Here’s why I’m not jumping up and down about NC GOP tax cuts

NC GOP tax cuts

Regarding “A frustrated GOP wants to know: Why aren’t North Carolinians celebrating tax cuts?” (Jan. 11 Editorial):

The N.C. GOP wants to know why I’m not excited about my meager tax cut. Here’s why: I think N.C. income taxes are reasonable and I pay them each year, as required. The problem is, the legislature fails to spend those tax dollars prudently.

The state has a $6.5 billion surplus, yet we can’t seem to fund needed road projects or schools.

Why are they cutting my taxes? Why aren’t they spending the money taxpayers sent them? And why, in the name of God’s green earth, are they lowering the corporate tax rate to zero?

North Carolina is at the bottom of most metrics, with school funding 46th in the nation. Traffic in Charlotte and Raleigh has reached epic proportions.

Please stop the tax cuts and do something. Corporations and the top 5% don’t need tax cuts. If you create great infrastructure, companies will come here. You don’t need to provide incentives.

Chris Conroy, Cornelius

Election maps

North Carolina is not a democracy. That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from the three-judge panel’s Jan. 11 decision that the GOP’s election maps are legal.

In a democracy, votes are supposed to matter as equally as possible. How can we be a democracy when the state could split votes evenly between Democrats and Republicans, yet the GOP sends 10 representatives to Washington while Democrats send four? How are we a democracy when the GOP could get far fewer votes, yet still control the state legislature?

At the very least, we should stop lying to children in school. We may be a state of laws under a constitution, but that does not make us a democracy. We should at least tell them the truth.

Patrick Link, Chapel Hill

UNC games, masks

I am deeply disappointed and distressed that the UNC policy requiring masks at basketball games is not being enforced. If other universities can do this, so can we. The number of maskless people sitting around us at a recent game was appalling. I hope the university will make a public statement and get serious about enforcing the mandate before Saturday’s game so we might continue attending in-person.

Susan Moeser, Chapel Hill

COVID tests

How ironic that those who rant about big government complain that COVID home tests are not instantaneously available from the federal government. And of course this is the fault of Joe Biden. Let’s be reminded that tests and vaccine are available because of “big government.”

John T. Dowd, Raleigh

Raleigh towers

In downtown Raleigh we have a plethora of requests from developers who seek permission to build 40-story pop-up towers where there were none before.

There are no “tenants” for whom they will be acting, but they must convince the Raleigh City Council that their proposals will be for the economic good. They must also convince Council that objections from direct neighbors the buildings abut, steal daylight from, and add nighttime light to should have little to no legitimacy.

Nothing of consequence is being offered to these new neighbors. Why should we have laws that allow anyone who buys land at tens of millions to abut and block all views from already existing apartment buildings?

William T. Lynch, Raleigh

Leaf pick-up

Raleigh is so proud of its “City of Oaks” nickname. It’s too bad that we are so woefully unprepared to handle, in a timely manner, the volume of leaves that those oak trees produce. It is almost mid-January, leaves have been on the ground for months, and some neighborhoods are just now hearing the hum of the leaf trucks for the first time. We can do better!

Nash Corzine, Raleigh

Gun control

Reflecting upon the gun control discussion in the years since the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision on Heller, it appears to me that if we boil away all the rhetoric about overreach, states rights, personal rights, self defense and the Second Amendment, it comes down to this:

POTUS: “We need to do something to stop the carnage.”

Congress: “No sir, we don’t.”

John Marlow, Raleigh