Letters to the editor

Cancer Center not what it was

It seems the organized campaign of character assassination directed at Dr. Michele Carbone that has been orchestrated by a very small number of University of Hawaii Cancer Center faculty members has now been joined by a number of former center members, and the same accusations and half-truths have been repeated on pages of the Star-Advertiser.

Carbone has been an agent of much-needed change. Whether he remains center director or not, the reality is that the Cancer Center will never return to what it once was — a comfortable place to spend one’s career, with tenure, with full salary support by the state of Hawaii, with no teaching responsibilities and with little accountability.

It is time for everyone, including the Star-Advertiser, to understand this and to stop trying to return us to a past that was unworthy of our future potential.

Marcus Tius
Deputy director, UH Cancer Center

If there is cause, then fire director

I never met Dr. Michele Carbone, the director of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, but starting from the premise that "it is easier to obey than to manage and command,"I find these continuous veiled accusations quite disturbing.

It seems to me that the matter is pretty cut and dried. If Carbone is not competent enough, fire him and be done with it. If he is indeed competent, then stop all these accusations and half-baked innuendos.

Misappropriation of funds is a serious charge, and if the UH Board of Regents believes that there is a cause, then order an audit and seek the truth.

We are talking about cancer research, a vital and serious matter. Personnel files, abrupt management style and hard-nosed attitudes seem quite petty in comparison.

Presumably Carbone was screened, interviewed and selected by a panel of competent, educated people. Were they all wrong?

Perhaps itis theregents who should be fired.

Franco Mancassola
Hawaii Kai

Pre-dawn walks are dangerous

I know the dangers of being a pre-dawn walker, so I do everything I can to be safe.

I wear light-colored clothing, but drivers still don’t see me as they back out of their driveways.

I face oncoming traffic, but drivers still race against each other in a 25-mph zone.

I walk in marked crosswalks and obey traffic signals, but drivers still speed through their left turns as they try to beat the light.

I even wear a raincoat on stormy days, but drivers still want a laugh at the drenching they can give me.

Unfortunately, even with those precautions a driver struck me from behind because, as he confessed, he could not see me because he "did not have the money for an eye operation."

Karen Chun
Nuuanu

Play shell game to ‘find’ revenue

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said an 18 percent pay raise for firefighters "means we’ve got to find more revenues somewhere else … or we cut services, so it makes our job more challenging but not impossible" ("Honolulu firefighters to get 18 percent pay raise," Star-Advertiser, Dec. 20).

Certainly the political class’ most arrogant statement of the year.

Good grief!

"Got to find"?

Revenues don’t grow on trees, hide behind bushes or live under stones.You, I and our neighbors earn them.There is no somewhere else.

What he meant was: Find another one of our pockets not already being picked by other politicians or by a surrogate tax collector like Hawaiian Electric Co., which funds pet projects of influential contributors like windmill investors by overcharg- ing us for electricity — while the political class plausibly denies it’s with tax revenues.

End the shell game of pretending different pockets means different sources.

Restrict the political classes to a single tax by reforming the 16th Amendment, which now gives them permission to tax anything they feel like.

George L. Berish
Kakaako