Letters to the editor

Down with debt
Neither Republicans nor Democrats address the real issues at hand. The national debt will soon be $16 trillion. Having a national debt is not a bad thing, but the acceleration rate of our debt is not sustainable. The debt we see doesn’t include the looted Social Security funds.

The generated “rich” contrivance at $250,000 is meaningless. The pittance of higher taxes on that group would fund the government only for a few days. The only way to correct our downward debt spiral is painful. The government must reduce spending.

Obamacare will destroy the middle class. If an individual does not provide for the rainy day to is it the obligation of the rest of society to lift him up?

If we continue down this road, the result will be mediocre medicine for all except the very rich. This is what they have in England and Canada.

The economy stinks because of Obamacare. Yes, it was bad when he came into office, but the socialistic medical cure was railroaded through by Democrats. It left people scared enough to hamper business. Scared enough to see savings by individuals at an all-time high.

Obamacare must go away and a slower, rational, sustainable approach to medical care considered.

Pat Kilroy

Milton Drive

Goose Creek

Inside victory
The PGA Championship was an extraordinary event that once more made Charleston the envy of the nation.

The weekend before this tournament another sporting event brought what one of the event organizers deemed “the largest collection of professional sportsmen and women to have come from South Carolina ever.”

The annual “Slim Down the South Celebrity Softball Game,” was played at Joe Riley Park. The men and women, some who traveled great distances to play, all get it: Many kids don’t have the potential to play sports or be athletic because they are physically unfit.

Obesity is plaguing the nation’s children. Louie’s Kids is the nation’s oldest organization dedicating time, resources and funds to children and their families who are ready to change their lives and begin to live healthier.

This game has provided us the opportunity to support athletic programs with these same principles in Charlotte, N.C., as well as Savannah, Ga., this past year. We hope we’ll be able to “Slim Down the South” in even more cities throughout Georgia, Tennessee and Louisiana.

Our work is not easy, and I am grateful for those on our staff and board of directors as well as amazing national sponsors like Southwest Airlines and Wells Fargo, who understand the critical need for change in many young people’s lives.

I was asked what the highlight of my night was at the game. It was hearing one of our kids, who just completed his first Triathlon as well as at least six other foot races this past year, tell this group of celebrated men and women that although he’s still working on “the outside, because I know to a lot of you I still look fat, but thanks to Louie’s Kids I have never felt better about myself on the inside.”

Well, that’s better than money in the bank. That is, as the famous commercial likes to say, priceless.

Thank you, Charleston, for your support of this game and for the support you show to Louie’s Kids and to all in the community working to turn the tide on the ever rising childhood obesity epidemic.

Louis H. Yuhasz

Founder/CEO

Louie’s Kids and RunBuddies

I’On Avenue

Sullivan’s Island

Election bickering
It seems like every day there is a report in the media about an incumbent office holder suing to prevent a challenger from running against him in November. These reports raise a couple of questions for me.

What are these incumbents worried about? If they have done such an outstanding job in their elected positions, wouldn’t we want them to continue? A good employee usually doesn’t get replaced every few years.

What is so great about a job that pays less than $25,000, including expenses, for state legislators? Local offices pay much less.

The job keeps legislators away from home nearly half a year. They spend uncountable hours at meetings.

This whole legal battle is over ethics. But is it ethical to win an election against no opponent, when a possible opponent is prohibited from running because he misunderstood a law that did not even apply to the incumbent? It appears to me that legislators wrote the law to make it easier for them than for challengers. Is that really ethical?

Thank goodness in November we, the voters — the employers — may choose write-in candidates. Maybe we can hire some representatives, not just legislators, but all office holders, who will work for us rather than themselves.

Lowell H. Knouff

Elaine Street

Johns Island

Insurance woes
About eight years ago I was interviewed by The Post and Courier concerning insurance in South Carolina. Since I had retired from the insurance industry, I knew a little about it.

I said then that the Commissioner of Insurance should be elected not appointed. Shortly thereafter the commissioner resigned, and since then the insurance industry in South Carolina has been a mess.

How dare insurance companies say you are in good hands and then cancel 10,000 home policies in the state? Why do our elected people allow this to continue? Maybe giving all the business, auto and home, to one or two companies would make up for any big losses. The late Reese Joye nailed the insurance companies: “You are not in good hands, they are not your good neighbor, and they aren’t on your side.”

Bill Mabry Sr.

Linksland Road

Mount Pleasant

Reactionary force
What’s the matter, Post and Courier? Don’t you care about the unfortunate? You do locally, but nationwide?

Not much.

About 40 million of your fellow Americans lived without medical insurance prior to Obamacare.

Where were you when those life-loving liberals came marching in? Fighting righteously for the already fortunate. Why care about the “swinish multitude”? Probably not many good Republicans among them anyway.

When the news broke upon your eager ears that Mitt Romney — a decent, well-meaning and brilliant man but one who is looking more and more like a wooden puppet, jerked about this way and that by the cold and grasping hands of masterful multi-millionaire manipulators — had chosen Rep. Paul Ryan, a charismatic, extreme ideologue, as his running mate, what did you do?

You heaved a sigh of relief that it was not someone closer to being a moderate.

Then surely you whooped, “Let the games begin.”

No, you were not recalling the opening of the London Olympics. That would bring painfully to your mind Romney’s European journey wherein he insulted the British.

No. The “game” you meant was one of celebration. Your best dreams had come true — a reactionary!

James C.S. Rivers Jr., Ph.D.

Miles Drive

Charleston

Finish I-526
Any task worth starting is worth finishing. I have traveled to and from Johns Island, Kiawah and Seabrook islands many times and plan on doing the same in the future.

I have for the most part, felt that our highways and byways are 20 years behind the times. It appears that if we need a four-lane highway, we build a two-lane road, with little or no thought as to future needs.

In Florida, if they need a two-lane, they build four.

The completion of I-526 isn’t something new but something for which funds have been appropriated. It has been delayed by special-interest groups and individuals seeking their own agendas.

Everyone benefits from better roads and highways. Better roads are a necessity, no getting around it. The recent PGA Championship is certainly another reason to act on this in a positive way.

We need I-526 completed now, not later, and not “if.”

James H. Spence Jr.

Mary Scott Drive

Goose Creek