They're Coming After You

Worldnetdaily/Creators Syndicate, Inc. | 3-6-02 | Walter Williams

[farmall]

They're coming after you

Posted: March 6, 2002 by: Walter Willaims

1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Most Americans were pleased with the legislative attack on cigarette smokers, not to mention confiscatory tobacco taxes. We reveled in the Environmental Protection Agency's dishonest study concluding that second-hand smoke causes cancer. And, by the way, I'd like to hear whether the Food and Drug Administration would sanction pharmaceutical companies employing EPA's research methods to test drug safety – and if not, why not?

The real reason for the attack on smokers is that many people are offended by the tobacco odor. Unfortunately, in their quest to eliminate tobacco fumes, Americans are willing to trade away constitutional principles and rule of law.

Tyrants are never satisfied. They've lined up new victims. Surgeon General David Satcher has provided them with ammunition by describing obesity as America's No. 1 killer, costing 300,000 lives annually. As a result of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other obesity-related illnesses, it's costing us billions upon billions of health dollars. That means, according to John Banzhaf of George Washington University School of Law and other tyrants, America's food industry is to blame and liable. New York University Professor Marion Nestle agrees, saying that the food industry "can't behave like cigarette companies. ... Yet there's a lot of people who benefit from people being fat and sick, and the whole setup is designed to make people eat more. So the response to the food industry should be very similar to what happened with the tobacco companies."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is one of the Washington lobbies that wants to control what we eat. These tyrants not only propose taxes on what they deem as non-nutritious foods, they've also proposed a 5 percent tax on new television sets and video equipment, and a $65 tax on each new car or an extra penny per gallon of gas. You might ask why tax these items? CSPI Nazis see watching television and videos, and riding instead of walking, as contributing to obesity. And, as they see it, just as tobacco companies were responsible for people smoking, television manufacturers are responsible for people being couch potatoes, automobile companies are responsible for people riding instead of walking and the food industry is responsible for people eating too much.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has joined these tyrants. No reasonable person advocates drunk driving, but MADD has another agenda. It wishes to outlaw driving even after having one drink. It has successfully pushed Congress to lower the blood/alcohol level for a drunk-driving arrest to .08 percent. But its true agenda was revealed by Steve Simon, chairman of the Minnesota State DUI Task Force, when he said: "If .08 percent is good, .05 percent is better. That's where we're headed. It doesn't mean that we should get there all at once. But ultimately it should be .02 percent."

That's the way Nazis work – incrementally. If they had demanded Congress make the blood/alcohol .02, they wouldn't have gotten anything – not even .08 percent. I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate agenda is alcohol prohibition.

The Center for Consumer Freedom keeps up-to-date information on these and other tyrants. You might say, "What's the fuss, Williams? These people will never get away with controlling what we eat and drink!" Think again. In the '60s, when the anti-smoking zealots were simply asking for smoking and non-smoking sections on airplanes, no one would have ever anticipated today's tobacco taxes, laws and regulations.

Most evil done in the world is done in the name of promoting this or that good. By turning away from rule of law and constitutional government, Americans are following in the footsteps of the decent Germans, who during the 1920s and '30s built the Trojan Horse that enabled Hitler to take over. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WorldNetDaily contributor Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

[Gaston]

Once again, another giant I TOLD YOU SO for Limbaugh. He, virtually alone, said that fatty food would be target #1 after the nico nazi were successful with their tobacco shakedown.

Here is one Rush didn't tell you about. Under the same premise that smoking bothers the breathing of others around them, they will also go after the women (or men) who wear too much cologne.

[NMC EXP]

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” -- Noah Webster

Sowell and Webster are correct. Bottom line is the primary function of the state is to seperate us from as much of our cash as possible. The favored excuses for this theft are 1) "do it for the children" and 2) "[you fill in the blank] results in higher health care costs which must be paid for by all".

I reject the notion that I am responsible for the care of anyone other than me and mine. So did James Madison when he said;

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article in the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.... With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.“

Grab your a** and run.....the only true criminal class in America is poised to strike again.

Regards

J.R.

[Phantom Lord]

Actually, i have heard him speak about "mutliple chemical sensitivity."

[Gaston]

Actually, i have heard him speak about "mutliple chemical sensitivity."

Maybe you are right about Rush's ability to predict the future is better than anyone else on the political front. I must have missed that one. I stand corrected. Thanks.

[newgeezer]

I get your point about someone else's eating not affecting you like smoking near you kicks in your asthma, I just don't agree with your conclusion that because of that, the government should regulate - if not ban - smoking.

Then you have never had asthma.

My wife is terribly allergic to most cats; if she gets near one or goes into a house where one even used to live, she experiences respiratory distress, sometimes severe, much like asthma.

So, should the government regulate or ban cats?

[biblewonk]

Close the cat show loophole!!!!

[biblewonk]

Most Americans were pleased with the legislative attack on cigarette smokers, not to mention confiscatory tobacco taxes.

I don't think Americans would even recognize a similarity to a situation 225 years ago if the government attacked tea drinking by taxing it to death. Boy how we've changed.

[Sabertooth]

Once again, another giant I TOLD YOU SO for Limbaugh. He, virtually alone, said that fatty food would be target #1 after the nico nazi were sucessful with their tobacco shakedown.

Rush absolutely nailed it, but just for the record, Dennis Prager was also right on top of this from Day One.

[jaq]

Well, I have asthma, and I almost died of it two years ago. It was triggered by my beloved German Shepard.
Since I smoke, being next to a smoker doesn't bother me ... strong perfume or cologne DOES. I have to leave the area if someone is wearing it; however, I don't ask the government to force them not to wear it in public.

[newgeezer]

when a guy at the table next to me but across that invisable line that denotes the smoking section, desides to light up while perusing his menu.

Given your asthmatic condition and your sensitivity to cigarette smoke, one has to wonder why you would sit at a table so close to -- let alone next to -- the smoking section.

I know people who merely dislike cigarette smoke enough to ask for a table far away from the smoking section, and they don't even have a medical reason.

Oh, and although I'm not a smoker, I believe restauranteurs should have complete freedom to make the rules in their places of business. Let them appeal to the market as they wish, and let potential customers vote with their feet.

[Sloth]

Too many Freepers can't appreciate the difference between an inherently intrusive activity like smoking and a non-intrusive one like over-eating at a buffet.

[mysterio]

Oh, cry me a river. Go to a different resteraunt. Ask to be moved. Smoking is almost illegal already. If you are too slow to find a place where there's no smoke, then I have no sympathy for you.

[LouD]

CSPI Nazis see...riding instead of walking, as contributing to obesity.

How about when I drive to the gym? Do I get a rebate?

[farmall]

a local restarant was so smokey we walked out. @ 1 year later we checked it out again, no smoke at all. i told the manager what happened in the past and he said they put in a smoke eater.

did'nt know what a smoke eater was, but it sure cleared that place up.

[farmall]

run to the gym and back ----save your membership fee.

[Fred Mertz]

Walter Williams tells it like it is.

[Wolfie]

Bottom line. Williams' premise is flawed. I know from whence this madness was spawned, and it wasn't the tobacco settlement.

[Just another Joe]

And, as they see it, just as tobacco companies were responsible for people smoking, television manufacturers are responsible for people being couch potatoes, automobile companies are responsible for people riding instead of walking and the food industry is responsible for people eating too much.

We told them so!

[Just another Joe]

Thats why smokers are hated.

If you hate them all for the actions of one you are as bad as the Ku Klux Clan used to be.
Did you ask him politely to extinguish his smoke while he ate?
Or do you just complain about it here?
Realizing that he COULD have told you to shove it because he was in the smoking section, he might have realized that it bothered you and not smoked again while he was there.

[newgeezer]

Too many Freepers can't appreciate the difference between an inherently intrusive activity like smoking and a non-intrusive one like over-eating at a buffet.

Some of us appreciate the difference, but still fail to see any need for government regulation. Can you appreciate that difference?

You want to talk "intrusive"? Let's talk about government intrusion on the free market with laws like these.

Some of us -- even this non-smoker who hates the smell of cigarette smoke -- think the mere suggestion of anything resembling any sort of "right" to a smoke-free restaurant dining experience is absolutely ludicrous, bordering on nanny-state insanity.