Traffic around flea market a hazard in emergencies

Flea market traffic is getting worse every weekend. There are three driveways, but for some reason everyone wants in the first drive. Traffic stays backed up from early morning till around 3 p.m.

Have any of you considered what would happen if there were a fire on Leach Road? Help could not get in and you could not get out.

Cars waiting to turn in and those who pull out across the road stop any traffic from going anywhere. There was a huge fire at the flea market a while back. No one was there and the fire equipment kept a steady run with water to knock it out. What would happen now if it were full of people and cars?

Cars even park beside the road because the parking lot is full, so fire trucks or rescue teams couldn’t even drive down the side of the road.

Help! Something must be done before there is a tragedy.

— Vicki Sanders

Salisbury

Trump tough on trade

Your Associated Press article on Trump and trade (“Many experts skeptical Trump’s trade threats will work,” March 20) begs for more clarification.

The AP article states that economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics think the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the pending deal involving the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim countries, “would barely affect American employment. … Jobs created by greater access to the Asia-Pacific markets would likely be offset by jobs lost.” (At what wage differential?)

The Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics is a private, nonprofit and (supposedly) nonpartisan research institution devoted to the study of international economic policy. (Google it.)

It’s funded by many of the 500 multinational corporate powers that were allowed to help write the 2,000-page TPP in secrecy. And Pete Peterson, a Nixon administration commerce secretary hailed by the establishment as one of “the most influential billionaires in U.S. politics,” and one of the 400 richest people in the USA, is founder of the institute. (The Progressive Populist, March 15.)

Personally, I would rather trust Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders instead of the Peterson Institute when it comes to trade deals.

— Harold E. Stover Jr.

Salisbury

On water, speed & the VA

About those people so worried about water from coal ash ponds causing illnesses: Why don’t they just put in whole-house water filters and leave Duke Energy alone? That way they would not have a problem with whether their water is pure or not. If they take care of the filters, they would not need to be concerned with their water.

Also, I read about the North Carolina troopers cracking down on speeders. They better get some more troopers. The minimum speed out there on I-85, I think, is about 80. Why don’t they go ahead and raise the speed limit and be through with it? They can’t get enough to slow down anybody out there. Because unless they have a trooper every 100 feet, they’re not going to be doing too much anyway.

I agree very much with Barry Nesbitt”s letter to the editor Wednesday about the VA hospital here. I go to the VA myself and I cannot complain one bit about my treatment. The VA Medical Center here is extremely clean and the service they give is really good, too. 

—Leroy Earnhardt

Kannapolis

What about local rights?

As a supporter of democracy, and equality, I think that it is a shame that our state now has a new law that bans local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination legislation. Imagine if a city passed an ordinance that gave all of its adult citizens the exact same legal and civil rights. Would the state invalidate it? Why is it that supporters of states’ rights don’t support local rights?

—   Chuck Mann

Greensboro