Taxes of any kind or type will always tend to be unfair or unpopular to someone or some group of people. Taxes are a necessary evil; they are the price we pay for our standard of living and the benefits that we enjoy, with out them our standard of living would be very limited.

Do you want a congressman from our own town? Do you want a fair, hard working and honest congressman? Do you want some you will not cave in to special interests?

Mr. Bill Hill’s May 20 letter, “ID protects, not suppresses, vote,” makes all the right-wing arguments about voter fraud but, like the right-wingers who gave South Carolina this law, provides no documentation of voter fraud ever occurring in this state. In fact, the latest report I saw from the state of South Carolina cited one incident of a vote coming from a dead person but, when checked out, that apparently resulted when a voter died between the date he cast an absentee ballot and the date of the election.

Re April 18 letter by Daniel Zamos, “Social welfare good for the economy”

Heather Ammons Crawford is the person we need representing S.C. House District 68 in Columbia. We need someone like Heather who will listen to our concerns and will work to ensure our community needs are addressed. I have known Heather for many years and have been impressed with her ability to organize and work with others to accomplish tasks.

Rarely do I feel so strongly about a candidate that I seek to offer a public letter of appeal on their behalf, but I would like to ask my fellow Horry county neighbors to seriously consider Paul Peterson in the upcoming election. So many people I speak to have such strong feelings about the national candidates but hardly know the local representative. This is a shame, for it allows the potential for elections to become a simple popularity race. The fact that the primary will be held on June 12, a time when most of us are more concerned with summer activities, makes it imperative for us to be proactive and vote for the candidate that will best serve our community.

Horry County Council Chairman Tom Rice said extra police and library staff funding is too expensive for us now. Chairman Rice stated that the burden of extra police will cause a budget deficit in a few years. Words like “we can’t afford this” were flowing.

While not all of the successes of a school district can be attributed to a single person, I can emphatically say that it is vitally important to re-elect Paul Peterson to the Horry County school board. I have the unique perspective of having known him first as a brilliant professor and now as a friend. I now work for the Horry County school district, and I can tell you that it is moving in the right direction.

It is obvious that you are someone who feels very strongly about socialized medicine. I do, too, but it seems we lean in very different directions.

As a business person and as a public official, Greg Duckworth has learned that he has to listen to his customers, clients and the voters if he is to get things done. In his business, Greg regularly uses interdisciplinary teams to generate the best possible projects. As a member of the North Myrtle Beach City Council, Greg has regularly brought various constituencies together to listen to and address their concerns to get things done.

Turpentine, tobacco and tourists. As Conway locals say, those three T’s built a prosperous Horry County from the last half of the 19th century to the present. Now, state Rep. Nelson Hardwick and his ilk want to add a fourth T to this triumvirate: trash.

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing we have in this country, as long as it is politically correct. The sad thing is that because of the movies and music industries, it has become politically correct to use foul language everywhere. Have you noticed how much the F- word is used? I know people that use that word three or four times in one sentence. Since when did the F- word become the main subject of everything spoken about? If they do not use the true F word, they use the substitute that sounds like freaking. As far as I am concerned, it is the same word.

Is the South Carolina Republican Party denying citizens its right to vote?

I am incredulous that The Sun News published Dan Zamos’ convoluted argument that abortion has been good for our country by reducing crime (May 21, “Abortion has been good for U.S.”). Based on the statistical probability that he would be a criminal, Zamos should have been aborted. The logic of his argument is to kill any unwanted child like a stray animal.

Recently, we had an exciting day in Myrtle Trace South. We were asked to evacuate due to the Legends II fire. Myself, along with two other cars stopped in the parking lot of Boston Pizza on Postal Way. The owner and staff were very gracious and offered pizza and drinks on the house along with the use of his parking lot.

There seems to be a preponderance of males responding to the abortion issue. Have you noticed the deafening silence from the females? Having three children under 2 and half, and after being told by doctors, for health reason, to have no more, I had the fourth child five years later.

There are a lot of choices in the upcoming election for our new 7th Congressional District, some good, some not so good.

One time or another, numerous team and individual professional sports have taken image hits for various reasons. And now I’ve observed on the professional tour that two distinct century old American PGA Tour player traditional hallmarks may be on the edge of jeopardy.

Re May 17 letter by Len Seeman, “Beyond time to end open burning”

There are a lot of choices in the upcoming election for our new 7th Congressional District, some good, some not so good.

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” That’s what we face in the 7th Congressional District primary in a few weeks – and it’s one of the reasons why I decided to run for office for the first time.

Congratulations to Ms. Anna Locke, the recently named Teacher of the Year for Horry County Schools, but our community has reason to be proud of another local teacher as well. From over 100 independent schools and more than 3,000 teachers across the state, my wife, Melinda Haldi, was named the 2012 elementary school Teacher of the Year for independent schools in the entire state of South Carolina. But you wouldn’t know anything about that award from reading The Sun News. I was quite surprised that The Sun News didn’t publish anything about such an accomplishment, especially since it had run a lengthy article about Mendy 10 years ago when she won Teacher of the Year shortly after starting to work for Horry County Schools after college. It seems that The Sun News has unilaterally determined that the private schooling provided to thousands of children in our community either doesn’t amount to education, or isn’t worthy of report. Interesting.

It was pleasure to read Terry Munson’s courageous and candid scolding (May 4 letter, “The illogic of abortion foes”) of the self-righteous “pro-life” reactionary zealots bent on dragging our nation back into the swamp of ignorance called the Middle, or more appropriately, the Dark Ages.

We must direct more of our current education spending into classrooms. We must improve the educational outcomes and job prospects for our children by reducing administrative bureaucracy in the school systems and ensuring that more of the money spent on education is actually spent in the classrooms on teaching. Right now less than 50 cents of every taxpayer dollar spent on education in South Carolina is actually spent on classroom instruction. That’s just not acceptable.

The Community Kitchen would like to publicly thank the National Association of Letter Carriers who each May collect food donations in their campaign to Stamp Out Hunger. With their help and the generous support of the Low Country Food Bank, local churches, businesses, foundations, individuals and hundreds of wonderful volunteers the Community Kitchen served over 94,000 meals in 20ll protecting the most food insecure.

Oftentimes we think about elected representatives and speculate about how one candidate would be better than another and what would that candidate really do for me if he/she is elected. We know that the candidate’s contributors would have direct access to the representative, but would a local resident with no influence be able to communicate with the representative and would he/she actually address your concerns and perhaps offer a resolution or a direction on a problem you are having? That is the real test of a person you would like to address as “my representative” or “my congressman.”

I just finished reading a publication entitled “Stop Voter Suppression in 2012.” It is paid for by the United Steelworks Union and is being supported and distributed by the League of Women Voters.

I get quite annoyed when the people on the left think the solution to our financial problems is to raise taxes. Have they not figured out that the government, also known as the beast, has proven to be a very poor steward of our money? Why do you think we have programs that are now bankrupt and worse, the introduction of new programs that have cost estimates double and triple the estimate made back when the law was written, the Affordable Care Act, for instance.

Time after time while serving on the North Myrtle Beach City Council, Greg Duckworth showed that he can get competing groups to cooperate on a project to achieve a result that is good for everyone! One example of that is the small wind energy ordinance that has allowed North Myrtle Beach to establish a renewable energy system to generate electricity.

It’s time we elect someone who isn’t afraid to say no: “No” to more government spending; “No” to more government regulations, and “No” to high, confusing tax burdens. Heather Ammons Crawford is the fiscal hawk we need to help straighten out this financial mess and bring the focus back to practicality, common sense and conservative principles, which will get our economy back on track and help nurture small business, rather than stifle it with more government intrusion.