Is Bostrom the only one who can see? OR April Fool's Day at the City Council, only they were not joking

Congratulations to Dan Bostrom for nailing things correctly when he suggested at yesterday’s City Council meeting that what the opponents of candy cigarettes really want to outlaw the real things.  Our local tobacco Taliban is back at things again so we all need to prepare for another round of intolerance.  That they are now attacking candy is but another sign of how they won’t let up on anything until they have achieved total domination of and utter demolition of what is supposed to be a free society.

 

So-called “public health” advocates oppose cigarettes because they associate “second hand” smoke with bad effects, real or imagined, which are said to include cancer, heart problems, and emphysema.  About the only possible second-hand problem caused by candy anythings is litter.  But the intolerant person is often a blind person so this minor detail won’t catch the eye of any of their eyes.

 

There may indeed be some public safety benefit from the part of the proposed ordinance which bans novelty lighters.  Lighters which do not look like lighters may be more of a hazard than lighters which do.  Of course, there is no real reason why this should be part of the same ordinance, except perhaps to provide cover for a councilmember who does not have the backbone to directly stand up against intolerance to rationalize a vote for the proposed ordinance.

 

But shame to people like Katie Engman, who works for the Association for Nonsmokers-Minnesota and is unlikely to feel shamed by her intolerance for bringing this thing to our City Council’s attention.  [After all, it is not like they have anything important to do.]  Double, or even triple shame on her and her cohorts for bringing youths like Shanicee Dillon and Calitta Jones into the fray.  Let us hope that these young people can grow up into more tolerant people than they are now being led to be.

 

DPP coverage is available here.

Flak for Thune? An Apology?

Dave Thune has been getting some flak for stating that downtown residents don’t want 8.000 “puking Republican lobbyists in the streets at four in the morning.” [A wise guy would then ask what time they wanted them puking, but there is no wisdom here, is there?]

Even though his record indicates that Thune does not ever deserve the benefit of a doubt, it might not be too far out of line to be at least a little understanding on this one. I doubt if the people who live downtown [or in any other of our city’s neighborhoods] want anybody puking downtown, regardless of occupation or political affiliation. But somehow, Senator Sandra Pappas thought it necessary to apologize for his comment on the floor or the Minnesota Senate.

Well, Thune is one of her constituents, but doesn’t this take constituent services a bit far?

But it seems to me that the apology is excessive and unnecessary. After all, Senators are relatively well aware of political processes and the speech they entail and should be able to give the councilmember’s comments a proper perspective. And although to many of us outsiders, they both seem to be part of the flaky, intolerant left, there must be more than the High Bridge separating Pappas from Thune.

And the Boy Wonder noted that Saint Paul is not Las Vegas. No, it is not. You can still smoke there.

Which brings us to the real difference: The real drinking for the cigars, the lobbyists and power players, will not be in our saloons and bars nor in the saloons and bars of Mpls. or Bloomington or anyplace else in our area. That action will be moved to suites and rooms where the cigars can do what gives them their name.

And the hanging, unanswered question would be, “Why wouldn’t we take this step for other conventions and groups that use our city?” After all, we wouldn’t want people to think that attorneys, lawyers, clergypeople, hardware dealers, ice hockey fans, dentists, baton twirlers [at least their over-21 chaperones], and others to be denied the amenities that we give the Republicans.

Previous post: You might want to drink late too [3/28/08]

Related articles: [from Minnesota Monitor]: Pappas apologizes for Thune's 'puking Republicans' remark

RNC: St. Paul says 'no' to 4 a.m. bar close

You might want to drink late too

Let me see if I have this right. Legislative leaders, at least some of them, want to open the bars until 4:00 am during the GOP convention, so that our visitors will have a good impression of our city and/or area.

I suspect it would. Politicians [and maybe GOP politicians in particular] expect communities to surrender whatever values they may have to spur progress and the people who can bring progress about which is what they imagine themselves to be.

But Phyllis Kahn who seems to be promoting most of this balked at a temporary lifting of the smoking ban.

Go figure.

[Of course, having to go to a combination to nominate McCain and laud seven years of W is probably just cause to really drink.]

I would just as soon let the visitors see us as we are, worried about the effects around-the-clock drinking can have on society, concerned about how late we make our hospitality workers work, and totally intolerant.

Do we really want to share Governor Plenty with the nation?

Aren’t we glad we have Tim? Are we really sure that we want to share him with the nation?

His Excellency, Timothy Pawlenty, Governor of the once-Great State of Minnesota, has always been against new taxes. [Increased fees are a different thing. Ask anybody who has been tagged for a seat belt violation or tried to buy a pack of cigarettes.]

He even wants to give us a break on our sales taxes, a really big one. It will save one cent every time you spend eight bucks.

But to make up for that he wants to reduce the property tax credit for renters and renters only. [As any GOP insider can tell you, tenants are second class people for the most part, anyway who aren’t going to vote, or if they do, will not vote for people like Governor Plenty, anyway.]

A Minnesota Monitor post today by Jeff Fecke [How Tim Pawlenty's tax cut helps you] gives some more illumination, ending with the following revealing paragraphs:

Yes, if you're the type of consumer that makes big-ticket purchases of electronics -- not to mention yachts, where you could save $250 on a $200,000 purchase -- you might actually see some benefit from Tim Pawlenty's big tax cut.

Incidentally, Pawlenty did call for one tax increase on Friday. Well, not so much an increase, really, but a decrease in the property tax credit for renters, from 19 percent to 16 percent. Now, if you pay $950 a month for your 2-bedroom apartment, that will cost you an extra $342 next year.

Again: Aren’t we glad we have Tim? Are we really sure that we want to share him with the nation?

More Harp Music [in a very minor key]

I know it seems that I harp on this a lot, but when basic human freedoms that Americans used to assume they had disappear, shouldn’t there be some harping?

It looks like we will have a lot less theater in Minnesota as authorities will try to crack down on all the new theaters which have opened up in the light of the Tobacco Taliban’s fraudulently-labeled “Freedom to Breathe” Act.

Although the story made Time, it looks like free theater’s day in the sun will be brief. Somehow, we all must have known it would be, since the demonstrated haughtiness and intolerance of the act’s advocates has been well noticed over several years.

We submit to fingerprinting and drug tests to apply for even the most minor jobs. We allow ourselves to be almost strip-searched to go into our public buildings or an airport concourse. We say, “I don’t smoke so why would I care?” We beg our authorities to enact things like "photo cop." We continue to lose liberty and nobody seems to care.

I have suggested before that we need to change our National Anthem from the one we have to one less martial and less jingoistic and blasphemous [read verse 4]. Now I think there is another reason. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is no longer true.

This is not the land of the free and is the home to very few brave.

[Earlier posts include: Free [10/1//2007]; Two Followups [1/4/2008] and others under labels "Freedom" and "Smoking."

Two Followups

Just brief followup on two things posted earlier.

ONE. The DPP has an article today about the 301 Club in South Saint Paul and how the mislabeled “Freedom to Breathe” Act is cramping it to the verge of extinction because the allow AA meetings at their facility.

Remember, the Tobacco Taliban has neither decency nor mercy.

Earlier post

TWO. Despite Gov. Plenty’s scheduling a quick election to fill a seat he made vacant, DFL candidate Kevin Dahle was elected to the District 25 seat. This gives the DFL a theoretical veto-proof majority in the upper house.

The best plans don’t always work.

Earlier post

On [Around] Wisconsin

Many of us have grown to think of Wisconsin as the obstacle one crosses to get to Chicago or points east, the land of speed traps.

Lately, because of the actions of our Tobacco Taliban, it has been seeming a more welcome place.

Now their governor wants to change things and keep smokers and people of good will [despite what the TT says, these two groups do overlap] out of his state.

I suggest that we all let the powers that be in Wisconsin know that bratwurst, cheese, and beer from Wisconsin will disappear from our shopping lists if this happens.

Many people don’t want to go across Wisconsin already. If they do this, people who want to go east may well want to skip their state altogether. There may not be a good other option for getting to Chicago, bit if you are looking to get to that other big Midwestern crossroads, Indianapolis, or south or east of there, you might want to rethink things. 52 around Rochester, 63 from Rochester to I-380, down the Avenue of the Saints to I-80 and I-74 across Illinois and Indiana is almost the same mileage, but allows one to skip both Wisconsin and Chicago. Some small stretches between Rochester and Waterloo are two-lane, but most is four-or-more lane, divided and there are no toll roads.

And remember: If they don't want us, we con't want them.

A Person's Home is His/Her Castle?

If it sometimes looks as if I keep harping on one topic, it is at least because the Tobacco Taliban just won’t agree that enough is enough, never mind more than enough.

I might ask them, “Don’t you have any sense of decency left? Has your bigotry so obsessed you that cannot ever let people live in peace?”

Of course, they have demonstrated very clearly what kind of people they are and what kind of answer they would give.

The latest thing they want to attack is people smoking in their own private residences, trying to get landlords and/or government to outlaw smoking in apartments and condominiums. [It seems that the plural should be condominia, but my spell checker doesn’t agree.] While condominiums may be disproportionately inhabited by the affluent, rental apartments are disproportionately occupied by lower-income, working class people. It may be that those in the Tobacco Talilban have overlooked this or it may be that they seem to have some strange concept of noblesse oblige which makes them feel that they need to enlighten us tenants on how to live.

It is becoming very hard to keep a tolerant attitude toward them. Maybe that is because they have been making it so hard. I am aware that history has a lot of stories of both saints and sinners who have suffered a lot more without bitching, but I guess I am not made of the same fabric.

Spinning 2007

We will all be spending a while longer trying to spin yesterday’s elections.

One thing is clear. School Board incumbents, regardless of party, must be generally acceptable as they all clearly won.

The City Council would seem to be skewing left, although I don’t know that this actually appears since it seems to me that we have so few true leftists in this city or country in the first place.

Maybe this years elections signal a change in the way this city does things. Maybe they do not. American politics are based on people and people change.

In 1964 people thought the LBJ>Goldwater race signaled a new era of liberal politics for the United States. But four years later Richard Nixon and George Wallace combined for almost sixty per cent of the popular vote.

In 1970 Wendell Anderson was elected governor. In 1974 he carried every county in his reelection. In 1978, the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, and the state House slipped away from the DFL. In fact, the DFL has never been to elect a non-incumbent governor since Wendell Anderson.

Trends people thought they were seeing did not develop.

On the other hand, Republicans controlled the Minnesota Senate from statehood in 1858 until 1973. Who would have thought that the 1972 election would mean a change to last for almost four decades at least.

Together, this year's elections certainly were not a victory for people who believe in freedom. [Cf. October 1, 2007 post] And they certainly weren’t a victory for common sense on transit, although I am not sure that there is/was any way for common sense on light rail or other transit to make itself evident.

We’ll have to wait to see if this year was the beginning of a new trend. Was Dan Bostrom’s party at Yarusso’s last night the last hurrah of an old crew or just something that in four years people will look back at and wonder why they had all of the concern? Was Debbie Montgomery’s defeat to Melvin Carter the end of a lifetime of one person’s service to the city and a sign of transition to a new generation?

We’ll find out in time, I guess.

Truth in Metaphor Dept.

All the time I have been referring [here and in other places] to the "tobacco Taliban” I thought the term was appropriate and alliterate metaphor.

This doesn’t prove anything, but it makes me think there may have been more truth in the term than I thought. [from Washingtonpost .com

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Smokers are like animals that do not think rationally, a Malaysian hardline Islamist cleric said at the weekend.

Islam discourages the faithful from smoking, just as it bars them from alcohol, said Nik Aziz Nik Mat, spiritual leader of the Parti Islam se-Malaysia, which seeks to turn the country into an Islamic state that punishes thieves by lopping off their hands.

Smokers did not use their brains because they continued to let themselves be addicted to the habit, despite knowing it was bad for their health, the Star newspaper quoted Nik Aziz as saying.

"People who do not want to think are like animals," Nik Aziz told the launch of an anti-smoking campaign in Kota Baru, the capital of Malaysia's northeastern state of Kelantan, which is his party's last remaining bastion.

Nik Aziz, himself a non-smoker, has earlier said smokers would not be included among his party's candidates at Malaysia's next general elections, widely expected to be called as soon as early next year.

Welcome to Minnesota?? [Nothing is allowed division

In today’s Mpls. paper there is a story about where Minnesota people can now smoke, since their own state continues to assault their basic human freedoms [see October 1^st post].

They suggest Hudson. I haven’t been there for a while, but may need to make a trip soon. I assume that MnDot still has the sign on west-bound I-94 just west of the St. Croix which welcomes people to our state. I live here,
but I wonder if I will really feel welcome when I see it.

Free?

Well, are we all feeling safer and healthier today?

The mislabeled “Freedom to Breathe” Act has taken effect. I imagine that the Tobacco Taliban is now trying to figure out how to get what little smoking is still allowed outlawed now. How people can have so little use for our rights to religious toleration, freedom of association, personal choice, and property is probably no big question. But what is wrong with the bulk of our populace, those who have allowed our basic rights of choice, association, property and toleration to be taken.

We keep hearing that smoking bans are popular. So what? Since when was majority opinion a factor in establishing human rights?

Dave Thune has said that he introduced the Gay Rights Ordinance because, even though it was controversial, it was the right thing to do. Now he says he introduced our local tobacco ban for the same reasons. He is wrong on both counts. Not only is the ban popular, it is the WRONG thing to do.

There are people who will continue to support the Tobacco Taliban-supported politicians at all levels of government even though smoking bans it are the wrong thing to do They say they can’t be “one issue” people.

Single issue??

> human rights?

> freedom of choice?

> freedom of association?

> property rights?

> religious toleration?

Which of these rights is a single issue?

Wake up America!