  Monahan568 Member Username: Monahan568 Post Number: 164 Registered: 04-2004 |
surprised nobody mentioned this today yet.... http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs .dll/article?AID=/20070724/NEW S06/70724028/1001/NEWS | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 44 Registered: 11-2004 |
Oops, here we go again... next they will be telling businesses they can't serve fatty foods... or have live bands cause it is causing hearing damage... slippery slope.  And, heaven forbid people make a choice for themselves and go to a smoke free bar if they don't like the cig smoke... Also, Michigan government thinks it is having a hard time replacing the revenue from the Single Business Tax... I'd like to see them replace the taxes they stand to eventually lose from the bars that end up shutting down, and the possible drop in revenue they collect from cigarette sales taxes! | ||
Oldredfordette Member Username: Oldredfordette Post Number: 2269 Registered: 02-2004 |
No bars closed in New York when they banned smoking. No bars closed in friggin IRELAND when they banned smoking. Whether you agree with a ban or not, closing bars isn't the issue. | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 46 Registered: 11-2004 |
^ ...source please. ;) | ||
Oldredfordette Member Username: Oldredfordette Post Number: 2270 Registered: 02-2004 |
You are the one who made the claim. You look it up. | ||
Thejesus Member Username: Thejesus Post Number: 1678 Registered: 06-2006 |
I just hope they are wise enough to exempt the casinos that are about to open...I have my doubts | ||
Jt1 Member Username: Jt1 Post Number: 9632 Registered: 10-2003 |
Hope so as well just for the tax revenue for schools and the city. The issue is that I believe one of the arguments is that the employees should not be subjected to second hand smoke. I don't nkow how this wouldn't apply to the casinos unless they have great ventilation (I know the temps ones certainly did not). The smoking ban in Casino Windsor seemed to cause its business to decline so I would think the same may be the case for Detroit's casinos. | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 47 Registered: 11-2004 |
Hey, I said that they 'stand to eventually lose', and 'possible loss in revanue'... I didn't say "NO bars closed" in (the huge, and growing, metropolis of) New York.... but I'll look into it anyway. | ||
Upinottawa Member Username: Upinottawa Post Number: 918 Registered: 09-2005 |
Why exempt the casinos? All four regional casinos would be smoke free; ergo no comparative disadvantage for smoke free casinos. Casinos should get in the business of handing out nicotine patches to addicts and leave the clean air alone. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 1220 Registered: 04-2006 |
"The smoking ban in Casino Windsor seemed to cause its business to decline so I would think the same may be the case for Detroit's casinos." I think this was primarily because there was an alternative in close proximity. That won't be the case anymore if they ban it in Detroit. | ||
Karl Member Username: Karl Post Number: 8816 Registered: 09-2005 |
This article does a nice job of pointing out the hypocrisy of the left and followers like Oldredfordette. The similarity to gay rights is especially thought-provoking: The Nanny-State Diaries Drinking, smoking, shooting and sticking it to bureaucrats. BY STEPHEN MOORE WSJ, Friday, July 20, 2007 12:01 a.m. Echoing H.L. Mencken, humorist P.J. O'Rourke once quipped that conservatives are a group of stiff-collared puritans with a "haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having fun." He should have joined me at the recent fifth annual Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms summer gala hosted by a right-leaning Colorado think tank, the Independence Institute, at a gun club in Kiowa, Colo. This year's theme was "Stop the Growth of the Nanny State"--but it might as well have been "Live Free or Die Hard." Every activity seemed designed to annoy Hillary Clinton. There was a whole lot of drinking, smoking and shooting, but thankfully not in that order. During the morning hours, we carried nine-pound rifles through the woods, shooting pellets at clay pigeons flung into the air. By 10 a.m. the park was alive with the continuous claps of gunfire and hollering. "Ahh, don't you love the sound of freedom?" exalted Jon Caldara, the president of the institute. This was a family affair, with many gun- toting children and women participating. The "girly man" of the group, I managed to hit all of two clay pigeons the entire morning--and I didn't so much break them into pieces as inflict minor wounds. When Mr. Caldara introduced me as the lunch speaker, he said: "Moore is reportedly with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but after watching him shoot a gun today, I wonder if it isn't the New York Times." I live in the nation's capital, where guns are illegal--and so the closest I've come to a firearm was the time I was mugged walking home from work in 1989. I was equally out of my element in 1994 when, working for the Republicans in Congress, I found myself in rural Georgia trying to rally voters. Encircled by a boisterous crowd of gun enthusiasts, most of them dressed in military fatigues and holding their rifles at the ready position as I electioneered, I ended my rally-the-troops talk: "And that is why we have to take over the House of Representatives in 1994." One middle-age woman held her gun over her head, nudged herself to the front of the crowd, and in a deep Southern drawl asked: "Son, do you mean by force?" No, I didn't. Nice idea though. Many of the folks at the institute's, um, policy forum had come from all over the state to have a good time, sure, but they also had a deeper motivation: to stick their tongues out, figuratively, at the tyrant politicians in Washington and Denver who keep enacting rules about how they should run their lives. These people are just dog tired of having the government tell them what to do: Buckle your seat belt, wear your bike helmet, don't smoke, don't shoot, teach your 8-year-olds to wear condoms--and, most of all, stop complaining and pay your taxes. One participant was incensed that Denver now has a law requiring that every dog be neutered unless the owner gets a government permit allowing the animal to reproduce. On the left even sex is becoming taboo. Then there are the more mundane rules. There was a discussion over lunch at my picnic table about how Congress is regulating nearly every basic household appliance--refrigerators, washers and dryers, toilets, hair dryers, shower heads, lawnmowers--to make sure that we are not, God forbid, wasting water or energy. A woman told me that she is stocking up on cartons of incandescent light bulbs, because soon it will be illegal to buy them. (The poor lady insisted on remaining anonymous so that the light-bulb police don't come to search her home.) The buzzword on the left nowadays is "tolerance" for those with different lifestyles--like cross-dressers--but almost everything that these folks want to do, liberals won't tolerate. One smoker lamented that if "gays were discriminated against today the way smokers are, there would be an uproar." Gun owners have reason to be fearful too. In a recent blog interview on Moveon.org, John Edwards of North Carolina proclaimed that health care, child care, a livable wage and a clean environment are "rights," but owning a gun is a "privilege." The men and women who gathered in Kiowa would like to send him a copy of the Constitution. I'm not a smoker or a gun owner, and not much of a drinker, other than at Margarita parties. But, as Mae West once cracked, "Sometimes I don't drink so the next day I can remember having fun." The gathering in Kiowa was pure joy--and I suspect that if liberals would loosen their puritan collars and start showing real tolerance of conservative "alternative lifestyles," they'd be having more fun too. Mr. Moore is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. | ||
E_hemingway Member Username: E_hemingway Post Number: 1268 Registered: 11-2004 |
Add in all of the border problems caused by 9-11 | ||
Upinottawa Member Username: Upinottawa Post Number: 919 Registered: 09-2005 |
Where is the tolerance for crack smokers? public masturbation? The above article is thread-jacking at its worst. | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 48 Registered: 11-2004 |
I just don't understand, that if there is such a demand for smoke-free bars, then why isn't there many? There is NO law that says a business owner HAS to allow smoking!! (Message edited by MotorCityDave on July 24, 2007) | ||
Jt1 Member Username: Jt1 Post Number: 9633 Registered: 10-2003 |
quote: I disagree. Their decline came following a smoking ban and the Detroit casinos did not see an increase to offset the decline in Windsor. Maybe it was the economy more but it seemed that the smoking ban hurt Windsor and did not help the Detroit casinos. | ||
Upinottawa Member Username: Upinottawa Post Number: 920 Registered: 09-2005 |
Did large corporations go out of business when they banned smoking in office buildings? Did universities go out of business when they banned smoking in classrooms? If Casino Windsor still allowed smoking and the Detroit casinos did not, I could see why people would call for the exemption. However, this is not the case. In addition, the "exemption" argument presupposes that the majority of gamblers prefer to gamble in smoke-filled rooms. | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 50 Registered: 11-2004 |
"Did large corporations go out of business when they banned smoking in office buildings?" "Did universities go out of business when they banned smoking in classrooms?" You didn't seriously just try to make that comparison, did you?? ...lol!! | ||
Udmphikapbob Member Username: Udmphikapbob Post Number: 392 Registered: 07-2004 |
I can't get cancer from second-hand gay, Karl. I'd have eye tumors the size of grapefruits from reading your closeted postings if that were the case. That said, I am still against a total ban of public smoking. I know that, when I go to a bar, bowling alley or casino I am going to a smoker-friendly environment. I do not have to go to these places, but I choose to, despite the smoke. Ban smoking from restaurants, sure - I am going there to eat, and I expect a smoke-free environment. Ban it from public buildings and from workplaces - I shouldn't be forced to walk through that cloud by the door when I am going to the library, grocery store or office. But a total ban like this is overreaching. | ||
Karl Member Username: Karl Post Number: 8819 Registered: 09-2005 |
Motorcitydave, Upinottawa thinks that posting an article discussing smoking legislation on a thread dealing with smoking legislation is "thread-jacking at its worst" so perhaps he is in a joking mood today? | ||
Fury13 Member Username: Fury13 Post Number: 1943 Registered: 10-2003 |
I would support "separate-but-equal" facilities in bars. Have bars sectioned off into two rooms -- one for smokers, one for non-smokers. That way, all the smokers can be free to breathe each other's (concentrated) fumes. Oh yeah, and the smoking section should be in the back, so non-smokers don't have to walk through it (and choke). | ||
Karl Member Username: Karl Post Number: 8820 Registered: 09-2005 |
Sorry Udmphikapbob, I think the article might be referring to certain behavior practiced by gays that can have deadly consequences. Perhaps not cancer, but maybe HIV from "second-hand gay"? I too am against a total ban of public smoking - the article points out, however, that these bans seem to emit from the supposedly more "tolerant" in our midst. | ||
Jams Member Username: Jams Post Number: 5474 Registered: 10-2003 |
Instead of outright bans, possibly the State should create a Licencing for bars that would allow patrons and establishments to choose legally between smoke-free or not? | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 51 Registered: 11-2004 |
If so, I apologize Upinottawa ... and a little ashamed of myself, with being a true lover of smart ass sarcasm, that I didn't pick up on it!!...lol. ;) (Message edited by motorcitydave on July 24, 2007) | ||
Karl Member Username: Karl Post Number: 8822 Registered: 09-2005 |
Jams, the goal of the Dems (the party of tolerance) is a total ban on tobacco. The voters would find it too offensive if they just came out and said that as Democrats, so they use the government and laws to do it for them. By conditioning folks one step at a time, the left puts a big squeeze on Big Tobacco. Look who sponsors the bills, and look at the votes. | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 52 Registered: 11-2004 |
Sounds like a good idea Jams... and maybe offering an incentive of some sort for smoke-free bars... discount on those fees, etc. | ||
Harpernottingham Member Username: Harpernottingham Post Number: 218 Registered: 04-2006 |
I think drinking should be banned in bars. | ||
Motorcitydave Member Username: Motorcitydave Post Number: 53 Registered: 11-2004 |
After all of this talk, I sure do feel like a beer and a smoke! | ||
Sstashmoo Member Username: Sstashmoo Post Number: 169 Registered: 02-2007 |
I don't smoke, but I don't have a problem with folks that want to. Smokers are much cooler to hang with anyway. Not near as uptight. The tree hugging crowd that always cries about smokers, shouldnt be living in a filthy industrial city like Detroit anyway. Their own car emits way more pollution and more damaging emissions than 50 smokers could. The carbon monoxide alone is lethal. Someone made a good point, the most liberal do what you want to crowd complains the most. Like people that smoke pot, not allowing cigarettes in their house. Its all based on ignorance and selfishness. | ||
Jams Member Username: Jams Post Number: 5476 Registered: 10-2003 |
Odd, I must have missed the memo. Many of my Saturdays are spent with a group of Dems that bash Bush frequently as they light up. | ||
3rdworldcity Member Username: 3rdworldcity Post Number: 803 Registered: 01-2005 |
I'm for a total ban on smoking in public places. I don't feel I should have to breath second hand smoke. I am concerned for my health, but more sinister is the thought of being in an enclosed area with a bunch of people who are so damned stupid that they smoke in the first place. Who knows what else they'll do? (Those nitwits are killing themselves with every puff, taking a few minutes or a day off their lives; it's like watching a bunch of people committing hari-kiri, which I admit would be interesting to see, but smoking is way too slow.) Let 'em go outside and smoke. |
