Fayetteville Smoking Ban

I guess we Fayettevillians are too stupid to know the difference between a restaurant and a bar, so we will have to have the police decide for us. A bar and grill that stops serving food at a certain time, closes its kitchen, but leaves its full bar open till late night is still a restaurant and therefore cannot allow smoking, as it is now. This includes hot pizza slices. If they erect a wall, and give it a separate entrance, and don’t allow any food to be served there, then it is a bar and can allow smoking. It is an extreme burden to the business owner, and absolves all responsibility from the dim-witted customer that cannot tell the difference, or read a sign.
My definition is pretty simple and would solve a lot of problems. An establishment with a bar in it, and with a liquor license, and stays open after hours, is a bar. If the establishment doesn’t have a liquor license, and or closes before 10 p.m. it is a restaurant. For example, Alligator Ray’s is a bar that serves food to their drinkers. Denny’s is a restaurant that has no liquor license and is not a bar in any way. That’s the difference. If the name or description has the word “bar” in it then it allows smoking. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t a bar and doesn’t allow smoking.
If people don’t like smoking bars then they can open a new bar with a sign on the door that say’s “No Smoking.” They can also put up many signs saying “No Smoking” around the establishment, and not put any ashtray’s on the tables or the bar. When they become extremely successful and start putting the smoking bars out of business, then they can say that the drinkers in Fayetteville have spoken, and it will become a trend. Smoking bars will put up signs saying “No Smoking” and they will be successful too. The fact that people are not responsible enough to decide for themselves what is a bar or a restaurant is amazing. Non-smokers have to get the government to place an excessive burden on everyone so that they can go to a fashionable place, and don’t mind ruining it for everyone else. If the non-smoker doesn’t like the smoking, then they don’t have to go there, they are free to go to a different place more to their liking. This is supposed to be a free market economy, customers should decide with their wallets.
The Mayor was not able to resolve this debate, and passed the buck to the police chief who had the right idea, but it was not well thought out. Alligator Ray’s proved the 70/30 rule wasn’t completely adequate. Some accountability should be leveled on patrons. Business owners will do what is best for their businesses, and if it is to not allow smoking then they will decide, not a small assemblage of councilmen.

Minimum Wage Response to Rev. Copley

Rev. Stephen Copley of “Give Arkansas a Rai$e Now” wrote on the merits of raising the minimum wage in Arkansas. He is the leader of a coalition of ministers that want to raise the minimum wage. It is not surprising that the only people that want to raise this wage are people of faith that have no training in matters of economics and business, and politicians that beg for any votes they can hoodwink people into. Copley cites many statistics that are misleading at best from sources that are partisan at worst. His study focuses on whether higher minimum wages will reduce employment in the service industry. It doesn’t focus on the speculative and transient nature of services which are always going to need mouth breathers to operate. They follow the money, they don’t create it. It says nothing of the other workers, already making higher than minimum wage to start, that will suffer as a result of business absorbing these higher costs. Does he think owners will absorb the costs? He is naïve. Just as illegal workers lower wages for all minimum wage workers, higher minimum wage workers lower the wage for all the rest. A constitutional amendment will make Arkansas anticompetitive and only redistributes the wealth, but doesn’t increase it. We already have too many impediments to business creation here and don’t need a bunch of panderers to make it worse. Copley should stay away from economic fairy tales and stick to the other kind.