Wiggie's Busted for Having Smokers (Madison, WI Smoking Ban)

Madison's most outspoken critic of the smoking ban has been busted for allowing smoking in his tavern, but the bar owner says he will fight the charges and might try to get the smoking ban overturned because of his case.

Dave Wiganowsky, a county supervisor and owner of Wiggie's, 1901 Aberg Ave., is being taken to Madison Municipal Court on two counts of violating the city's smoking ordinance for allegedly letting patrons smoke in his bar on Dec. 17 and Jan. 14.

Public health officers working undercover went into Wiggie's on both occasions, based on complaints from patrons that smoking was going on in the bar.

"We had complaints," said Doug Voegeli, city of Madison Environmental Health Services supervisor. "We talked to Dave, went over the ordinance with him and then did compliance checks to make sure he was complying."

Wiganowsky told The Capital Times today he doesn't allow smoking in his bar, but if someone is smoking and won't quit, he has to watch out for the safety and welfare of his employees.

That's apparently what happened in the January incident, when a man lit up a cigarette at the bar and angrily refused to put it out when the bartender told him to.

"I'm not putting my people in harm's way," Wiganowsky said. "I've already had a smoking customer throw a glass at a bartender and another throw a burger on the floor. When you shut 'em off, people get aggravated."

Wiganowsky said he has hired an attorney and will fight the complaint. Neither the patron nor the bartender was issued a citation.

"It will take some time and effort, but maybe this case will get the ball rolling on getting the smoking ban overturned," he said. "We'll go to Municipal Court and maybe lose that one, but there are many other things to look at."

There is room for negotiating on the charges, said Assistant City Attorney Marci Paulsen, just as other bar owners in similar situations have done.

"We'll probably make a high-low offer," Paulsen said. "If he's good and there are no more violations for the rest of the year, it would be a low fine. But if there are other violations, he would get the highest fines allowed."

Wiganowsky is facing up to $671 in fines and court costs because of the two violations noted in the complaint. If it was only one offense, the maximum penalty would be $198.50.

"Definitely not," Voegeli said. "There had been complaints against his establishment and we are required to follow up on the complaints."

Voegeli said five Madison taverns have faced court dates because of the no-smoking ordinance, based on 22 complaints since the smoking ban went into effect in the city on July 1, 2005. All but one owner (apart from Wiganowsky) settled before going to trial.

Public health officers do have some leeway in citing or not citing smokers, bartenders or owners if a customer lights up.

"If a customer's told to put it out, we're not going to write a citation to the bartender," Voegeli said. "It all depends on the situation."

Wiganowsky said some situations are more volatile than others, and he's not willing to put his employees up against surly smokers if it means his bartenders could get hurt.

"My daytime bartender is 61 years old," he said. "My wife Angie is 5-foot-2. What are they going to do?"

"That's my busiest day of the year, and I've already laid off five people," he said.

No matter if it goes to trial or not, Wiganowsky is fighting both the complaints and the smoking ban all the way.

He couldn't care less if he's able to smoke in his own bar, he said, but wants his customers to have the chance for a smoke and a beer.

"I quit smoking 20 years ago," Wiganowsky said. "So did Angie. It doesn't bother me."

I think I know how Richard Bach felt when he was internally pressured to write Illusions. Yet myself just writing an article, he wrote a book. Illusions, one of many.

Anyhow, a key to defeating the encroaching police state is identifying their strategies, methods and tactics. Their strategy -- the parasitical elites strategy is to rid society of smoking in public. Never mind for the moment that they cannot accomplish that goal. Their methods are to foist a boogieman problem with associated fear onto people and society. ...Then declare themselves to protect the people and society from the problem and associated pain and suffering.

The tactic they use is to hold someone (bar owner) responsible for the action of the person that violated the law. That tactic effectively hides the police state from plain sight, while it inscribes bar/restaurant owners to become an arm of the police state. That is an abhorrent injustice. Yet not an uncommon a tactic. ...Hold someone or something else accountable and or responsible for another person's actions -- happens often to business owners.

For example, suppose the police never arrested or ticketed the bar and restaurant owners. Rather, they apprehended the persons they catch smoking in the bars and restaurant.

That would allow the general public to become engaged in the process. Whereas the method and tactics the police state now utilize keeps the general public at bay with only the pontification of the original boogieman problem and fears to hold onto. By hiding/shielding the police-state parasites from demonstrating their dishonesties bordering on criminal fraud behind apprehending the bar/restaurant owners -- make them the front man -- it hides the futility of their strategy. Simply put, if the people acknowledged the effects first hand the police state strategy would fail miserably. Heck, it never would've gotten off the ground in the first place.

Unfortunately most people have been so indoctrinated to accept being manipulated that they hardly if ever know when they are being manipulated by such strategies, methods and tactics.

I'll give another example from a different yet related area of government. The strategies methods and tactics approved by congress and utilized by the IRS are the same. Twenty-five to thirty percent of the price of a product or service that a consumer pays is embedded income tax, payroll tax and cost of compliance.

Almost nobody realizes that about 27 cents of every dollar they spend at the cash register is tax and compliance cost of the tax. Imagine if each time a person spent a dollar for whatever they had to fork over an additional 27% tax. If that had been the case, as it would be with a national consumption/sales tax instead of the income tax we now have, it would have been virtually impossible for government to incrementally grow to even half the size the leviathan government it is today -- ditto for State police-state governments.

Similar to having to write a check each month as large or large than your mortgage to the IRS. People would take action. No sitting idly by believing everything is just hunky-dory. It's in your face reality -- not foisted illusions.

By hiding the tax from the people that pay it, including hiding it from the poor that also pay the tax at the cash register, the poor and rich will continue to be manipulated via the boogieman problems and fears foisted on them.

And what's the IRS strategy? To collect monies congress approves and do that by whatever means it empowers them to utilize toward that end. In effect, that too is proving itself futile. For as we know with the tobacco taxes and many other things taxed, the more something is taxed the less of it there is to tax.

That's two futile strategies. Congress empowers the strategies with their edicts, the IRS funds them and all levels of government enforce them. Edicts mostly from the federal and state governments. And they enlist local authorities to comply with the police-state tactic.

The illusions they foist on people to manipulate them to go along with their futile strategies is dragging the people, economy and society, increment by increment, ever closer to the cliff edge.

They, the parasitical elites are blind to the futility of their ways. Primarily because to them, we all end up dead in the end. Thus they will not be held accountable for their actions. Nobody to blame them. ...Until now!

In closing, a post I wrote a couple hours ago (28) further highlights the common denominator among the above strategies, methods and tactics.

That's how events have progressed (read: regressed) to today. Creep. Instrumentalism. They used it to create a leviathan government. It's almost as though the parasitical elites -- purveyors of group-think -- are inching the establishment and us along with it ever closer to the edge of the cliff. We're so close our nose is sniffing at the edge. Like a dog sneaking up on the cliff edge.

All the time they've told us that we need this new law and that new regulation. At the clip of about 3,000 new laws each year. It's been incrementing like that for several decades -- more than a dozen. Telling us that without each year's new laws and regulations persons and society would run themselves and society headlong to destruction -- we'd plunge over the cliff edge. That's their excuse -- not reason -- for proposing thousands of new laws and regulations each year.

Ironically, for decade after decade for hundreds of years man and his society have increasingly prospered. And, as it is now, we continue to increase prosperity despite almost every person breaking several laws each year. A person would think that surely persons and society would have self destructed with so much lawlessness occurring. Yet just the opposite has happened. People have increased prosperity.

It is the establishment parasitical elites that are a drain on people and society while dragging us closer to the cliff edge. The cliff-edge that persons via increasing prosperity are distancing themselves from. For it is they -- parasitical elites -- that have created the cliff edge to drag us over. Free people do not move toward self-destruction.

Congress and high-ranking officials of the IRS have ensured that most people break the law. When not one in 40 accountants can arrive at the same income tax bill for the same family of four and, the IRS help-line answers are wrong 60% of the time, is that not a glaring sign that the intentionally blind are leading the manipulated blind -- people manipulated, usually emotionally via boogie-man "problems" and fears foisted on them -- over the cliff edge.

Unlike truth that has many gray areas, honesty has none.

A War of Two Worlds:

Value Producers
versus
Value Destroyers

"It is a war of rational honesties versus irrational dishonesties."

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