Governor Tim Kaine was in Virginia Beach Monday to announce his push for a statewide smoking ban. The funny thing?
Flanked by lawmakers who said they will sponsor smoking-ban bills this year, Kaine made the announcement at Hot Tuna Bar & Grill, a smoke-free restaurant on Shore Drive.
Yep. He was in a restaurant that has already gone smoke-free, without any such statewide ban on the books. Ah, but it gets worse:
About 560 Virginia Beach restaurants have voluntarily gone smoke-free, according to Virginia Beach Restaurant Association officials who support a statewide ban.
OK, so 560 restaurants have taken it upon themselves to run their businesses the way they see fit and now they want the government to impose a restriction on others that choose to operate differently. Got it.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Brian,
What part of ‘representative republic’ is unclear?
First, that is one paragraph out of a rather long explanation of why HB 3202 is bad policy, and an explanation of what better policy would be based upon.
But more importantly, the 2002 vote was to DENY government additional powers, that whole ‘consent of the governed’ thing. The government has only those powers given to it by the people. The people said “No” and the Assembly went ahead and did it anyway.
There is no comparison between the people forbidding government from doing something, and then the government going ahead and doing it anyway, and government assuming new powers to trample the rights of people because the majority finds it convenient to do so.
Don, you’re sounding like a politician. Your own website quotes the 2002 referendum where “citizens of Hampton Rotes voted by nearly a two to one margin to reject”
You asked me to show you. I just did. More paragraphs with more rhetoric doesn’t change it. You applaud public opinion when you agree with it and think legislators should listen, but when the public disagrees with you, you want legislators to ignore the public and listen to you.
Vivian,
Glad to see you supporting freedom and personal responsibility. You might wish to review your previous post and then explain why your views on payday lending support nanny state interventionism. I must admit that I fail understand how you can hold such disparate views.
Pardon the second post, but I just read through part of the thread from Vivian’s previous post on the smoking ban idea.
Eileen’s comments remind why I quit reading vbdems. Her sophomoric, insulting and just plain lame style was too much to put up with. The only posts at that place worth reading were David’s on conservation.
Out of curiosity, would everyone here support my right to open up a bar where you don’t need to leave the barstool to hit the head? You know, fit the bar with something of urinal, and everyone drinking at the bar can just take a leak right there?
~
And Brian, you realize that you’re being sophomoric, insulting, and just plain lame by hijacking this post to whine about Eileen, yes?
Vivian, I am confused. Your last line sounds like apro-business, self determination conservative. You know, you can get kicked out of the liberal club for that!
😉
Also, Brian and Tabor… FOCUS, stay on topic.
MB,
Feel free to open up any sort of bar you’d like.
That said, I’m hardly hijacking this post. You just need to get over yourself.
MB, I won’t try to stop you from opening up your bar-inal.
Well, okay, that’s helpful (except for you, Brian. Really, you try too hard. Save your energy for something more productive).
So, am I correct in assuming that those who’d let me open my bar-inal (thanks, Lumen!) are generally disdainful of health regs and worker safety, in general? You’d prefer to let the market sort it out, yes?
In general, when risks are plainly observable, I do not think that government of a supposedly free people should get involved in making personal decisions. The presence of cigarette smoke in an establishment that allows smoking is not usually hidden from patrons or employees. The risks of first-hand and second-hand smoke are widely known and easily researchable. By all means, restrict smoking in government buildings, but let owners of privately owned and operated establishments make the decisions about what to do about smoking on their property. If anti-smoking activists would take the money that they spend lobbying for smoking bans to instead invest in smoke-free establishments, they could probably make themselves some money in the process of accomplishing their original goal.
So is that a yes or a no?
Playing catchup here 😉 Let’s see:
MB is opening a bar-inal. That ought to be interesting.
All the others – I think I’ve said about all there is to say about the smoking ban in my earlier post.
BTW – were you guys aware of Grumpy’s no smoking section? 😀
My stand on payday lending is not incompatible, because there is nothing nannystate about restoring a level playing field, which is all I’m asking for.
Vivian,
A ban on smoking would certainly seem to grant a level playing field, no?
MB,
Yes, I would prefer to let the net result of people using their time, abilities, money, property, etc., freely (i.e. “the market”) find ways to improve our standard of living. There are situations where government involvement is necessary to protect the rights of one group against another or to successfully protect the country, but my political views default to protecting freedom by defending the rights of Americans to interact and trade freely.
No, I am not disdainful of worker safety. As someone who has had people working for him, I worked very hard to make sure that my soldiers, both American and Iraqi, had good food and proper equipment and that they had the best possible training to be as safe as possible in all the situations that soldiers are likely to encounter.
BM — Go right ahead and open your barinal. Just out of curiosity, what will the patrons do when the buffalo wings have made their way through?