In a letter I wrote, the vast majority of it concerned the spurious and utterly false accusation by the NAACP of racism in the elections here in Fayette County, and the cynical, despicable use of the race card solely for the purpose of gaining political power they can’t win in fair and open elections.
The liberals in this county brought this deceitful lawsuit, which has extorted $1.2 million from Fayette County citizens, because when their liberal ideas and candidates ran in county elections, they were soundly defeated by a conservative majority.
A rebuttal to my letter, also published in The Citizen, completely ignored the entire key message of the piece. Instead of trying to defend the plaintiffs’ arguments which the plaintiffs themselves have trouble defending, choosing to use vague declarations such as “change” and “progress” (what does that even mean?), and saving legal costs for a suit they themselves brought, the writer chose to move the spotlight off the central argument and quibble over who should get the credit for the progress in Fayette County.
Politifact this:
Fact: Under the conservative leadership of Fayette County as compared to adjoining jurisdictions (overwhelmingly liberal) such as Clayton and Fulton counties and the city of Atlanta, Fayette County is head and shoulders above those areas.
The citizens of Fayette County enjoy lower tax rates and spending by county government. For that spending, we enjoy a crime rate a fraction of our neighbors with an outstanding sheriff adequately funded by the county.
We have award-winning EMT and fire services and exceptional healthcare available to all. We have among the lowest unemployment rates.
All our children benefit from an outstanding public school system, which has posted the second highest graduation rate in Georgia while trimming excess capacity and at among the lowest cost per student.
A very transparent county government who re-vamped the health and benefits plans saving county citizens $2 million, avoided costly money-losing, taxpayer-subsidized public transit systems while achieving and maintaining a Standard & Poor’s AAA county bond rating.
Let’s not divert our focus from the real issue here: the spurious charges of racism in Fayette County. If you want to “politifact” something; “politifact” the NAACP lawsuit. That will come up totally false.
Dennis D. Benson
Captain, United States Navy (Ret.)
Peachtree City, Ga.
