Banning smoking violates everyone’s individual rights
Dear Editor,
I cannot answer for Councilwoman Marilyn Librers’ challenges to the proposed, and now enacted, expansion of the smoking ban (Municipal Code Chapter 8.44) in Morgan Hill. However, the claim by Mark Grzan (Morgan Hill Times, Your Views, 8 May, 2012) that she “voted against” the ban is factually inaccurate. Ms Librers, in fact, voted for the ban initially to include the Outdoor Sports Center (part of a unanimous vote) and then, when reconsidered she voted for the ban with an exclusion for the Outdoor Recreational Facility (part of a 3-to-2 vote, with Mayor Tate and Councilman Carr voting against the enacted ban). Each “challenge” that I heard her raise during the council debates (April 18 and 25) of the merits and scope of the smoking ban concerned whether accommodations for personal rights and rights of property owners and event planners should be included.
As I expressed (as a non-smoker) at both City Council meetings, the entire concept of the government banning an otherwise legal activity is a violation of the rights of all people. To usurp personal responsibility, freedom of choice and personal property rights under the guise of “promote the general welfare” is a direct assault on the citizens of the community and the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Let the free market determine whether a business activity (and immediate vicinities thereof) will succeed or fail. People, through free choice, will make that determination.
The dictate of government of how property owners must (or must not) use their property is a form of seizure of a person’s effects, and the dictate of how people must (or must not) choose to live their lives denies and disparages the rights of the people.
A property owner should have the backing of the government to declare his or her business to allow smoking or to ban smoking – and then the public will decide whether to support that business.
It is interesting that Mr. Grzan has chosen to work against the rights of one minority group while advocating for the rights of other minority property owners. He has repeatedly taken the position that Morgan Hill should not annex “prime county agricultural land for nonspecific recreational venues and housing.”
He would be wise to take to heart the adage “If I don’t speak up when they come for my neighbor, who will speak up when they come for me?”
Frank Ryan, Morgan Hill
Editor’s Note: The Times opinion page ran an erroneous letter in the May 8 edition (“Community deserves answers from councilwoman, not rhetoric”) that included incorrect information about the city’s new secondhand smoke ordinance, even though the facts were previously reported correctly in the Times news section. The letter writer based his criticism on an earlier vote on the ordinance, in which Councilwoman Marilyn Librers voted against it. However, on the final vote to approve the ordinance April 25, Librers voted ‘yes’ on a 3-2 council vote. Mayor Steve Tate and Councilman Larry Carr voted against the outdoor smoking ban.
Time to take America back and force the rich to balance the budget
Dear Editor,
When the Supreme Court decided the corporations are people then people became non-people. America was supposed to be a democracy created to serve real people and no other reason.
We were trying not be a kingdom where we were ruled by a king. Nor were we trying to be a feudalistic society where the peasant class (99 percent) was forever enslaved through bondage (debt) to the “Lord of the Manor) (1 percent). We are a country where all men (people) were created equal.
This week J. P. Morgan saw $2 billion in trading losses. Chief Executive (Lord of the Manor) Jamie Dimon has been lobbying for less government regulation of Wall Street so that they can make more money through higher risk investments.
However in 2008 when everything collapsed the banks came begging to the government for a bailout of trillions of dollars that we the people are supposed to be responsible for. They aren’t taking the risk – the risk is transferred to us. That isn’t fair. Why should we the people just hand the Lord of the Manor trillions of dollars that we have to pay back to them? I don’t think so. Why should we deregulate them and have the people pick up their losses?
The top 1 percent are sucking the life out of America. We need to tax the rich to get our money back they stole from us in 2008. These investors are not “job creators” they are slave owners and our debt becomes the mechanism for instituting slavery.
If the phrase “we the people” means anything then we need to rise up against our oppressors and tell them – we are the people – corporations are not people – and we are going to take America back from the rich and make them pay off the national debt that they created and tried to put on us.
Marc Perkel, Gilroy
