|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Dear Editor,
For years, South Carolinians have been told to trust the executive branch and legislators in Columbia. What has that gotten us? Horrible roads, continual growing frustration with the government we pay for, and politicians who seem more interested in protecting one another than serving taxpayers.
Ralph Norman is finally offering something different. He’s talking about cleaning up Columbia and restoring accountability to a government that has become increasingly disconnected from the people it serves. That takes a backbone you can’t teach or pretend to have.
***
What concerns me most is seeing elected officials use their influence to reward their political friends while REAL conservative Republicans are treated as the enemy. Instead of supporting ways to make the government more transparent and accountable, so many have spent their time attacking members of the Freedom Caucus and defending a system that benefits them, not us.
South Carolina deserves leaders who answer to voters, not the political class. Ralph Norman understands that meaningful change won’t come from the people who created the problems in the first place.
Sincerely,
Jay Kilmartin
State Representative, District 85
Irmo, S.C.
***
FROM THE EDITOR…
Thank you, representative, for submitting this letter. Grateful for your work at the S.C. State House on behalf of citizens and taxpayers. Look forward to hearing from you on these pages again soon!
***
SOUND OFF…
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
8 comments
Jay, how is your Freedom Caucus buddy RJ doing? Been to see him lately?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha…(deep breath)…hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Apparently voters love the corruption. They foolishly send the same corrupt rinos back to Columbia every year. Ever notice people think “their guy” is great and all the others are the problem.
Ralph is probably a decent man but he excites me about as much as canned tapioca pudding for dessert at the old folk’s home.
Voters for SC governor need to care about this.
Hell hath no fury like a lawyer whose chance to make money dwindled or like a prosecutor who failed to obtain a wrongful conviction in a case which should not have been brought in the first place or like a prosecutor who just had a wrongful conviction (obtained by unconstitutional acts to say the least) vacated.
We know why Todd Rutherford and Leon Lott are furious that Professor Chow got acquitted in the protection-of-others shooting death of 14-year-old loaded-gun-toting Cyrus Carmack-Belton, acquitted by a jury with seven black members no less after hearing a brilliant defense by the amazing black lawyer Shaun Courtney Kent clad in a bespoke three-piece suit lined in crimson silk and a plain silk tie matching the lining’s EXACT color.
What puzzles me is the silence of Will Folks about the violence-inciting xenophobic speech of lawyer legislator Todd Rutherford and the silence of Andy Fancher about the crime-glorifying speech of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.
I, for one, being TRULY committed to the health and happiness of all children, including black ones, will NOT be silent, God so willing and FITS permitting.
More important than governor candidates’ marital and extra-marital activities are their views about, and proposed actions against, teenagers carrying loaded guns and trespassing on stores which prohibit entry of those loaded guns.
After a black male lawyer-state-legislator, we have a white chief county law enforcement officer FALSELY asserting the Cyrus “did nothing wrong.”
WRONG: Cyrus did AT LEAST two VERY WRONG things:
(1) Cyrus carried an unlawful LOADED gun; and
(2) Cyrus TRESPASSED with that loaded gun on the Chows’ store which had a CLEAR sign that guns were not allowed in the store.
That is the ULTIMATE disrespect for the store owner.
It a diner had entered shirtless into a fancy restaurant which had a sign, for example “shirt and tie required,” Lott’s men would have arrested that patron for trespass.
The private owner of any premises has the ABSOLUTE right to set conditions for the entry to the premises by any one other than the owner.
What you are doing is encouraging more children to carry loaded guns which are more likely to kill them by accident or suicide, to say nothing of gang warfare.
Stop the hypocrisy and demagoguery! You are killing children for the sake of cheap publicity.
Voters for SC governor need to care about this.
Hell hath no fury like a lawyer whose chance to make money dwindled or like a prosecutor who failed to obtain a wrongful conviction in a case which should not have been brought in the first place or like a prosecutor who just had a wrongful conviction (obtained by unconstitutional acts to say the least) vacated.
We know why Todd Rutherford and Leon Lott are furious that Professor Chow got acquitted in the protection-of-others shooting death of 14-year-old loaded-gun-toting Cyrus Carmack-Belton, acquitted by a jury with seven black members no less after hearing a brilliant defense by the amazing black lawyer Shaun Courtney Kent clad in a bespoke three-piece suit lined in crimson silk and a plain silk tie matching the lining’s EXACT color.
What puzzles me is the silence of Will Folks about the violence-inciting xenophobic speech of lawyer legislator Todd Rutherford and the silence of Andy Fancher about the crime-glorifying speech of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.
I, for one, being TRULY committed to the health and happiness of all children, including black ones, will NOT be silent, God so willing and FITS permitting.
More important than governor candidates’ marital and extra-marital activities are their views about, and proposed actions against, teenagers carrying loaded guns and trespassing on stores which prohibit entry of those loaded guns.
After a black male lawyer-state-legislator, we have a white chief county law enforcement officer FALSELY asserting the Cyrus “did nothing wrong.”
WRONG: Cyrus did AT LEAST two VERY WRONG things:
(1) Cyrus carried an unlawful LOADED gun; and
(2) Cyrus TRESPASSED with that loaded gun on the Chows’ store which had a CLEAR sign that guns were not allowed in the store.
That is the ULTIMATE disrespect for the store owner.
It a diner had entered shirtless into a fancy restaurant which had a sign, for example “shirt and tie required,” Lott’s men would have arrested that patron for trespass.
The private owner of any premises has the ABSOLUTE right to set conditions for the entry to the premises by any one other than the owner.
What you are doing is encouraging more children to carry loaded guns which are more likely to kill them by accident or suicide, to say nothing of gang warfare.
Stop the hypocrisy and demagoguery! You are killing children for the sake of cheap publicity.
So, Mr Kilmartin, when are you planning to give up your seat in the House of Representatives in support od Ralph Norman’s call for term limits?
Breaking for FITS his and Andy Fancher’s continuing puzzling silence on the Cyrus Carmack-Belton story and on Sheriff’s Lott continued shirking of his own responsibility for Richland County’s gang and firearm problems, I paste my reply to a commenter on an MSM’s interview with Prosecution Witness Jasmine Broadwater:
? @johnson12183 , first, Cyrus was NOT “murdered.” He was fatally shot; but not every fatal shooting is a murder.
Please, please, PLEASE, respect the jury’s acquittal of Professor Chow of murder. That is why we have trials by jury and a court system.
Guilt or innocence of crime is not, and should not become, a matter of on-line opinions. It is to be determined in ONE forum, and ONE FORUM ONLY: a court of law.
Now that it has been determined in the only available and legitimate EARTHLY forum, NO ONE has the right to call Professor Chow a murderer or to call his fatal shooting of of Cyrus Carmack-Belton a murder.
Next, I was only responding to a question about what laws Cyrus had broken because I am very offended by those who should know better than to claim Cyrus did “absolutely NOTHING wrong.”
I do believe that the Chows over-reacted to Cyrus’ suspicious behavior in the store. But those who claim Cyrus’ carrying an illegal firearm and trespassing into the Chows’ store with is “nothing wrong” are simply glorifying self-destructive behavior among urban black youth that ends up hurting those youths themselves.
Only the morning after the vigil for Cyrus were there horrific incidents of much gunfire and a teen-aged black male dead.
Still think “nothing wrong” with loaded firearms in the hands of urban under-age males?
But I also add something important: NOT all injuries should receive CPR by CHEST COMPRESSION, which may be contra-indicated and even itself the cause of death in cases of bleeding into the chest cavity. The life-saving measure in such cases is a chest tube, not chest compressions. Of course, lay people may not have immediate access to surgically-sterile chest tube in all bleeding-into-the-chest-cavity emergencies; but even an IMPROVISED chest tube until EMS arrives is a better option than chest compressions.