The end of smoking in Colo. bars and restaurants
Re: “Bars brace for a big drag; Some businesses are ready for the ban, but others fear smokers will bolt,” June 25 news story.
The lawsuit filed by bar owners to fight the state smoking ban is misguided and completely illogical.
Having more than 40 years’ experience in the food and beverage industry, I see no merit in such an exercise in futility.
Not being able to smoke is not going to keep the regulars out of bars and restaurants, period. People still want to go out to see and be seen.
The key to the whole matter is that the law must be adhered to by all businesses affected. If the populace realizes that there is no choice, that no matter where they go, smoking will be prohibited, they will still go out to their favorite watering hole and later smoke where and when it is allowed.
Save your money, guys, and spend it where it will do some good. You never know; you might even attract some new customers who like the idea of not having their lungs polluted.
Eric Greene, Durango
…
Let us suppose the hype about secondhand smoke is true, that one breath of secondhand smoke will kill you. With such a health hazard, wouldn’t it be safer to ban all tobacco sales in the state? While we’re at it, shouldn’t we take a look at the hazards of alcohol? How many innocent lives are taken by drunken drivers? But then, after all, I don’t possess the brilliance of the governor or the state legislators.
Ted Griffeith, Highlands Ranch
…
The estimate is that 25 percent of smokers quit because of bans such as the one going into effect in Colorado, and the state has 630,000 smokers. Even if this estimate is ambitious, the law will still save tens of thousands of lives, and for those more fiscally minded, hundreds of millions of health-care dollars – all at the expense of a few bars on the Kansas border, and extra hassles for the rest. The state legislators who voted against this ban should be ashamed of themselves.
Dan Gish, Denver
Competition in the cable TV marketplace
Re: “Cable TV bill has benefits and pitfalls,” June 26 editorial.
Opening the cable TV market will be an improvement to all neighborhoods in the Denver area. In my neighborhood, we have two choices for cable service: Comcast or nothing. Many others face the same dilemma. The legislation currently going through Congress will change this situation for everybody.
Streamlined entrance for cable providers will encourage more companies to move in, each competing to attract customers. It wouldn’t make sense to restrict their customer base. That’s the nature of competition. The more competition, the lower the prices – the lower the prices, the more people signing up for service. In turn, the more customers, the greater incentive there is to build a better service. The benefit of this is huge.
Forcing build-out rules will damage the opportunities of smaller providers who want to serve niche markets. For example, a company that wants to serve a small, niche community will struggle to survive if it’s required to reach out to a certain density of the population within a franchise area. Some franchises are defined as a neighborhood, while others are defined as an entire city. These build-out rules will undercut the benefits of competition.
The Telecommunications Act – as well as the bill in the Senate – already protects against redlining. Additionally, the House bill contains strong penalties for companies that do redline. The nature of competition will do the rest of the work to benefit all of Denver’s cable TV consumers.
Jarrett Smith, Denver
Buffett’s donation of billions to Gates fund
Re: “Investor Buffett donates billions,” June 26 news story.
The press is misguided in its rush to exalt Warren Buffett’s donation by praising him as being among the latest icons of philanthropy, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller and Gates. This is typical for a capitalist culture that includes money as the currency of high virtue. Thoreau, in “Walden,” said that philanthropy “is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.” I do not subtract anything from the applause for Buffett’s philanthropy, except that the greatest blessing to mankind is for citizens to inspire others through the powerful example of how they lived, in their life’s work. Buffett, through a few charitable years, hopes in an end-game deal to convert an example of amassing an unconscionable fortune through a clever scheme to find undervalued stocks for investing.
Perhaps in his final few years of philanthropic activity he can recast this legacy in a kind of “quid pro quo” barter with history. In the end, the image of the great benefactor will be overshadowed. Culture will inherit Buffett’s capitalist contagion as the ideal to devote one’s life to accumulate wealth, while philanthropy is an afterthought in the twilight.
John A. Wickham, Evergreen
No minimum-wage hike
Re: “GOP senators repel effort to increase minimum wage,” June 22 news story.
Congress continues to do all it can to deserve its all-time unfavorable rating. It cuts taxes for the wealthy at the drop of a hat, but is totally unconcerned with the plight of America’s poorest. Last week, the Republican majority defeated a Democratic attempt to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour, where it has been stuck for nine years. Yet the prior week, members of Congress voted themselves their seventh straight annual pay raise. Their new salary will be $168,500, which in a 40-hour week equates to $81.80 an hour. In denying the increase to the minimum wage, Republicans argued an increase would result in a loss of jobs. If only that were true of Congress, there’d be fewer of them for us taxpayers to support.
Richard Kaup, Golden
…
What a spectacle the Republican Congress treated us to last week: On the one hand, they refused to raise the minimum wage, and on the other, they began working on an end to the estate tax. So here’s a theme they can run on in November: The poor have too much money, but the rich don’t have enough.
Dan Danbom, Denver
Question of balance
Re: “Study: Men with older brothers more likely to be gay,” June 27 news story.
It strikes me as very odd that in this story summarizing the results of a scientific research study, almost one-third of the story was dedicated to the comments of a little-known anti-gay organization.
The Center for Marriage and Family Studies had absolutely no data to challenge the research, only saying “We don’t believe.”
Sorry, but not liking factual results does not change the facts.
If this is the new standard for “fair and balanced” reporting, I can just imagine the next scientific study reported showing alcohol use affects driving ability to be reported along with many comments from the Distilled Spirits Council that they don’t believe it and the findings are “challenged and questioned.”
Factual news articles that are not trying to create controversy are just fine with me.
Michael May, Boulder
TO REACH OPINION EDITORS
Phone: 303-820-1331
Fax: 303-820-1502
E-mail: openforum@denverpost.com (only straight text, not attachments)
Mail: The Open Forum, The Denver Post, 1560 Broadway, Denver, 80202 or PO Box 1709, Denver, 80201
Letters guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 200 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.
