Letters to the Editor

• Hilton Head should build future on past success
  We've been wintering here from Ontario, Canada, over the last 10 years or so, and we love it.

• Plans for new bridge a model for environment
  Typically, highway bridges in Beaufort County and the Lowcountry have been designed so that stormwater runoff flows directly and untreated into our waterways. This runoff carries with it oils, grease, asbestos, rubber, heavy metals, sediments and other road debris into the creeks, rivers and marshes, contributing to contamination of the waters.

• Hilton Head's approach, attitude attract visitors
  We are Canadians who have wintered on Hilton Head Island for the past 11 years, approximatingfour years of our lives.

• Selling GOP hypocrisy could end financial woes
  How fitting to place Sen. Jim DeMint's rantings and ravings about tyranny and that favorite Republican bogeyman -- socialism -- right where they belong, amid coverage of demented crackpots such as Joseph Stack and John Patrick Bedell.

• Many objective reasons for cigarette tax hike
  Last month, I submitted a letter urging a significant increase in the tobacco tax. Over a glass of wine, a good friend thanked me for my opinion and suggested personal opinions are rarely persuasive. Good point, well taken. So for any who might be curious, there are large databases you can reference.

• Chamber statistics fail to convince on sales tax
  Mark Twain popularized the saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

• Issue not compensation, but Hilton Head's future
  A recent story in The Island Packet on the proposed sales tax increase that is making its way through the South Carolina legislature has certainly drawn a lot of much-needed attention.

• Let chamber president chip in for marketing
  Hilton Head Island Town Council's decision to release $300,000 in emergency funding for a Hilton Head

• Two wrongs won't make it right on terrorist 'deal'
  Let me get this straight: Apparently, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is trying to structure a "deal" that would encourage the Obama administration to do the right thing (trying the terrorist involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by military tribunal), in exchange for Republican support for the administration's plan to do the wrong thing (closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility).

• You can be very sure, and still be very wrong
  In response to the March 5 letter, "Obama's 'transparency' shows his power grab," I would remind the letter writer of former President George W. Bush's "sure" statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

• Difficult choices to make to avert financial disaster
  The only way to save our country is to cut federal, state, county and local governments in half.

• Budget cuts will cripple AIDS program
  ACCESS Network was founded in the Lowcountry in 1987 in response to the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Carolina. ACCESS Network provides free HIV testing, counseling, nutritional programs, housing and emergency financial assistance, just to enumerate some of the services.

• Chamber CEO's pay prompts some questions
  This goes under the title, "I can't believe what I just read." Hilton Head

• Some suggestions for downtown parking
  I read with interest Mayor Billy Keyserling's column Tuesday in the Neighbors section of The Beaufort Gazette.

• Cut out middle men for marketing money
  Where are our tea party friends when we need them?

• Ga. lawmaker on to way to make our roads safer
  South Carolina legislators take note. A Georgia lawmaker has proposed a bill to fine drivers who travel too slowly in the far left passing lane, with emphasis on the word "passing."

• Free enterprise trumps government programs
  In response to school board member Bob Arundell's charge of conflict of interest against state Rep. Shannon Erickson, I think he has responded like any red-blooded politician who is willing to use other people's money to support unfunded programs to provide services for someone else.

• Come election time, America will reawaken
  Columnist Leonard Pitts has done it again with two columns on the anti-intellectual effectiveness of the tea party movement, but now with the added caveat of racism.

• Amendment's intent no longer relevant today
  As a country, we have lost our senses and gone bananas over the right to "keep and bear arms," as stated in the Second Amendment.

• Congress, Obama should listen to American people
  Shame on the U.S. Congress. The Senate passed legislation to "pay as you go," which means spending measures must be funded.

• Shannon Erickson right to think about taxpayers
  We ought not to be questioning the ethics of a member of the South Carolina legislature who votes to keep down taxes and who simply is suggesting ways to serve children at lower cost to the taxpayer.

• Wall Street bailout shows execs shouldn't get bonus
  Had I not read it in The Island Packet, I would not have believed the information. On the Feb. 24 Business page was the story "Wall Street collects $20 billion in bonuses."

• Supporters obfuscate impact of new sales tax
  The Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce and other local proponents of a new 1 percent local sales tax show little regard for the intelligence of the residents of Hilton Head and surrounding communities when they portray it as merely a way to have tourists fund tourism.

• Chamber fails to make its case with 'fact sheet'
  Inserted in the Feb. 28 edition of the Packet was a "slick" handout from the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, titled "Tourism Marketing Initiative Fact Sheet."

• What is conservative about chamber's actions?
  I don't understand. I'm guessing most members of the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce consider themselves fiscal conservatives.

Letters to the Editor

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