Posted on 03/06/2002 5:21:26 AM PST by 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.
In a way I see your point - but those places (government offices) are paid for by everyone and at some point in time must be visited by everyone.
The problem is that the anti-smokers feel it is within their right to not be inconvenienced by smoke on the off chance they may some day possibly decide to step foot in someplace. They therefore ignore the fact that the only one paying for that place is the person that owns it.
I remember when the management company that owns several of the malls in the state decided to make them non-smoking, with the exception of restaurants that had smoking sections. This was no big deal to me as I'm not a big mall shopper and there were still other malls. This was before statewide restrictions.
When statewide smoking restrictions were being proposed a couple years later, that company was at the forefront of including all malls. Apparently their policy had been hurting business and they wanted to "level the playing field."
If I were seated within earshot of you in the restaurant, and you began wheezing and frothing with an asthma attack, I'm probably going to feel some sympathy for you, but I'm also not going to enjoy listening to you wheeze, and watch you treat yourself with your inhaler, while I'm trying to eat my dinner. Unlike you, however, I'm not in support of petitioning the government to have you banned from the restaurant. I'm not poking fun at asthmatics here, just drawing a parallel. Your asthma is your unfortunate problem that you must deal with. Saying that smokers should be made to pay for a problem that is yours sounds a bit too socialistic in my opinion.
But you're correct. And that's the way they do it. the California smoking ban started just with restaurants. Bars were exempt, but not for long.
Incrementalism at its best. They are proposing the same thing in Delware right now.
And they still allow immigrants to keep coming.
American citizens will just have to stop using water to make room for the immigrants.
Greenwich, Connecticut, was forced to open its private town beaches to the unwashed masses.
In California there is a movement afoot to allow bathers access to beaches in the backyards of private beachfront homes--because private beachfront property stops at the high tide line, and therefore people should be allowed to frolic on the portion of beach exposed when the tide recedes, right under the windows of those who had worked and sacrificed to enjoy peace and quiet.
There's a shortage of beaches, and so the growing mob simply legislates what it needs.
If population growth continues, our backyards will be next.
In several states, people are already fighting to keep their homes from being seized under eminent domain, so their state may sell the land to mega stores, thereby creating "economic zones" for the employment of the growing masses.
Man, I'm really torn on that one. There's a lady who works in our office that I would like to have banned when she marinates herself in some kind of stinky perfume! It has literally caused my eyse to water and gave me trouble breathing ( and I generally like nice perfumes,etc.).
The real kicker is that she is a smoker, too, and I think her own sense of smell has been dulled so much by smoking that she doesn't realize that the rest of us are being knocked over by her perfume. It has been mentioned to her on several occasions, but it hasn't helped.
I agree with a previous poster, however, that if we all just excercised better manners we wouldn't need new laws. As much as I hate choking on that sickly-sweet perfume cloud, I would not support a law against the wearing of such.
Holding my nose for freedom...
I don't think there is a such a right, and I have opposed a restaurant smoking ban when it was proposed here. Indeed, private property rights reign supreme, as far as I'm concerned. The fact remains, however, that smokers who persist in smoking around other people when they know there is a likelihood of bothering them are selfish. Smokers frequently want to claim some kind of moral high ground on these issues, when they don't have any. OWNERS of private establishments have the right to allow, prohibit or even require smoking -- that doesn't mean that smoking itself is immune to criticism.
In the study of restaurant business that is touted by the antis they calim to prove that restaurant business has actually increased since the smoking bans went into effect.
Dear old Stanton Glantz, the anti-smoker we all love to hate, took the state receipt records, which is the correct way to do such a study. What he fails to tell anyone is that when he did it, he also included catering, take-out and fast food receipts in with those from dine-in restaurants.
When looked at seperately there is an entirely different story - including over 1000 less restaurants in California at a time when the economy had been booming.
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