High rents shutter more Boulder businesses

I have lived in Boulder since 1987. My wife and I enjoy the diversity of restaurants and independent stores throughout the city and on the Pearl Street mall. A number of smaller restaurants that we enjoyed eating at and small businesses we liked to shop have disappeared over the years. My wife who is an artist use to sell her art at the Arts and Crafts Gallery that closed due to high rent and more recently another gallery that closed due to high rent.

Recently we stopped by the Le Peep adjacent to McGuckins, our favorite breakfast and brunch restaurant, to see a sign on the door saying they were closing the end of September. We are heartbroken and asked why and it was because of the high rent. So many great places have disappeared due to high rent. It’s just not right.

Also when the city approved higher number of people to live in rental properties to save rent cost; I mentioned that a rental property that we share a driveway with that had three renters when occupied by four renters that the landlord will increase the rent, and sure enough that is what happened. The three renters were paying a thousand a piece each month and with four renters the price went up to four thousand a month.

Really landlords what are you doing? Do you really need so much money? The Arts and Crafts gallery on Pearl Street has been empty for years. We will miss La Peep. Such a shame.

— Jeff Connor, Boulder

Democrats are the ones attacking democracy

Democrats rail against their perceived threats to democracy while attacking it themselves. Based on proposals by several Democrats they would eliminate the Electoral College, add two Democrat-controlled states, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., and eliminate the filibuster in the Senate.

Those are a few of the anti-democracy attacks by Democrats. They would put Supreme Court judges on limited terms. They would apply restrictions by outsiders to decide what judge could hear various cases. They would impose an ethics code on judges beyond assurances of fairness and interrupted by Congress. Most of all they want to eliminate judges who may lose an “understanding of the broad public currents of the country,” as stated in an AP news article. Add to that the attacks on the court like Senator Schumer’s attack “you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price” for decisions.

Judges do not need to understand societal currents. Their job is to rule on questions of whether rules (constitution) and regulations (laws) are allowed under the constitution.

Democrat’s restrictions would be like a football referee penalizing the visiting team more severely and more often than the home teat based on “public currents” during the game.

— Ray Fiolkoski, Longmont

A vote for Trump is a vote for dissolution of the U.S.

Regarding the recent letter, “A vote for Trump is a vote for real peace,” I agree totally with the letter writer when he described Cheney and the neocons as warmongers. Cheney and various neocons pushed G.W. Bush to start his war of choice based on lies in Iraq. Then, the writer skids off the path of truth and into the right-wing talking points more akin to Putin apologists and assorted useful idiots. He uses the term “our proxy war” to describe Ukraine’s fight for survival against the genocidal war of choice based on lies imposed on the sovereign nation by the dictator Putin. Outrageous! The letter ends with the disingenuous trope that admits “Trump is a jerk but he is for peace.” I do not think Trump is for anything other than staying out of jail for his many felonies, and that our representative democracy is in grave danger from the person who says he “will be dictator on day one” and that he wants to eliminate the Constitution. Read and comprehend Project 2025. So no, your vote for Trump is not for peace but it is for the dissolution of the America we love and fight for. My vote is for Kamala Harris!

— Lars Morales, Superior