But I'm also of the mind that it's left to the individual whether or not he or she chooses to smoke. And that means that it should be up to business owners to decide whether or not they allow smoking in places they own like restaurants and bars.
And I also have come to believe that in the few short months since she was sworn in, that Bev Perdue has already become the worst Governor that I have ever seen North Carolina have in my lifetime. She's already "effed"-up our educational budget bigtime. Now this...
"An important and historic day for North Carolina." That's what Perdue declared today as she announced she would immediately sign a bill just passed by the state's General Assembly that will BAN smoking in ALL public places.
In all honesty, I never thought I would live to see the day that smoking in public was outlawed in, of all places, North Carolina: the biggest tobacco-producing region in the world.
And as I said before: I don't smoke, and wouldn't want anyone to take it up either. But as an infringement on individual liberty, what Governor Perdue and the General Assembly are doing is wrong.
And North Carolina goes the way of the Socialist Republic of California....it starts with the smoking bans, extends to the ban on alcohol in public places, extends to glass bottles, and just goes on and on and on....we've already written this song in Cali.
ReplyDelete"...and then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up."
ReplyDeleteNiemöller was on to something. Expect things to get much, much worse.
The story the newspapers aren't telling you is this . . . .
ReplyDeleteA private, non-profit foundation that receives funding from such people as Ted Turner, Barbara Streisand, Bill Gates, The Times Company, Time-Warner, Media General, and the Heinz estate is hiring lobbyists in every state legislature for the purpose of doing whatever is necessary to ensure that public bans on smoking are passed.
Tactics include taking legislators out for meals, buying them vacation trips, bringing movie productions to targeted states and (when all else fails) outright bribery to gain votes for this legislation.
The end goal is to provide unchallenged legal precedent that can one day be used to outlaw the use of tobacco products, or beyond that, any product or behavior that this foundation disapproves of.
This is definitely anti-populist behavior, because this foundation seeks to "educate" legislators on the dangers of smoking (something we all know about) and the advantages of defying the ill-formed public opinion that no real harm comes from smoking.
They have a word for this . . . . it's called Oligarchy. Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls.
Later . . . .
Ol' You-Know-Who