Dear Editor, I read the story
”
Tighter downtown bar restrictions.
”
(Morgan Hill Times June 8, 2010) The president of the Downtown
Merchants Association, representing 13 establishments that serve
alcohol, is asking for restrictions to curb at least one alcohol
vendor.
It’s you, me and our elected officials who perpetrate the alcohol problem
Dear Editor,
I read the story “Tighter downtown bar restrictions.” (Morgan Hill Times June 8, 2010)
The president of the Downtown Merchants Association, representing 13 establishments that serve alcohol, is asking for restrictions to curb at least one alcohol vendor.
The DMA is financed with Morgan Hill city tax dollars (about $100,000 per year). This group, in the past, has stated that there were not too many businesses selling alcohol in the small neighborhood of Main Street to Fourth Street along Monterey Road.
This is the group that petitioned and received permission to take acquire, for free, our public sidewalks so they could sell alcohol outside. Alcohol is served in the pathway of our school children walking to and from school. Alcohol is served and advertised to everyone who drives and walks in this short theme park. We are promoting these few blocks as an alcohol “destination.”
These are the 13 purveyors that organizes public alcohol walks along this small stretch of road. These 13 paste large signs about the alcohol in every window. These 13 organize and sell tickets to alcohol auctions and plaster signs announcing the financial success.
One of these 13 purveyors “partners” with our city to use our Community Playhouse as a public bar. This business features professional comedy entertainment and a full bar. This bar even secured an authorization to serve alcohol all during the performance inside the theatre. Other citizens who use the Playhouse are forbidden from serving food and drink to be consumed within the performing area.
Our city supplies the facility on a share the profit basis. Our city has become an alcohol vendor and promoter. Our city is operating a bar that: has more than 25 percent of the space dedicated to serving alcohol; does not have a dining room or offer a full-service food menu; has patrons who get drunk and disrupt the performers; and has entertainment that is not limited to musicians.
Our city facilitated the re-opening of the bar that serves cigars and alcohol in these few blocks. I read that we even offered this tobacco/alcohol vendor over $300,000, of our tax dollars, to temporarily relocate. Our city financed the conversion of a police department building to a bar. This bar has entertainment that is not limited to musicians. This bar is across the street and fronts facing a local school.
Our city placed very large signs in front of and through out our Community and Cultural Center to advertise Budweiser beer.
Our city authorized at least eight additional bars to be set up in the “downtown” area during the Mushroom Mardi Gras.
We, you and me, and our elected officials are actually the alcohol problem.
Where should we start in defining tighter downtown bar restrictions? Should we restrict our own city government first?
Staten M. Johnston, Morgan Hill
Did five Supreme Court justices commit treason?
Dear Editor,
Three foreign corporations, BP, Transocean and Halliburton, are responsible for the worst disaster to ever occur in the gulf waters.
Five justices of our Supreme Court have voted that our Constitution and Bill of Rights give these bozos free reign to spend as much money as they want to support any candidate or any ballot measure in any election held in the United States of America.
It is a real puzzle that impeachment proceedings are not underway in our House of Representatives. The five believe that the framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights intended to grant foreign corporations equal protection with individual American citizens. Is this treason?
Frank Crosby, Morgan Hill
Arizona’s recently passed immigration law is not a race issue
Dear Editor,
In response to last week’s Around the Water Cooler about whether immigration is a race issue, and from the perspective of an Arizona resident, the ONLY people who have made Arizona Senate Bill 1070 a “race issue” are the folks who think the state law will lead to racial profiling.
The Arizona law only allows the state executive branch to execute the same law that exists at the federal level. The most practical way to alleviate concern about immigration from, say, Mexico would be to examine whether immigration quotas are properly set for various foreign nations.
Isn’t it interesting that the U.S. has, by far, the most liberal immigration standards of any nation on the globe; much more liberal than our neighbor to the south?
Fred Borns, Chandler, Arizona
