Opinion

In the last couple of days, the far left and the liberal news has had the audacity to put out the most blatantly vicious lies that are made to demean the TEA Party. First, there was ex-president Bill Clinton trying to link the TEA Party rallies to a bombing of a federal building, which killed many innocent people.

As chairman of the Lancaster County Democratic Party, I am compelled to respond to The Lancaster News’ editorial, “Are Local Republicans Taking Over,” that appeared in the Sunday, April 18, edition. The answer to your question is no.

This is not merely a knee-jerk partisan reaction, but based on facts. In Lancaster County, every countywide office is held by a Democrat. All but one County Council seat – Council District  No. 1 – is held by a Democrat.

I am so disappointed in the mail carrier in my neighborhood.

I read in The Lancaster News that postal carriers were collecting food for those who need it. I made the effort to get out and buy the food and get up early enough to put it at the mailbox for them to collect it.

Lancaster County, we’ve done well. As of Thursday, the county’s participation rate in the 2010 Census was 79 percent. That put Lancaster County tied with neighboring York County as the counties in South Carolina with the best census response in 2010.

South Carolina as a whole has done a good job responding to the census. The state’s most-recent participation rate was listed by the U.S. Census Bureau as 73 percent, one point above the national average.

The season is upon us. Baseball? Well yes, but the traditional opening pitch has been thrown, and there’s a connection to our subject here since President Barack Obama tossed out the first pitch for Major League Baseball when the Nationals battled the NL champion Phillies on April 5 in Washington.

Racing? Try again, because the wheels of a new motor sports campaign have been rolling on NASCAR, and even at our own Lancaster Motor Speedway.

Folks, we’re talking politics, where the major mascots are the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey.

You would figure a guy who has been around Lancaster Dixie Baseball for 30-plus years would know all that goes on.

Not a chance a major event would get by like some seeing-eye single.

Well, if this was, in baseball terms, a hidden ball trick, then longtime Dixie Youth Baseball official Ronnie Gandy would have been like some stunned rookie.

On Lancaster Dixie Baseball’s opening day – Saturday, April 10, Gandy was invited to be a part of the youth baseball program’s 2010 ceremonies at the Wylie Park Complex.

The founding of the University of South Carolina at Lancaster in 1959 created new hopes and opportunities for area citizens. In 1951, a void in the community led to the vision of the future.

USCL has come a long way since then. It has greatly changed the community and it changed many of our lives. It shows by radiating change and hope in the community. Where there is hope, there is a bright future. From one house and humble beginnings, growth continues to this day.

Every day, it seems to me, we are slowly losing the right to make our own decisions. It seems the government is making more and more decisions for us. One right I refuse to be denied is the right to bear arms.

It’s refreshing to know there are still people who want to protect our rights. I would like to give a huge thank you to our S.C. House Rep. Deborah Long. She has signed on to sponsor House Bill 3994 – Transportation and Storage of Firearms in a Locked Vehicle.

While President Barack Obama and his Wall Street buddies are hustling to divert public money to patch wounds inflicted by corporate greed and government-endorsed Ponzi schemes, toilets are overflowing.

The government has flushed perfect opportunities to infuse federal money into community-based, job-producing critical infrastructure projects, which could have stabilized employment, but instead paid off whining board members with billions of dollars to cover obscene bonuses and mismanagement.