Dear Editor: Mr. Maurice Carter in "Stuck in Beeping Reverse" tries to explain why the T-SPLOST lost so decisively in last week's election. He says it was because of "confusion, mistrust and misinformation" and then quotes from polls from the AJC when the only poll that counts was that held last Tuesday.

There was no confusion over the fact that this represented the largest tax increase in Georgia's history. Half the money was going to go to bail out MARTA ,which becomes more of a boondoggle daily. "Special" taxes have a history of never going away. Many of the projects had a life that would have lasted longer than 10 years. The highway projects would have been a witches' brew of crony capitalism, joint ventures and set asides for "minorities" and Davis-Bacon wage demands.

There was a lot of mistrust of the elected officials who foisted such a complicated mess on us (I understand at least a half-dozen incumbent legislators lost their re-election bids -- one in Newton County -- over their support of T-SPLOST). This mistrust continues. People don't like to be blackmailed into voting to raise their own taxes.

Under the category of misinformation was the revolting ad that ran on TV and radio that stated that Ronald Reagan would have endorsed, signed and voted for T-SPLOST. Yes, taxes were raised a couple of times under Reagan, but not because of him. He was dragged kicking and screaming by the Democrats and Bob Dole into signing tax increases after receiving promises of spending cuts that never materialized (incidentally, that's why conservatives don't believe the promises of liberals now that if we will just raise taxes, they will match the increases with spending cuts). Also, don't tell us that raising taxes $7 billion over 10 years will increase employment.

Incidentally, Alexis de Tocqueville did not say "people get the government they deserve" --unless he said it when he was six years old. Joseph deMaistre said it in 1811.

Fred Wheele