When the restaurant tab adds up, people stay home
Re: “Food, Honestly: Is takeout too expensive?” Jan. 14 commentary
Allyson Reedy hit the nail on the head. My wife and I love to eat out, but in all honesty, the prices are starting to deter us. At our favorite sit-down burger place, a burger is $14, fries are $4, and a Happy Hour beer is $6 — $24 before taxes/fees and tip. There are myriad taxes and extra fees (Fair Labor, kitchen, recycling, composting, etc.) these days, usually averaging 10-15% of the bill. Add a 20% tip and you are over $30 for a burger and a beer. Multiply that by two, and our tab is usually just under $65.
Not to sound like my mother, but you want to know how many burgers, fries and beers I can have at home for $65? I honestly don’t know how the average family eats out these days. I’m guessing in light of all the restaurant closures that too many don’t.
Mike Conkey, Thornton
ICE is making sanctuary communities safer
Re: “Bills address immigration crackdown,” Jan. 15 news story and “Chaos, tension the new normal” and “Demonstrators for and against ICE face off,” Jan. 18 news stories.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states that the federal government has supremacy over states in matters of immigration. Sanctuary states and localities are clearly illegal and actions by them to impede or interfere with federal immigration law enforcement are illegal and constitute insurrection.
Officials in sanctuary states like California and Minnesota and sanctuary cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis claim that ICE is creating chaos and making conditions unsafe for their citizens. Actually, it is government officials in these states and cities that are creating these conditions by refusing to cooperate with ICE, releasing criminal aliens with ICE detainers onto the streets, encouraging residents to protest against ICE and doing nothing when protests turn into riots with projectiles and fireworks thrown at federal agents, federal vehicles damaged, and ”protestors” vehicles used to impede law enforcement. Their actions encourage residents to endanger themselves and risk prosecution for criminal violations. You do not see chaos and unsafe conditions in non-sanctuary cities or states that cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Officials in sanctuary cities and many news outlets do not publish mug shots and RAP sheets for the murderers, rapists, child molesters, drug and human traffickers and other criminal aliens that ICE is apprehending and by so doing making communities safer. They claim that ICE is apprehending peaceful, law-abiding immigrants, and call ICE agents Nazis, the Gestapo, terrorists, and racists. (News flash: non-citizens who enter the country illegally are not law-abiding.) The Associated Press and the Denver Post are complicit.
Steve Lloyd, Cheyenne
Should judges, politicians and journalists cover their faces?
I would like to remind your readers who support the masking of ICE agents because of possible threats to their lives, that judges who have ruled against this administration, politicians who oppose this administration, reporters who question this administration are not masked and have also been threatened by said administration, doxxed by the same. Some of these people, in fact, have been killed for their beliefs. These individuals are not as heavily armed as ICE agents and are just as, if not more vulnerable than these ICE agents, who, in many cases, have not been properly vetted or trained. So civil disobedience and noncompliance are indeed justified.
Rochelle Davis, Denver
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