Rail should serve all metro counties
After reading an informal poll of Clayton County residents’ opinions about whether to join MARTA, thus enabling public transportation to venture south, I am amazed some people are still relying on the tired old excuse of crime as a reason to vote “No” for expansion (“Stakes high in MARTA vote,” News, Oct. 6). A business owner was quoted as saying, “Clayton County already has issues with crime.” She ends by saying, “I don’t want my county open to anyone and everyone.”
Is she proposing building a Berlin-type wall to keep out non-residents? She also says Clayton doesn’t need MARTA but should have its own transportation system. Presumably, it would be like the Gwinnett and Cobb County systems that hook up to MARTA anyway. That kind of mindset is why MARTA is known around the country as a rapid transit system that doesn’t really go anywhere. Of all the counties, Gwinnett needs MARTA most of all, yet we also think backwards like some in Clayton County and depend on traffic-clogging buses to link us to MARTA.
We have 10 counties in the greater metro area. They ALL should be linked by rail. We will continue to have the country’s worse traffic and stagnant business growth until that goal is achieved.
ALLEN FACEMIRE, NORCROSS
Unhealthy trends due to bad habits
In response to “Health trends point down” (Opinion, Oct. 3), health in Georgia is down because people refuse to take care of themselves and are under the delusion that health insurance will make them healthy. Will you be healthy if you refuse to do what your doctor tells you to do? Of course not. But the author argues more taxpayer money thrown at the problem will make the sun shine. Ask any emergency room doctor, and he’ll tell you two-thirds of the folks in the ER are there because of bad lifestyle choices — overeating, bad diet, no exercise, smoking, drug abuse and on and on. The bottom line is, Georgia is unhealthy because people refuse to make the effort to be healthy.
PAT MURPHY, FAYETTEVILLE
Georgia FairTax would create jobs
A reader from Cumming wrote about the problems with deepening the Savannah port (“Port deepening will hurt U.S. economy,” Readers write, Oct. 3) and ended his letter by saying, “Now if we could just get the Fair Tax to finish the job, we would all be impoverished together.” The truth is, the FairTax would create jobs. When surveyed, a majority of business owners said that they would build their next manufacturing plant and headquarters in the U.S. if the corporate tax was eliminated. With the FairTax, companies would not only choose to stay in the U.S., but many companies would move back to this country. On Oct. 14, “UnFair: Exposing The IRS” will be shown in select theaters nationwide, including one in Cumming. I hope the author of that letter will watch the movie and learn the truth about the FairTax.
LISA CHAMBERS, SNELLVILLE
