Pearl Street tip system works
In last week’s letter dubbed “Tip your street performer” [Sept. 26], the author rightly suggests that if you enjoy and value a performance, then compensate the performer.
She also states that one very discouraged performer vented to her his frustrations about not making a decent wage by the end of the day.
As someone who has watched many performances on Pearl Street over the years I can confidently say that the “busking” scene is one of the purest forms of free market capitalism (without the collateral damage — mostly). No room for whining here. Fact is, some buskers get more donations than others because their performance is, in fact, more highly valued than others. I suggest that if a busker isn’t making enough bread on the street, either the performance needs to be tweaked and/ or other forms of income need to be generated to make ends meet — perhaps with a more conventional job. But really, the tipping out there works pretty close to perfect.
Note: I personally would like to see a classical violinist get tipped more than a guy who can walk on his hands and yodel at the same time — but hey, my taste in artistic expression tends to run contrary to popular opinion.
Keith Robzen/Boulder
Flood is wake-up call
It’s mostly rich people that have been destroying our recent environment ever since I can remember, at least since the 1960s, when in southern California, they started building big and expensive buildings and homes and the smog encroached because there were no rules.
I was right in my expectation of Mother Nature (of God) that you can’t keep messing with the Earth and not expect it to respond. This giant flood is proof!
The rich and careless and indifferent have profited by building all over the place, again with huge homes, factories, box stores and highways. They never listen to people who know and have studied these things; they just go on their merry way, getting richer by profits and hurting all the environment and all the rest of us folks.
If we do not learn from this experience and just continue to do the same old stuff i.e., 15,000-square-foot homes on the creek or on mudslide hills; i.e. air pollution from coal and factories; i.e. killing the natural flora and fauna in order to build and have larger families thereby using up Earth’s resources, this will not be the last catastrophe! This was only a warning! I believe that next time, Mom will really let us have it until we all wake up!
We are lucky that not more folks were killed.
Miriam Paisner/Boulder
No on 66
Amendment 66 (a billion-dollar tax increase to “improve” education) costs a lot of money, yet it doesn’t address the systemic problems of public education. If Amendment 66 passes:
• Public schools will stick with the cockamamie policy of paying great teachers the same as average and awful ones, they’ll still defy common sense and pay teachers based on years of service and their college degrees instead of paying for results, and they’ll still have the lunacy of protecting teachers with tenure
• Public school districts will have more money to waste on the salaries of union bosses, they’ll have more money to blow on paying teachers to do union work, and they’ll have more money to waste on lavish school board conferences held at luxurious places (like the Broadmoor and Brown Palace hotels)
• Public schools will still assign children to schools based on arbitrary political boundaries (Nearly everyone recognizes that it would be crazy if we were assigned a government-run grocery store based on arbitrary political boundaries. We would never tolerate it. Why do we tolerate such craziness for schools?)
• Poorly run lousy public schools will still not have to worry about going out of business or about the competition, and still nobody will have to worry about being fired for rotten results (is there no end to the madness?)
If Amendment 66 fails to improve academic results, the tax will not expire in 10, or even 20 years. It’s a forever tax increase with no accountability for results. Vote No on 66.
Chuck Wright/Westminster
Food month
Looking through my calendar of national observances, it appears that October is turning into “food month,” beginning with World Vegetarian Day and World Day for Farmed Animals Oct. 1 and Oct. 2, continuing with National School Lunch Week Oct. 14-18 and World Food Day on Oct. 16, and culminating with Food Day on Oct. 24.
World Day for Farmed Animals (www.WFAD.org), on Oct. 2, is perhaps the most dramatic of these. It celebrates the lives, exposes the abuses and memorializes the slaughter of billions of sentient animals raised for food. Recent undercover investigations showed male baby chicks suffocated in plastic garbage bags or ground to death, pigs clobbered with metal pipes, and cows skinned and dismembered while still conscious.
Moreover, a recent Harvard study of more than 120,000 people confirmed once again that meat consumption raises mortality from cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Animal agriculture accounts for more water pollution than all other human activities. A 2011 United Nations report recommends eating less meat to reduce greenhouse gases. The good news is that our meat consumption has been dropping by nearly 4 percent annually! Entering “live vegan” in a search engine brings lots of useful transition tips.
Stanley Silver/Boulder
