When businesses go cashless, consumers pay with more credit card debt

Politicians keep urging average Americans, quite rightly, to crawl out from beneath credit card debt. However, why is no one mentioning the disturbing trend by businesses, concert and sports venues and even museums to go “cashless”? This policy forces people to use their credit cards, thus driving up their debt even more. Where is the logic?

Both a famous Illinois museum and a newly opened brewery in the Loop (both shall remain nameless) are “cashless.” You have to use a credit card for everything in them, from entrance and exhibit fees to food and gift store items.

Who mostly benefits from this? Largely the credit card companies via charging fees. Not the consumer.

And we can’t let Americans off the hook, either. By supporting cashless businesses, they are, to use a psychological term, “enabling” them. Rather than solving credit card debt, consumers are contributing to its continuing expansion.

Stop the madness. Support businesses who use good, old-fashioned cash, which in turn supports both a robust monetary economy and their hard-working employees. Other nations still do so. Why can’t we?

Bill Dal Cerro, Edison Park

Police should pay for misconduct, not taxpayers

As the recent Sun-Times editorial pointed out, we as taxpayers are in a bad position with all the lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department for all these wrongful arrests/convictions where our tax dollars are used to pay the wrongfully convicted. How about paying the wrongfully arrested/convicted out of the police pension fund? Then maybe our tax dollars can be spent on something better, like schools or helping the homeless.

Ken Cook, South Side

Eclipse met high expectations

We’re all used to seeing the crescent moon, but what we experienced Monday, in my case from Park Forest, with the moon eclipsing up to 94% of the sun, was an awesome and rare crescent sun. A truly amazing experience!

Alejandro Lugo, Park Forest

Does character still matter?

In the 1990s, attorney Kenneth Starr, with his acolyte (now Supreme Court Justice) Brett Kavanaugh in a supporting role, was acting as a hatchet man for the morally-incensed GOP as they hounded then President Bill Clinton for a number of possible nefarious offenses. However, in the end, it all boiled down to a stain on a dress, a decent but inexperienced young woman and Clinton’s own sophomoric definition of “sex.” But, even though the result of that impeachment was not totally satisfying, it was made clear to the public at large that the Republican members of Congress felt the proceedings had been a righteous endeavor.

Fast forward to the 2020s. Now, that same party’s choice for the country’s leader is a past president who is seeking to regain the office and, if successful, hints that he’d like to immediately trade it in for a throne. Compared to Donald Trump’s array of pending civil and criminal vulnerabilities, existing convictions and humongous fines, Clinton’s little escapade is equivalent to getting caught making-out on the porch. Has the oh-so-morally-sensitive Grand Old Party completely abandoned the principle they battered the rest of us with in the ‘90s: “Character matters”?

Yep, sure looks like it has.

Michael P. Walsh, Morgan Park