In regard to your front-page New Year’s Day story, “Pay as you go; Costs for driving around city — Skyway tolls, parking garages, valet and car-sharing — are going up”:
An individual in a two-person household can save about $1,015 a month or more than $12,000 a year by taking mass transit and living with one less car.
A 2014 study showed that Chicago area mass transit ranked at the top in service efficiency and effectiveness in cost per passenger mile. Importantly, Metra has the lowest cost per passenger mile of its peer railroads in America.
So make your new year’s resolution to save money, time and stress and get a little exercise by walking to your school or workplace from the bus, el or Metra station. Ride mass transit!”
Kirk W. Dillard
Chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority
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Gitmo detainees are prisoners of war
I could not disagree more with your editorial Thursday about Gitmo Bay. The editorial is fraught with misleading information and conveniently ignores other troubling facts.
First, the people at Gitmo are there because they tried to kill Americans. There have been about 600 enemy combatants freed, and one out of three of those individuals is once again fighting American troops overseas. These enemy combatants are locked up without charges because their actions are not crimes.
They have been segregated from their companions as captured soldiers are in any combat situation, and this segregation should continue until all hostilities against American troops are terminated, as in all past wars.
Moving these people to our mainland would grant them the rights and privileges allowed our U.S. citizens, thus justify trying them in our criminal courts and allowing them the perception of being martyrs. This would endanger our citizens on the mainland as well as our soldiers overseas.
“What a small and fearful creatures they must be” is your description of our elected Congress. This pitiful attempt to demean anybody with differing views is so typical of liberal thinking. Our bicameral Congress was intentionally designed this way to force debate and not allow any one branch of government to exert absolute control over any single issue.
Finally, if you need a social issue to so fervently fight for, why not fight for decent medical care for our returning veterans, whom our society and government ignore so readily. I personally care for our vets considerably more than I care for some foreign murderer trying to harm them.
Larry Casey, Forest Glen
