GOP wages war on middle class, poor
A review of our 2015 Republican Legislature and the governor’s war on the poor and middle class workers of Georgia: They wanted to take away paid health care to bus drivers and cafeteria workers because they are “part-time” workers (our part-time legislators’ own taxpayer-paid health care is not on the chopping block), but now they’ll just stick it to the counties. Now, they want to tinker with the Teacher Retirement System. Oh, and let’s not forget the parallel public education system the governor wants to set up with a superintendent he names; can you say bigger government?
After under-funding public education by billions over the last 10 years — to create a need for taxpayer-funded for-profit charter schools — now they want to do the same to the public defender system in Georgia, thus denying poor people access to legal representation. They did this with DFCS, but embarrassingly, too many kids were dying, so now they’ve funded it again.
The want to modify the tax structure by cutting income taxes, but raise the state sales tax rate. Not only that, they want to tax food again and get rid of a bunch of family friendly tax exemptions, changes that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. A “religious freedom” bill was introduced which was really just legalized discrimination. And finally, they want to get rid of the two remaining teeth in the mouth of the state ethics commission; legislators would not have to pay ethics fines imposed on them. Stay tuned, folks! Pay attention! Vote next election for a change.
BRUCE BURNAMAN, WOODSTOCK
Joining MARTA should be required
In his op-ed on transportation, "Let other counties vote on MARTA" (Opinion, March 3), Lee Biola stated counties should be allowed to vote on joining MARTA. I disagree. I think all metro counties should be forced to join MARTA. God only knows how much money would have been generated if the Legislature had done this originally. Can you imagine what our transportation system would look like today? We have already lost 40 years. The Legislature needs to put this into place immediately.
ROBERT W. PEPPEL, TUCKER
Turn out the vote, change Ferguson
As I understand it, the population of Ferguson, Mo., is much higher than 50 percent black. Yet they have no political power? Seems like we have an apathetic populace that only wants to complain about their situation without going to the polls to do something about it. Guess they never had the dream.
JOCK ELLIS, CUMMING
