Top brass must take the lead

Your recent article, "Army touts efforts to cut sex assaults" (Star-Advertiser, June 6) gives an example of a general doing something right.

If the Army understands one thing, it is meeting goals and objectives.All generals have passed through its meritocracy, a system that unfortunately puts too much emphasis on valuing people who get the job done, whatever the cost, including shutting out the voices of its own abused members.

One thing I learned as an army officer from an old army family is that the top persons set the standard and give cues for behavior. Ignoring sexual abuse or blaming the victim condones the behavior. It makes a sham of the meritocracy. The women senators are right to hound the top brass.

Nothing will change unless a high personal and public moral standard is met meriting high command. Best means best all the way around.

Fran Kramer
Ewa Beach

Caldwell, Martin not in the clear

The editorial puts a soft lighton apotential serious crime that confronts Mayor Kirk Caldwell and City Council Chairman Ernie Martin ("City actions put federal funds at risk," Star-Advertiser, Our View, June 9).

The federal government has insistedthe return of $8 million from the city awarded to the nonprofit Opportunitiesand Resources Inc. Anuenue Hale Inc. (ORI).

Caldwell’s and Martin’s worries should not be that the feds may not pour more cash into city nonprofits; rather, that the ongoing investigation will implicate their receiving campaign contributions from ORI for forgiving$1.2 million in loans.

Instead of hiring a private investigative firm, the mayor should instead bring in an independent special prosecutorto look into any criminal wrongdoing and prepare indictments where needed.

Bernadine Barry
Ewa Beach

DOE isn’t run like a business

Something’s wrong.

A business, expecting income equal to the nationwide average for that business requires investment, risk-taking, training,working beyond an eight-hour day and a product customers will buy.

If the outcome is less than the expectations, years of experience or being at the top of one’s college class doesn’t matter. Work harder or go bankrupt.

Not so with the state Department of Education’s top executives. For salary increases, they need only wait for the governor to show pity. They’ll get raises and do nothing more than what they do now.

All governmental positions, we hear, require high salaries to recruit the brightest and best. If what we have now are the brightest and the best, they should have no trouble either competing for the higher-paying principals’ jobs or finding other high-salaried positions befitting their talent.

Alas, because they are so bright, none will risk losing their rice bowls in an employment search that might show they are not the best.

Ronald Wong
Salt Lake

Spy programs hint of paranoia

As far as governmental hubris and fantasy go, this past week in Washington witnessed an unprecedented level of an "audacity of hype."

First off, President Barack Obama’s incredible claim that untold billions of phone and email intercepts by the NSA since 2004 at least amounted to "modest encroachments on privacy," would not pass the laugh test, even in the Land of Oz.

Then, a second revelation detailed the U.S. presidential order to develop cyber-attack capabilities on foreign nations, such as the widely reported Stuxnet computer attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Yet both the White House and Congress had the hypocritical arrogance to accuse the Chinese government of being responsible for cyber spying on the United States.

Instead of providing genuine security for the American people, these overarch- ing and repugnant — and super costly — programs of massive data-mining and cyber offensives only serve to allay and satiate the paranoid insecurity of a delusional police-state mentalitythat is predominant in Washington these days.

Danny H.C. Li
Keaau, Hawaii island

Stick to science-based medicine

Ira Zunin is right that "integrative" medicine is gaining in medical schools and hospitals, but wrong in painting this as a good thing ("Integrative medicine is key to health reform efforts," Star-Advertiser, Wealth of Health, June 8). To reduce costs we must reduce interventions that have no proven value, not increase them.

After decades of promotion and millions of dollars in research, not one of the much-touted alternatives to science-based remedies has been proved effective for anything more than minor symptoms. Whatever happened to the promises made 40 years ago that acupuncture would revolutionize surgery, anesthesia, the treatment of drug addiction, and the practice of medicine generally? And the promises made by naturopaths, when AIDS first appeared, that their alternative remedies could keep patients healthy while the drugs offered by medical doctors would only hasten death?

We should be weeding out ineffective remedies, not adding scores of new ones by reducing standards of evidence. And we don’t need expensive services from teams of health care providers to tell us to eat right, exercise, socialize and not smoke or abuse drugs.

Kurt Butler
Wailuku, Maui

Food inspection seems wanting

I am one of the unfortunate people in Hawaii who consumed the delicious Townsend "organic, antioxidant, frozen berry mix" recently sold at Costco.

I found out that I had been exposed to hepatitis A from one of the contaminated fruit ingredients.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called me and left an automated voice message informing me of the lot number of the tainted product. Through their national Food Safety Alert, I was told I had the option of going to the nearest public health clinic or to a private physician to receive a vaccine that protects against the virus. (The vaccine is free.)

The seemingly good news is that this Food Safety Alert and vaccine program was handled very quickly.

The obvious bad news is that the food itself was not handled or inspected properly. Isn’t it time to get serious about putting some safeguards in place for "organic" foods?

Karyn Herrmann
Hahaione Valley

How to handle teacher back pay

The Legislature never even had substitute teachers’ back pay on the latest agenda.

Why not pay the subs in two installments: the back principal one year, followed by the interest the following year? This plan would be easier on the state and better for the subs’ tax bills.

By the way, in my recent Department of Education re-employment substitute teacher II contract (July 1, 2013, to June 30, 2014), I see the same daily payment amount as last year.

Does the state really want to repeat past mistakes — followed by more lawsuits?

Chuck Finley
Honolulu