TRANSPORTATION
Legislature must act
on state’s traffic woes
Regarding “Dwindling dollars mean smaller plans” (Opinion, Jan. 29) and “Beleaguered DOT’s to-do list is doable” (Opinion, Jan. 29), the state Legislature and the voting public paved the way for roads and sprawl 40 years ago, when MARTA was allowed to become a two-county system. The question now is, do we want to change that, and how do we go about it? What are we going to do when gasoline goes to $7 a gallon and there are no alternatives available?
I think that the Legislature needs to take the bull by the horns and declare that we are going to have a transportation system, and this is how we are going to fund it. This must be a statewide system, and it must be funded by the state. Until the Legislature accepts that responsibility, we’ll never have anything.
ROBERT W. PEPPEL, TUCKER
BENGHAZI ATTACK
Shame on cartoonist
for spreading mistruth
Michael Ramirez, whose work was featured in a recent Sunday AJC, should be ashamed for his inflammatory and misleading cartoon showing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton atop a gravestone of one of those killed in Benghazi, saying “What difference does it make?” (Opinion, Jan. 27).
Her point was that, at this time, how those men were killed isn’t the issue. Whether it was a street gang, or planned attack — the result was the same. Shame on Ramirez for the lie that she is insensitive to their deaths.
JUDY BOST, SMYRNA
WOMEN IN COMBAT
New policy could be
cynical political ploy
Military men can be ordered into combat roles at any time, regardless of the positions or jobs they hold. Women have now been given the “opportunity” for direct combat roles. Can they, too, now be ordered into combat? Will they be?
If not, this constitutes unfair discrimination against men — another cynical move by this administration to buy votes from a favored constituency.
DAVID SKILLING, MARIETTA
ECONOMY
Vote pandering solves
nothing, harms nation
It saddens me to watch the economy that was the world’s best become weakened not by forces beyond its control, but by the changing will of the people. Our three branches of government used to be expected to deal with difficult, long-term challenges for the long-term good of the country. Today, those decisions are postponed in favor of pandering for votes.
A strong horse can be taken a long way without feed, but it will ultimately fall. The productive segments of our society seem to be viewed as bothersome hindrances to the conduct of countless programs that may make sense or seem good individually, but are dragging the economy down in the aggregate. Americans will come to profoundly regret the direction they have taken.
Somebody has to dig up rock and turn it into metal, and somebody shapes it into a tin can, and so on. At each step, value is created. This value can be then taxed for the common good. We have it backwards.
RICHARD D. SOUREN, CANTON
