Monday Letters to the Editor
On Julian Castro
I read with interest and curiosity The State’s recent editorial lauding Julian Castro’s candidacy for president. The editorial sounded very much like an endorsement of Castro based on his experience and his positions on certain issues. But compared to what?
Among other things Castro supports the following:
▪ Abortion up until birth.
▪ Re-shaping the economy by raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
▪ Same-sex marriage.
▪ Increasing taxes on high-income earners.
▪ Legalizing marijuana and expunging prior criminal records..
▪ Immediately rejoining the Paris climate change accord and moving forward with the Green New Deal.
▪ Decriminalizing illegal border crossings, reducing the role of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and increasing legal immigration and asylum rates.
▪ An assault rifle ban, “red flag” laws and a voluntary buyback of firearms.
▪ Eliminating the Electoral College.
I think you need to be mindful of these two facts:
▪ Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 14 percentage points in South Carolina during the 2016 presidential election.
▪ We didn’t necessarily vote for Trump because he was a “statesman” — we voted for Trump because of the conservative policies that he espoused.
Trump’s policies and positions run almost completely counter to every plank in Castro’s socialist platform — so with all due respect to your editorial, I can’t think of even one reason I’d consider voting for Castro.
Paul Gilbert, Batesburg
(Editor’s note: The Opinion page’s editorial on Castro’s recent candidate interview at The State wasn’t an endorsement of his candidacy. The editorial noted both Castro’s potential assets and obstacles as a 2020 presidential candidate.)
On USC football
I have been a USC fan for roughly 38 years and after watching the Gamecocks’ defeat against Appalachian State last Saturday, I believe that football head coach Will Muschamp and athletics director Ray Tanner should be immediately relieved of their duties.
The reason why I think Tanner should be replaced is simple: he hired Muschamp despite the fact that he barely had a winning record as a college head coach — and Tanner has also given Muschamp a contract extension that will require USC to pay the coach a massive buyout if it wants to get rid of him.
Tanner is constantly asking USC’s football fans for more and more money in terms of ticket prices, donations, merchandising — yet the product on the field has only gotten worse. Right now the USC football program is a train wreck, and it’s not going to get better in the foreseeable future.
I believe that both Tanner and the university have taken advantage of our loyalty to the football program, and I believe they will continue to do so until we fans demand better.
I will always be thankful for Tanner’s contributions to USC athletics and the various titles won during his tenure as the school’s baseball coach. That being said, however, being a good coach doesn’t necessarily make you a great athletics director.
Both Tanner and Muschamp should be replaced.
James Mills, Taylors
On empowering communities
Empowering underserved communities is a process of helping these communities realize their potential for success.
Many of these communities are plagued by a cycle of poverty that begins once they fall below a certain level of resourcefulness. This cycle continues until someone intervenes by providing worthwhile means — not handouts — for people in these communities to climb out of destitution, and by ensuring the health and education of the children in those communities.
Historically, most empowering initiatives focus on job development as a pathway to improving the quality of life for disadvantaged communities. In many cases, however, the residents in these communities lack workplace confidence and adequate job skills; generally, they are placed in unskilled or low-skilled jobs that provide steady income but offer limited prospects for upper mobility.
Unfortunately, even these jobs are rapidly disappearing in today’s economy — they are being replaced by technology. Indeed more than 23% of unskilled African American workers could be displaced by 2030, according to McKinsey & Company.
Given this workforce forecast, we must immediately develop workforce initiatives such as apprenticeships and skills training programs that target underserved communities. If we fail to act in a timely manner, we will relegate this segment of our population to a status of permanent unemployment, which will reduce the quality of life for our communities in general.
That’s why we must support efforts like the Columbia Urban League’s apprenticeship program and various college internship and summer youth employment initiatives — all of which can help many young people from disadvantaged communities realize their potential.
James T. McLawhorn Jr., Columbia
McLawhorn is the CEO of the Columbia Urban League.
On gerrymandering
Recently I worked as a poll manager for the municipal election in West Columbia, and the number of voters who had been gerrymandered out of eligible voting areas shocked me.
Fortunately, we had a knowledgeable poll clerk who was able to take these people to a large wall map and point out exactly where the voting lines had been drawn.
Gerrymandering remains a political ploy that allows political parties to select their own voters rather than the other way around. A voting precinct should not look like a jigsaw puzzle, and that’s why I believe that gerrymandering should be illegal.
Voter apathy in South Carolina is a critical problem, and not being able to vote in an election that your neighbors are voting in only discourages citizens from returning to their polling places.
Fortunately, people can go to vote411.org, enter their address and see a personalized sample ballot. But while this educational tool helps to inform voters, it does not affect gerrymandering.
We must end gerrymandering and allow people to vote where they should be voting.
Elizabeth Jones Columbia
This story was originally published November 11, 2019 at 2:44 PM.