This Levine is character is a classic example of the sort of person who no free society should allow to get within 100 miles of a legislative seat.Smoke Gets in Your Rights
California Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, has introduced a bill to make it illegal for people to smoke in their own homes — if they live in an apartment or a condo or a multifamily home. When last I wrote about Levine, he was pushing a statewide law to require grocers to charge for bags. Now he's after cigarettes — but only the legal kind. With his new AB 746, Levine is following a trail blazed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who pushed a law prohibiting the restaurant sale of large sugary drinks, which a New York judge overturned.
One politician thinks he has the right to tell New Yorkers what they can put in their stomachs. Another thinks he has the right to outlaw Californians smoking in the sanctity of their own homes. These two must think they are gods or kings. Or dictators.
They know what's best for you, so they feel free to force you to behave — for your own good.
"I've got to defend my children and yours and do what's right to save lives. Obesity kills. There's no question it kills," quoth Bloomberg in defense of his erstwhile ban on Big Gulps. Never mind that people could purchase two drinks if they wanted to get around the law. Why even bother?
I asked Levine whether he has any qualms about passing a law that tells people what they cannot do in their own homes. Offenders would be subject to a $100 fine.
"When you think about this issue, we send our children to school in a smoke-free environment," he answered. "Our offices are protected by workplace laws, and where we should feel safest to breathe clean air, in our own homes, is the last unprotected place from secondhand smoke."
In other words: No. Because smoke can leach from one apartment to another and secondhand smoke can kill, Levine said, he is standing up for families who don't want smoking neighbors (whether nonsmoking families want him to or not).
Levine did add that his bill would allow apartment dwellers to smoke in "designated" smoking areas.
But those areas, if they qualified, would be outdoors — outside one's home.
Observe, please, how Bloomberg and Levine have chosen the easiest targets a politician can pick on — fat people and smokers. Not that they would call them fat people and point with derision. No, they moan about the ill effects of obesity on health. Ditto smoking.
These guys wouldn't dream of restricting the rights of people who engage in risky behavior that is popular. I asked Levine: Would his bill apply to people smoking medical marijuana?
"That's not covered in this," Levine responded. "I am much more concerned with cancer-causing secondhand smoke than cancer-easing medical marijuana."
That's interesting. According to the American Lung Association, "marijuana smoke contains a greater amount of carcinogens than tobacco smoke." What about all those apartment-dwelling children who risk being exposed to secondhand marijuana smoke? That's different.
Will his bill pass? Levine answered, "Whether it passes today or not, it will pass soon." And: "We already have a law that says if you're driving in a car with minors, you can't smoke."
That's how governments take away liberty. First it's in restaurants, and then it's at work. Then they hit your personal space — a car with kids. People get used to the restrictions, and once a ban applies to one venue, it seems natural to expand it to others. Now a California lawmaker wants to make it illegal for people to smoke in their homes. What next?
Email Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.
If there's anything worse than an arrogant, control-freak prig sitting around rubbing his hands with glee as he uses whatever small amount of brain wattage he has to try and come up with new ways to invade and control the lives of free citizens, it's an arrogant, control-freak prig sitting around rubbing his hands with glee as he uses whatever small amount of brain wattage he has to try and come up with new ways to invade and control the lives of free citizens, who also happens to be an ignorant moron....
This tool is perfectly free believe any ignorant thing he wants to, but the problem is that as a member of the state legislature, he has the potential to inflict his stupidity on others...
This paper bag business is a classic case in point. We already have this fascist regulation in San Fran, (thanks to the efforts of our own control-freak idiot, Ross Mirkarimi, who came up with this while on the Board of Stupidvisors, and who later got elected sheriff
. He was yanked from that job by the mayor following a domestic abuse conviction, but was then re-instated as a result of the votes of four of his fellow idiot former colleagues on the board.)The dime a bag rule has resulted in the disappearance of hand baskets from the local supermarkets, (people are walking out with them) and an increase in the sale of plastic bags....
In our case, the dime a bag thing is just an insulting poke in the eye every time we shop, but now the idiots are talking about raising it to 25 cents per bag. (We currently use these paper bags as trash can liners for a number of the trash cans in our house, as well as other purposes like collecting kitty litter and charcoal dust from the barbecue, but if they go to a quarter a bag it will be cheaper to go back to buying the Glad plastic bags for these purposes. So rather than have paper bags that get re-used for a second purpose before being discarded, we will be using plastic bags one time and then throwing them away. And I know I'm not alone.)
Laying aside the fact that with their commissar mentalities they have nothing but contempt for the principle of individual freedom, these buffoons are also simply too stupid to understand human nature or the law of unintended consequences. So rather than seeing the error of their ways and revoking this moronic bag fee, their mindless control freak impulses cause them to reflexively want to double down on stupid by raising it....
This is similar to what they achieved in my case regarding the purchase of pipe tobacco. For years I bought it at local supermarkets and drug stores, paying their ever more exorbitant punitive taxes, simply because of the convenience. But eventually with the passage a moronic behavior control ordinance that banned the sale of tobacco products anywhere there was a pharmacy, (brilliant "logic" that) they created a situation where I would now have to drive across town for the privilege of paying their huge taxes.
This was a bridge too far . So they have now screwed themselves out of the tax revenue, as I switched to buying my tobacco online and having it delivered to my door for about half of what I was previously paying. (It would be interesting to see a study on what the impact of this particular bit of legislative stupidity has been on tobacco sales tax revenue overall in the city. If it's way down, the idiots are probably stupid enough to think it's because the law caused lots of people to quit smoking.
) These moronic micro-managing busy-body weasels ought to be swept from office, every last one of them.
