ACLU offers lame attack on litter ordinance

To the editor:

Allen Lichtenstein and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada have made a career of using contorted logic as the basis for defending or attacking in the name of the liberties they value. His reaction to the county’s proposed handbill litter ordinance is another example of a half-baked, erroneous comparison (Monday Review-Journal). He compares the law to forcing McDonald’s to clean up after a customer who buys a hamburger and throws away the wrapper.

No, McDonald’s sells hamburgers to customers who want them. If those customers throw away food and wrappers in and around the restaurant, we haven’t needed a law requiring McDonald’s to clean up after them. McDonald’s cleans up after all its customers because it’s good for business. If they didn’t, business would suffer.

In contrast, the handbillers give away fliers, many (perhaps most) of which are not wanted. That’s why they end up on the ground. And they don’t clean them up because their “customers” don’t care about the mess. The handbillers don’t care about the mess either, because a sidewalk covered with their litter doesn’t impact their business. And because, for years, the ACLU has sheltered them from responsibility for the trash the handbill “businesses” create.

Steve Byrne

Henderson

Get creative

To the editor:

Clark County commissioners have introduced an anti-littering ordinance that may eventually be put in place (Wednesday Review-Journal). If it does pass, it will surely be challenged in court and will be all but impossible to enforce.

One would think that a better way to stop the smut peddlers would be to go after the businesses that generate the trash in the first place. I’m sure the county has at least one bright and creative attorney who could come up with a stringent licensing requirement for the outcall services that are being advertised and find a way to shut them down.

After all, prostitution is still illegal in Clark County, and the trash being handed out on the Strip is simply a thinly veiled advertisement for this age-old profession.

Bob Huggins

Las Vegas