Wednesday’s editorial expresses our support for the annual Red Cross Heroes campaign:
Unbeknown to the leader of the area American Red Cross chapter, restaurateur Mike Arakas raised over $30,000 for victims of Hurricane Floyd in the autumn of 1999. Then-executive director Angela Nicholas was completely surprised when Arakas walked in with the unexpected check.
Again this year Arakas is leading the restaurant division of the Red Cross’ annual Heroes Campaign. Arakas is pleased that he has “100 percent re-participation” of the establishments that raised over $15,000 last year toward the Heroes goal of $150,000.
Today, the Georgetown County Council will discuss and hopefully vote on the first step toward increasing the county’s sales tax by 1 percent to pay for capital projects, with dredging the port’s channel at the top of the list.
If the county’s leaders believe it will truly help the community and want the port dredged, this is the only realistic way of paying for it that has been proposed in recent years. Without more traffic, the port has not been able to move up on the Army Corps of Engineers’ priority list. Previous attempts to beg our congressmen for earmarks first didn’t pay off and then were stymied by congressional moratoriums on earmarks. Local funding may very well be the last option available.
In 2010, as he was running to be re-elected to his post as chairman of the Horry County school board, Will Garland talked to the editorial board about his vision for a local education system that took every student from kindergarten all the way to college graduation. There should be a seamless system, he said, that worked from K-16, not just K-12. It wasn’t perhaps an original thought, but it was a good one, and it still is. We’ve heard the same aspiration multiple times from others in the community over recent years, from college leaders, municipal officials and others in leadership at our schools.
For a state consumed at present about a voter ID law, pushed for the ostensible purpose of insuring against voter fraud and preserving the integrity of elections, surprisingly little has been done concerning the big red neon light flashing over a local town.
Considering running for local office? Your time for thinking about it is running out, as Sunday’s editorial reminds would-be leaders:
A friendly reminder: If you’ve ever considered running for office, now’s the time to get your ducks in a row. The region’s new congressional district and the national presidential race have received the lion’s share of the attention in recent months, but voters will see plenty of other offices on the ballot come November.
Filing for the state primary races opens less than three weeks from now -- March 16 -- for all of the local partisan offices in Horry and Georgetown counties. That means if you’ve ever considered running to be auditor, clerk of court, sheriff, treasurer, coroner or for a seat on the county council or school board, you don’t have much time left to make up your mind (the Georgetown County school board is an exception, as it became a nonpartisan board in 2008).
Saturday’s editorial comes via The Washington Post:
It has been 42 months since the Bush administration placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the control of their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and began pouring in cash to cover the mortgage-finance giants’ mounting losses. This has enabled Fannie and Freddie to continue propping up a housing market that otherwise would have crashed: They currently back two-thirds of all mortgages made. Taxpayer cost: $180 billion.
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