Category Archives: Opinions
Courier Letters to the Editor 7-27-22
Speak up, speak out
Dear Editor,
Nineteen innocents dead, and two adult teachers as well. America stands in shock while asking how could anyone be so heartless!? 63 million innocents killed since Roe v. Wade was put into law, and America doesn’t even blink! Is this what our nation has come to? Innocent blood is the same as innocent lives being taken. Wrong! Murder is murder, no matter what name it is given. It’s still the taking of innocent lives that wanted to live! Abortion has been
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Taxing thoughts and eye popping numbers
My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw the breakdown of the proposed budget for the city of Easley that was printed as a public notice in the Courier a few weeks ago.
The figure that had my heart palpitating was the percentage jump in the property tax revenue.
It called for a whopping 26.6 percent growth — which I assumed to be attributable to development.
Whoa!
If that keeps up for another three years, Easley will be more than twice as big as it was last year — or something like that. At least that’s the way it appeared at first glance.
But the notice in the paper, while it told in the fine print what the millage rate would be in the proposed budget, it didn’t point out that the figure —
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The eagle and the chicken
The eagle who believed he was a chicken
Once there was a young eaglet that accidentally fell from the safety of his nest high on the mountain. Miraculously, he fell in a patch of soft grass and survived. He stumbled out into the open and a farmer saw him and brought him 
to the farm and placed him inside a chicken coop with all the other chickens. Since the eagle had not yet discovered his true identity, he started watching the other birds and naturally followed their habits
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Doing It on Your Own
The headline of this column could actually be “What to do when your local veterans group doesn’t step up to help other veterans.”
Because, yeah, it happens.
Mostly it’s for compelling reasons — the members might be older (I saw an unofficial citation showing that the average age of American Legion members is their late 60s). For the Veterans of Foreign Wars, it was early 70s. I believe it. Or post membership might have
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What’s happened to America the Beautiful?
O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty above the …
#blood in the streets
#killer on the rooftop
#pandemonium at the parade
…fruited plain.
I’m sorry; I wanted to write a stream of consciousness piece about the supreme irony of a guy using the freedom won by our patriot forefathers and
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How can we keep our children safe?
Do you know anybody who favors the widespread sale of assault weapons to the public? I’ve talked to a lot of people and so far haven’t found a soul who thinks this should be happening. So far, the majority of those polled want a 
ban.
Why is this happening? Well, I can only speak for myself, but if you want to protect children and if you value their lives, you realize that easy access to AR-15s and other weapons of war is making children and others victims of slaughter.
Even though the majority of us want assault weapons banned,
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A closer look at Psalm 23
Psalm 23 is one of the most popular chapters in the Bible, and many have said it is one of the wonders of the literary world.
It is so deep that scholars are perplexed and yet so simple that children can enjoy it. However, in all of its beauty and profound wisdom, we should pray that we do not lose our reverence for its interpretation. It is easy to allow familiarity to make us cold and indifferent to chapters such as this and others like John 3, Romans 8,
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Don’t disregard AARP
Starting when we reach age 50, our mailbox becomes flooded with frequent invitations to join AARP. At that age, we don’t want to hear about anything for seniors because, in our eyes, we aren’t seniors yet. We don’t even qualify 
for a senior discount at local stores. So maybe we don’t even look at the piles of literature and ads AARP sends. But maybe we should.
There’s more to AARP than meets the eye. For a mere $16 per year, we
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Caregiver reassessments paused
If you’re a family caregiver, or if you’re a veteran receiving family care services, heads up: The Department of Veterans Affairs is suspending the annual reassessments for those in the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers.
At the same time, at least for now while they review the program, the VA won’t change stipends based on a reassessment nor remove anyone from the program.
They will, however, continue to do reassessments when there is
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The woman behind Roe V. Wade
I was sitting in the back of a pickup truck talking with a woman named Norma McCorvey one afternoon in 1998, and people all around us were raising a ruckus.
We were parked on Laurens Road in Greenville in front of the Piedmont Women’s Center, a crisis pregnancy center — which was right next door to the Palmetto State Medical Clinic, an abortion clinic.
The reason we were sitting in the back of the truck was to keep a protective
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