Posted on 10/04/2002 1:37:41 AM PDT by SheLion
Former alderman Sue Higgins is an elegant, delightful -- and crusty -- old dame and when you look at the meddling and interfering busybodies sitting on city council today, you realize we lost a font of common sense when she quit. No one ever has to breathe second-hand smoke -- a bogus issue, by the way -- if they don't want to. Firefighters are stressed out, as are ambulance drivers . Again, no coming to grips with these problems. Conservative, enterprising people who realize they are not elected to tell people how to behave in either the privacy of their homes or privately owned eating and drinking establishments.
Sue, who spent 21 years in municipal politics, won't be at all satisfied by the so-called "compromise" aldermen made this week when they decided that, no, smoking wouldn't be banned in privately owned establishments in just three months, but it would be Jan. 1, 2008, when we strip away the rights of restaurant and bar owners and customers and ruin their businesses and toss thousands of young waiters and waitresses out of jobs.
She opts for the logical and fair idea of making owners themselves decide individually whether their businesses will be smoking or non-smoking, and if they go for smoking establishments, no one under 18 would be allowed to enter.
Add to that, no one who did not want to be around smoke would be forced to enter any of these premises.
Surely, in a democracy, that is the answer to the termites who want to socially engineer and regiment our lives.
No one surely has the right to dictate what others can or can't do in a privately owned restaurant or bar.
But here's another question: Why are these hardliner aldermen -- and their toadying bureaucrats and advisers --tackling an issue that has no relevance in our community?
Why are they not doing anything about the real problems in our city?
Bookstores and magazine outlets are full of pornographic literature. We hear nothing from council about getting rid of this pollution.
Obscene four-letter words pour into our community's movie houses. Not a word from council about cleaning them up.
Violence floats from our TV screens. Silence on that issue.
In "adult" video outlets, hard core movies are marketed with ease.
Prostitutes roam the streets, disturbing neighborhoods, and seemingly aldermen just walk by and turn their heads.
Drug pushers haunt our community. No action on this, either.
Our police force is the 53rd worst-paid of any major city in the nation. Council washes its hands of any concern.
Now, I'm not saying some of these anti-smoking zealots don't care about these blights, but a stack of them appear more interested in chasing decent, law-abiding restaurant and bar owners and harrying their customers than in attending to essential issues desperately needing attention.
It's a real cop-out -- if I can say so without smearing my friends in the police service.
It's also symptomatic of a startlingly low quality of talent on council, for when an individual realizes they are out of their depth on the big issues -- haven't got the intellectual muscle or the moral courage to come to grips with stark issues -- they find some sham problem to take up and so pretend they are working assiduously away on our behalf.
It's the way of mediocrity all down the line. In reality, they are just wasting their time and our money.
We need individuals on council -- and in the bureaucracy -- who match our city's spirit:
We do not need individuals with an authoritarian streak in them who dictate from their sanctimonious podium their own self-centered standard of behavior to ordinary men and women.
Are not porno books, obscene movies, prostitution and drug pushing a greater danger than a cigarette, cigar or pipe?
Not to the anti-smoking commissars -- and commissars is surely the right description when you delve into its meaning.
Yet now we know the extent of the dross we have on city council -- and can basically identify each and every one -- we should work to replace them at the next municipal elections and the ones after that with individuals who know what their roles really are.
Perhaps even Sue Higgins can draw up a list of prospective candidates.
Maybe even put her name at the top.
BTTT!!!!!!!!
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