the ancestral forms of our current grains and replanted the seeds that survived the winter to the patient medieval monks who cross-pollinated pea bushes with paint brushes. There are no foods available that have not been genetically modified.

Every time a bee moves pollen from one plant to another, a genetic modification occurs. Without the agriculture community and the botanists who study plant propagation and plant disease, the planet’s population would still be living in mud-and-twig huts as harvesters and gatherers.

Really, where would we be without chocolate, marshmallow peeps and movie popcorn?

David Wunsch
Honolulu

Social Security raise not enough

I just received my Social Security notification of adjustment for the coming year. This is after freezing payments for the past two years — that is, no cost-of-living change for two years.

And now it offers a meager 3.6 percent increase for the coming year, despite the fact that the cost of living to seniors (like everyone else) since the last adjustment has increased many times that amout.
For example, since President Barack Obama took office 21⁄2 years ago, food costs are up 57 percent, gasoline is up 34 percent, and cotton (clothing) is up 210 percent.

This manipulation of Social Security payments is a government scam on seniors. An honest, true cost-of-living adjustment would exceed 25 percent plus a payment for losses in the last two years. Where is Obama, where are our representatives, and what are they doing for their seniors in this matter?

Doug Worrall
Kahuku