Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan can help build roads out of poverty

Infrastructure

Some who take issue with President Biden’s infrastructure bill claim many provisions in it are unrelated to the basic issues of roads, bridges and other means of transportation usually considered in bills like this.

In giving broader interpretation to the term Infrastructure, the president suggests one man’s road may not be another’s — and that all roads must be addressed.

Millions of Americans who have languished in poverty for a lifetime have never been on a superhighway or flown on a commercial airliner. The roads they need are roads not yet constructed. They are roads that lead out of poverty and despair, roads that will lead them upward toward full citizenship.

This is a bill intended to benefit 330 million Americans, not 165 million.

Robert A. Shaw, Indian Trail

Voter ID laws

Changes to Georgia’s voter laws are being politicized.

Showing voter ID ensures your identify, that you vote only one time, and that you are an American citizen eligible to vote.

Voter laws should also plainly state that all mail-in ballots must be returned by 8 a.m. on Election Day. Results should be tabulated by midnight that same day, and every state should enact strict voter ID laws.

Sheila W. Evans, Charlotte

GOP voting laws

If one thing has recently become crystal clear, it is that GOP leadership in our state and nationally, does not believe in democracy.

Their focus on making it difficult for those with opposing views to use their constitutionally protected right to vote has been visible since the Civil War ended, but it’s not just racially motivated. It is more uniformly directed at those who are in the bottom half of the economic pyramid.

Sadly, a lot of those who support these attempts to denigrate those who are “economically challenged” have blinders on and don’t seem to understand that it is also directed at them, despite the fact they are not people of color.

Mark Selleck, Waxhaw

MLB’s recent move

Regarding “All-Star game,” (April 7 Forum):

This Forum writer refers to MLB’s recent actions as “nonsense” and says “Maybe it’s time to boycott Major League Baseball?”

The nonsense tearing this country apart is systemic racism, voting suppression and refusal to compromise. Actions by Major League Baseball are not the problem.

Rosalie Spaniel, Charlotte

Bipartisan folly

I’m thinking how ironic it is that Sen. Mitch McConnell is now complaining about the lack of bipartisan cooperation from the Democrats a few months after his party ramrodded a judicial appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court after previously blocking President Obama’s appointee over four years.

Almost as ironic is that Republicans are now suddenly fiscally conservative after leveraging the country with tax breaks for the wealthiest of taxpayers.

I’d love to be a Republican again, but their folly has made me an independent.

Philip Solomon, Charlotte

Distracted driving

April is Distracted Driving Awareness month, Alcohol Awareness month, and April 26-30 is National Work Zone Awareness Week.

As director of the N.C. Governor’s Highway Safety Program, I urge every driver to refocus their attention on driving behaviors that may contribute to preventable roadway deaths.

Distractions come in many forms: texting, speeding, impaired driving, being inattentive in construction zones.

In 2020 in North Carolina 1,982 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes, 157 died in distracted driving crashes, and 42 were killed in work zones.

A traveling National Work Zone Memorial will be on display next week at the NCDOT welcome center on I-95 in Northampton County. Sadly, there are 1,592 names on it, including 36 fallen workers from N.C.

Please, drive safe, drive sober, drive the speed limit and buckle up.

Mark Ezzell, Garner

This story was originally published April 8, 2021 at 3:21 PM.