We need to support our national parks

Our national parks, in addition to protecting places of spectacular natural beauty, also uplift important stories that represent the breadth of our state’s rich history. At such places as Congaree National Park, Fort Sumter National Monument and Kings Mountain National Military Park, visitors can engage with the sites, people and events that helped shape South Carolina’s history, helping to educate and enrich current and future generations and fuel local economies with the spending generated by their visits.

These valuable assets are in peril, however. Decades of inconsistent and insufficient funding has left our national parks with an $11.6 billion deferred maintenance backlog — nearly half of which affects the parks’ historic resources like trails, buildings, monuments, battlefields and archaeological sites.

Thankfully, bipartisan legislation has been introduced that would create a dedicated, reliable funding stream to address the backlog in a significant way. As the National Park Service celebrated its 102^nd birthday last month, I urge South Carolinians to ask members of our congressional delegation to add their names to the Restore Our Parks Act in the Senate and the Restore Our Parks and Public Lands Act in the House. Current and future generations will thank them.

Why wasn’t McMaster elected eight years ago?

Henry McMaster is the only S.C. governor in modern times who was not elected. That must tell you something.

If he was so great, why was he not elected eight years ago when he ran for that job?

Henry McMaster and Donald Trump have made me change parties. They are two members of the Three Stooges: McMaster, Trump and Brian France of NASCAR.

Lawmakers need to answer tough questions

On Aug. 8, I joined my Fifth District telephone town hall to engage with my congressman, Ralph Norman. I pressed the button early to ask a question. I was not called upon. Perhaps there were simply too many concerned citizens. Perhaps his helpers know of my differences with him because of my many telephone calls to his office.

The town hall topic was how to deal with violence in the schools. People talked about bullying, lack of metal detectors, whether or not teachers should be armed; parents expressed their pain about the bullying done to their children. No one mentioned our president’s angry and derogatory words to leaders in our own country and our allies across the world. No one asked why 307 Republicans in Congress have accepted money (some as much as a million dollars) from the NRA while only 24 Democrats have. No one asked about how Trump’s proposed 2019 budget cuts about 21 percent from Human Health Services as well as funding for Medicare, Medicaid, housing, food stamps, etc. No one mentioned the pain so many citizens feel about the future and the fact that the tax cuts primarily helped the very wealthy. Why?

He proved fraudulent activity to SSA

David Jordan’s letter, “Congress is ignoring entitlement fraud” on Aug. 26, 2018, brought to mind my own personal struggle reporting fraud to the Social Security Administration (SSA). My brother’s widow informed me in 2013 there was a woman in Chicago that no one in the family knew drawing social security benefits since 2002 on my brother’s work account.

This woman had been married to a man whose name was almost exactly the same as my brother’s. Another fact is that my brother’s identity had been stolen prior to 2002, and numerous fraudulent accounts in and around the Chicago area were opened using his identity and social security number in order to steal merchandise.

After three years of struggle with the SSA, they finally admitted that my brother had never been married to the woman in Chicago drawing from his account using his stolen social security number. But this was only after I had done all the legwork digging up birth and marriage records proving the man with the similar name as my brother’s that the woman in Chicago had married could not possibly have been my brother.

What did the SSA do about this fraud? Nothing, because no one at SSA or in Congress cares.