HAPPY 99th BIRTHDAY, MR BOB HOPE!!
Poohbah expects you'll be weeded out of the gene pool soon. Your premature death will, of course, be due to your smoking.
Posted on 05/30/2002 7:07:00 AM PDT by Just another Joe
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By Heidi Rauch-Webb /Oswego Daily News
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The Oswego County Energy Recovery Facility has gone the way of airlines, hospitals and most shopping malls in the country: no smoking in their facility. Deputy Superintendent Frank Visser said that though only about 10 out of 30 employees at the ERF are smokers, the issue was a serious one. "Our lunch room was also our smoking room and it's very small," he explained. "People who don't smoke couldn't get away from the smoke." Visser said that there had been some complaints to the health department and a few weeks ago Michael Rosen, Deputy Health Commissioner, and an assistant visited the facility and came to the conclusion that controlling the smokers was not feasible so they designated the building as non-smoking. "The new policy is that people who want to smoke must do so 20 feet from the building," Visser said. There were some disgruntled employees but Visser told the assembled County Department of Public Works committee last week that some of the smokers have no one to blame but themselves. "Some smokers were smoking in non-designated areas," he said. "I told them that it takes only one person to ruin it for the rest of the employees." Visser said the decision is final after the recommendation went to the county Legislature's Health committee. "It's a done deal," he told DPW committee members as they offered suggestions on how to correct the problem. "As a smoker, you have no rights. If I smoked, I guess I'd just quit." |
I contend that we haven't had a representative form of government since the number of congressional representatives was limited to 435.
The idea that close to 285 million people can be properly represented by 435 people is utterly ludicrous
Maine has 2 representatives in Congress "representing" 1.25 million people.
Yah, right. I'm sure everyone's fairly represented.
They have as much right to patronize an establishment to partake in a legal activity as there are people who wish to accommodate them.
The health neurotics have seen to it that there are fewer and fewer venues where this may take place. They are outlawing a perfectly legal activity by proxy in public settings.
The country is turning into a weak-kneed, control-freak driven, infantilized asylum for child-like creatures who are so narcissistic and afraid of life that they must call upon the power of the Great God State to make everyone cater to their cowardly fear of illness and death.
Freedom is messy, because individuals must accommodate one another, in order to reinforce the concept. You accommodate me in this, I accommodate you in that. I may not like what you do, but you may not like what I do some day - so let's call it even.
This has disappeared from the public square, so that now we have people calling for shooting others for activities they disapprove of.
It's the death of liberty, the yellowbellies just don't realize it yet.
The old saying that an armed society is a polite society is quite true. The Wild West saw everyone armed--and outside of fiction, saw a very few shootings over rude remarks or behavior, because said behaviors were actually quite rare.
Incidents of "road rage" have gone down sharply in states where concealed carry policies were liberalized.
Here, we are pretty much an armed society, but I don't have the urge to force someone's compliance with my wishes with the threat of murder, and I can't honestly say I know anyone who does.
We are not an armed society--just how many people do you know, outside of laew enforcement, who routinely carry arms at all times?
First they came for my neighbor, and I did not speak out for him because he was a homosexual, and I am not a homosexual. Then they came for my butcher, and I did not speak out for him because he is a Gypsy, and I am not a Gypsy. Then they came for my friend, and I did not speak out for her because she is a Jew, and I am not a Jew. Then, they came for me … but there was no one left to speak for me.
HAPPY 99th BIRTHDAY, MR BOB HOPE!!
Poohbah expects you'll be weeded out of the gene pool soon. Your premature death will, of course, be due to your smoking.
If you don't smoke where I'm going out to dinner, I'm gaining a freedom.
Already a pretty good sized "grey market" going for cigs in a lot of areas. Governments whining about it more and more every day - the lost revenue hurts children, you know.
Taxing cigarettes at the current prevailing rates is taxation without representation, and the grey is darkening. I predict there will be bloodshed in this war on smokers before it is over. Money talks, and $80 million a day will kill if necessary.
Dave in Eugene
BTW, when was the last road rage incident in your town?
An example of this is fines against pet owners who allow their pets to dump in public places without cleaning it up. Another example is littering. There are numerous examples which apparently escape the rath of smokers who don't care about anyone else but their cigarettes.
I hadn't thought of it quite like that before. My knee jerk reaction is to support the private property rights as being unlimited but you are correct. It is limited.
Actually if we apply the analogy further if the state restricted a restaurants right to allow smoking customers after the restaurant opened, one could make an argument that one's property rights were restricted and unless the gov't wished to grandfather the right of the restaurant's ability to serve smoking customers then essentially the gov't took property under eminent domain and would be required to compensate the owner for its loss.
This would be an interesting case and I would expect it would find easy fnding from various sources.
Their are a number of laws and regultations designed to keep air clean. Your argument that unless all air is perfectly clean from all other pollutants that we shouldn't ban indoor sources is a logical fallacy. A=B therefore C.
Well I don't advocate it until we get a law passed to allow it. I believe it is the simpliest end to the problem. It avoids writing restrictive laws againts private property owners and it still makes the ability to smoke completely voluntary.
Only a few smokers would end up gettting shot and their lives are shortened anyways, further many current smokers would quit and many would cut back ending in a net savings of life.
Further, it doesn't require the passing of anymore restrictions private property rights and smokers can continue to smoke privately.
Its a win-win all the way around.
The pollutants that you talk about have been PROVEN to cause permanent harm to otherwise healthy people. ETS has not been proven to cause permanent harm to otherwise healthy people.
I believe he is guilty of voicing his thoughts in short hand. He later said the health department had jurisdiction and that what the health dept says is final. When confronted by a complaint that the smoker's rights were being violated by the health department his respone should have said that smokers have no rights that affect the decision of the health department. Which is apparently a true statement. He obviously would not have meant the man had no rights at all.
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