Vote offers incentive for tough questions
Jim Galloway’s column (“T-SPLOST campaign getting a little bossy,” Metro, June 24) explains that corporations closely affiliated with untying Atlanta will be engaged in unionlike voting pressure on their employees.
It’s a rare corporate chief executive officer who looks at paying for infrastructure through the lens of individual taxpayers.
Their arguments make perfect sense for their organizations: Clogged arteries can inhibit economic development, and stuck company vehicles may be wasting money.
Anybody can understand those things. However, taxpayers looking at an increase in their current sales tax outlay have a huge incentive to ask tough questions about the efficacy of the program, and wonder if there is a better way.
Residents know how their last county SPLOSTs worked (or didn’t work). They wonder if there is really an emergency.
Taxpayers from competing cities with worse congestion probably want to know what the fuss is all about.
How well will the program work — for them? Why does a certain percentage of the electorate decide for them — and why have they been pitted against their neighbor to decide what the Legislature should have?
TOM DOOLITTLE, ATLANTA
Whose fault is it if you stumble and fall?
Regarding “Atlanta loses its footing on sidewalks” (Metro, June 24) and the assault on the public treasury by stumblers, the city is probably doing a middling job on the matter of sidewalks, but Mother Nature forever likes to grow trees and scour out asphalt, so it is a daunting task.
Good sidewalks are not a constitutional right, but an ongoing civic effort to provide public convenience in walking somewhere.
Common sense should tell you how and where to set your feet down properly — and if you can’t, you probably need a nanny. Slick lawyers and slack juries are part of the problem, helping folks plunder the city’s pockets for their own lack of caution.
I am getting old and shuffly, and I’ve taken a fall or two. It’s my problem, my concern and my fault — not the fault of a public entity. If I can’t step over a tree root or keep out of a pothole, more the fool am I.
We’ve become a nation of crybabies. The American mantra has become “I am not responsible for me.”
BOB EBERWEIN, ATLANTA
Food stamp program should have been cut
It’s very disappointing that the Senate chose not to substantially cut the food stamp program. Without meaningful changes, this program will only continue to grow far beyond its current cost. To cut costs, benefits should be cut 10 percent. No longer should food stamps be a lifelong benefit.
All applications should be made in person. Instead of only examining the job status of applicants, assets should also be examined. There are many other changes that could be made. Without changes, this program will eventually become a monstrosity.
GEORGE C. PETTRONE, SNELLVILLE
Gender roles
Response to “It’s good to hear the truth about what women want.” Opinion, June 27
Mona Charen is right that women can’t have everything — but neither can men. Men who work long hours as traditional breadwinners often perform their jobs for the women and children in their lives.
However, an irony of this role is that men often have little influence on, and poor relationships with, the very people for whom they are working.
Dad is often alienated from his children in a traditional family because the time spent at work leaves him with little to spend cultivating emotional connections with them.
DENISE NOE, ATLANTA
