A MARTA history lesson, DHS complicity & who's working to solve issues vs who's politicizing

About this episode

The episode discusses MARTA's troubled history, political dynamics in Atlanta, and the challenges of addressing urban issues.

PLUS: "everyone" wants Senator Jon Ossoff to run for President. I pulled up a recent video done by the Atlanta Journal Constitution's Ernie Suggs , doing a small tour of MARTA train usage weaving in MARTA's troubled (from the start) history for some context. What frustrates me most about MARTA's issues - and the issues flowing into its stations and trains from the major city it serves - is that Republicans who have almost no footing in the metro area, and particularly not the city itself, show no interest in addressing systemic issues by offering long term solutions. Instead, they lean on "dog whistle" tropes knowing their suburban, exurban and rural voters have backed-in preconceptions about "inner city" violence and "urban" decay. There's nothing new under the sun with this sort of pandering to a mostly white voting block but what doesn't get said enough - in my opinion - is that a) "white flight" led to a lot of us b) at the state level, Republicans take a "hands off" approach to a region of the state they can't gain footing in because they don't see the electoral benefit (gee, wonder why?) which c) makes them just as…

People in this episode

Host: Ron Roberts

Topics covered

• MARTA history
• politics
• crime solutions
• urban issues
• Republican strategies

Keywords

• MARTA
• Jon Ossoff
• Atlanta
• crime
• Republicans
• urban decay
• Darin Schierbaum

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Atlanta Journal Constitution, MARTA

Places: Atlanta, metro area

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