They wouldn't let me vote until 1994... don't blame me.

Well, as usual, I forgot that I even had this thing setup - and so begins my list of excuses... perhaps there wasn't anything that I really wanted to talk about... until now.

Let me start with a recent piece that I was reading on the Atlanta Journal/Constitution's (AJC)website - http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/custom/blogs/town-talk/entries/2005/08/16/how_much_did_yo.html

I sat at my desk during lunch and read almost all of the entries from people that have experienced more than 100% increase in gas prices. Many of them go on to say that they can no longer afford to visit friends and family, go out for social events, etc. My initial thought was to go along with the crowd and blame all of these problems on the instability of the Middle East - until I read someone's comment about MARTA not going outside of the Perimeter.

That single comment triggered almost a thousand thoughts at one time. A good friend of my cousin was moving to Alpharetta from out of state (New Orleans I believe) and the young lady showing us apartments had the audacity to tell us that crime is low in the complex "because the bus line does not come out here." I also thought about the late 1980s and early 90's when MARTA made a futile attempt to push rail and bus service into suburbia (known as Cobb and Gwinnett county for us local ATLiens). You can go into the stacks for the AJC right now and simply search "MARTA and Gwinnett" and get some of the most idiotic statements from people worried that some poor, homeless man is going to catch the train from Five Points, ride to your raggedy house in Gwinnett, break in and take your TV back downtown on the bus. The day that makes sense to me is the day that I will change my line of work.

I say all of this to say this - Brother Malcolm referred to it as "the chickens coming home to roost." We are paying for our own ignorance. If you look at Gwinnett now, it has one of the highest minority populations for a county in the entire country. Jimmy Carter Blvd. during rush hour is a nightmare to say the least. Back in 1990, MARTA estimated that there could have been rail service in Gwinnett as early as 1997. By now we could have been catching a train to go to Athens on Saturday for a football game. All of the people complaining about how much they are spending driving across the Metro, you better think a little bit harder when you decide on whether or not you want mass transit in your neighborhood. Crime is going to be the least of your worries when you can't afford to stay in your house because you are buying gas all the time. If you were not here when those decisions were made, you are not absolved of your civic duty. People in Europe are paying roughly $6.00 per gallon - just imagine how much filling up your Expedition or Excursion will run you then... Do something! Quit whining and help get a regional transit system that entails more than a few express buses. You can either pay some taxes now for an infrastructure that will be in place for generations, or start reading up on how to file for bankruptcy when you run out of gas.