Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding your local Safeway store.

You expressed your concern regarding our alcohol policy at the store. We apologize that you were inconvenienced by our policy. Please realize that our policy is in no way a reflection on you our valued customer.

Our policies regarding the identification are not meant to inconvenience a select group of our customers, but to make every effort to protect all of our customers and communities, as well as our employees who are personally liable for alcohol sales.

Additionally, you expressed your concern regarding the level of service provided by our Manager in this regard. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you encountered and that your experience was not consistent with our standards. Dominick’s continually strives for the highest quality of customer service.

We value you as our customer. Your valuable feedback is being forwarded to the appropriate parties for their review and consideration. Please be assured that your concerns will be addressed. We hope you will reconsider and continue to shop at Dominick’s.

Further, for your future reference, we would like to inform you that the valid forms of ID acceptable for the purchase of alcohol and cigarettes are:

Driver’s License
State ID card
Military ID
Passport

If you would like to discuss this further, please reply to this email or call our toll free number at 1-877-723-3929 and reference contact I.D. xxxxxx. One of our associates will be happy to assist you.

We appreciate your business and look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you for shopping at Safeway.

Sincerely,

Gail Mackay
Customer Service Cente”

now they have a sign “Passports not accepted to by alcohol” or something like that in the wine and liquor aisles. I find that completely unacceptable and ridiculous. And Xenophobic.

Thank you for your comment. I don’t believe I was name calling, merely expressing exasperation! In response to your questions:

(1) You correctly surmise that my information regarding the nature of town hall meetings was derived from a variety of news sources. Of course the reporting on them was bound to focus on the most inflammatory moments, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t effectively convey the huge hostile reaction to Obama’s attempts at health care reform. I expect you would agree with this, as someone who feels unhappy about the proposed reforms yourself. My post was in response to the widespread uproar being reported on not just at townhall meetings but all over the media and in various demonstrations (most recently the one on Saturday in DC). I find it difficult to understand and get very angry in response!

As for relying on information from the news, I would argue that almost everyone joining this debate suffers from that dependency. The polarization of news coverage means that one’s initial, often emotional response to the whole issue is then increased to a whole new level by whichever type of broadcasting you’re watching (Fox news on the ultra-conservative side; Rachel Maddow, for example, on the other). I have done my best to read a range of opinions on the whole debate, and my conclusion remains the same: this country desperately needs some form of a public option for health care! I do believe that the conservative press is most responsible for distorting the issues at hand, representing the whole thing as a form of socialism when the public option is no more “socialized” than medicare and is a small (though significant) part of the reforms as a whole.

What did you think of Obama’s speech last week?

(2) No, I’ve never done end of life or living will with someone who is terminally ill, but I don’t see how that is relevant. I doubt any of the proposed health care legislation would affect me were I to encounter that sad situation in the future. The “public option” means the provision and choice of a range of health care options to those who otherwise would not be able to afford any at all. In no way does that equate to “death panels”. If Obama’s ideals work (and that’s a whole different question!), the majority of Americans wouldn’t be affected negatively by more government control over health care options - they’d stay with their private insurance providers and hopefully benefit from the caps put on how much money and how many exceptions those companies can claim.

(3) This is the big one. Of course I don’t believe everything the government says or does is for the good of the people! If everyone blindly believed that, then this wouldn’t be a democracy at all. And I didn’t actually think everything in the proposals Obama laid out in his Congress speech last week would be for people’s ultimate good, although I thought most of his speech was excellent: for example, if he really goes ahead with the promise that abortions will never be provided with federal money, then it’s the poor communities where teenage pregnancies are rife that will suffer the most. Strongly believing that health care needs a massive overhaul in this country and that, to do it, some level of government control is necessary, does not equate to a blind confidence in the government itself.

(4) No, I don’t work in health care, although I have several close friends who do. One is a nurse who, in volunteering at a free clinic, has seen at first hand the terrible effects lack of health insurance can have. I’ve been on the receiving end of health care here and, as a graduate student with very little money, have seen quite how expensive it can be even with co-pay coverage. I think it’s a sad but true fact that many of the doctors opposed to any government regulation of health care must be more concerned about the effect on their own pay checks than about the welfare of all Americans (I mean ALL Americans, including those who currently can’t afford health insurance or aren’t sufficiently covered by the plan they do have).

Finally, I’d like to point out that my observations on the English health care system (the NHS) came from firsthand experience, as I spent the first 26 years of my life in the UK. And I don’t see how you can call Annie “misinformed” and “closed minded” as a result of her brief comment.

Naomi