Readers Write 2/14

Funding plan for power reactors is bad business

I can live with the plan to add two additional nuclear reactors to Georgia’s power supply system. It is in accord with our national goal of energy independence.

What is unacceptable is the program to bill in advance Georgia Power customers for the cost of building these units.

This is neither normal nor appropriate free enterprise business practice.

In essence, this is a giant, profit-making business entity using Public Service Commission approval to obtain an interest-free construction loan.

Perhaps the PSC needs to go a step further and add a provision to compensate Georgia Power customers for their enforced generosity.

Once these new units go online, maybe all those customers who paid in advance for their construction should, for a specified period of time, have their monthly electricity bills reduced by a percentage equivalent to the interest rate of a construction loan.

Mike McGuinn, Sandy Springs

Take profits out of politics for better policy

The current fervor stemming from the AJC about lobbyists is totally misplaced.

Once in office, the Georgia legislators have already sold their souls. The lobbyists bought them during their campaigns for office — and that is where attention to the money trail should start.

What is a free meal in office, compared to thousands of dollars of vote-buying getting into office?

There is only one chance for honesty in the Georgia legislature: one two-year term and no pay.

Regulate and limit campaign expenses.

Take the profit out of politics, and you take the crime out of politics.

But this won’t happen. The fox is running the hen house.

Mike McGowan, Peachtree City

Keep strangers out of personal health choices

I’ve had enough of the political war on women’s personal health care choices involving strangers who have no stake in those decisions.

I’m outraged that strangers think they have a right to make decisions about my daughters’ futures and health.

Some politicians talk about personal freedom. Those words ring hollow when in the next speech, they seem to think women don’t have a right to make the most personal decisions of all.

They say they’re against abortion? How can that be, when they think strangers have a right to decide about women’s access to contraception?