Posted on 08/16/2007 3:00:02 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
Don’t let the facts get in the way of the agenda.
I have felt for many many years that the assault on smokers is just the warm up for gun owners.
Not in my family they don't. I thank you for working to pay for my 8 70-85 year old uncles' entitlement programs and Social Security, Medicare.
Now shut up and get back to work, they need your wages to pay for their retirement and healthcare.
Having a child in a car is dangerous too. How many kids are killed in car crashes every year? Should we ban that too?
I have to admit that if my lungs could take it and if it weren’t unhealthy, I’d joyously light up a Marlboro this very minute. If it stinks, oh well.
Nevertheless, we don’t want our kids to start. And we don’t want them to submit to tender tyranny either.
Teach them self-control, and a little government resistance.
Really? I don't see that among the enumerated powers of the federal government in the US Constitution. And most of the restrictions in Bill of Rights Amendments and Fourteenth Amendment apply also to state and local governments. American law traditionally recognizes that the citizen has the right to be left alone (vis-a-vis government at any level, unless there is a compelling reason for the state to intervene. But then again, you sound like you know nothing about the Constitution and the legal tradition of the country, perhaps because you were miseducated in a decadent public school system.
I don't know the particulars in your case, but isn't it better for the child who old enough to talk to tell his or her parent that the smoke is bothering him or her, rather than to have a stranger from a government bureaucracy intervene. 90+ percent of the time, the parent would respond in some positive way, either not smoke altogether in the car or open the windows when he/she did. Government intervention in family squabbles should be the last resort, and that only when serious injury or death is a distinct possibility. It usually isn't in cases such as this and therefore government shouldn't be intervening except in the most urgent of circumstances.
What's worse is when the parents are NOT feeding the child nothing but crap, and he is 300 lbs because of a hormonal imbalance or other medical condition that is not understood by the medical authorities. And it's even worse than that when the state takes the kids and/or locks the parents up for child abuse.
I would agree with you in that case as well (although I suspect that the example you give is a much smaller percent of the problem - no less disturbing, though). Bottom line is, the more the government stays out of my life the better my life is.
I have seen this and worse. What makes my blood is the crack mamas who are allowed by CPS to keep the kids who their boyfriend slammed against the wall and are brain-damaged for life (now being cared for courtesy of Medicaid) but the parents who truly care about their child's weight and appetite are investigated and threatened when they seek help. Our world is inside out and upside down.
I’m thinking of quitting smoking and taking up leaving burning tires on city streets for relaxation instead. If the nanny staters want something to whine about I say give them something to whine about.
Thanks for the ping!
You are correct that studies show that the existence of smoking helps government’s financial balance sheet on a net basis. That is, the money saved by government due to smokers’ statistically shorter lives (e. g., less Social Security and pensions) plus the amount government receives in tobacco taxes plus government’s windfall from tobacco litigation settlements exceeds increased health care costs that government pays for smokers over the course of their lives.
Smoke em if you got em!
Thank you so very much.
I’ll be looking for a new car next year, and all of you smokers can indulge yourselves with my blessings.
Yup, the respiratory therapy business has never been better, and though there has been no recent shortage of clients, you never know.
On the other side of the equation, if you really need a reason to quit smoking....perhaps a few hours a week of volunteer service at, or a tour of a chronic care hospital with serious COPD patients might wise a few of you people up.
I won’t count on it, but I will count on my getting a new car next year at your expense.
No, it is not, and it is no business of any governmental authority.
In my mind, eating Big Mac's in a car is "child abuse".
Listening to Marilyn Manson in a car is "child abuse". DRIVING with a child in the car is "child abuse".
Just stop it.
Sorry I missed this.
The reason government exists is to defend the populace and the borders, maintain the roads, put out the fires, fill the potholes, collect the trash, and then stay the hell out of whatever else it is that the citizens may want to do for fun or enterprise.
God! you people are incorrigible!
But isn't the kid exposed to exhaust fumes from the car? That's a hell of a lot more dangerous. No one would leave their kid in a garage with the motor running for 30 minutes. But 30 minutes of cigarette smoke is "harmful"? Liberals as so pathetic in their selective outrage.
Well, your quitting smoking will give them something more to whine about: the revenue they lose by your not paying the tobacco taxes you'll been paying them as long as you smoke!
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