I went to my first major metro city council meeting yesterday. Overall, my impression was that, 1) these people are professional blowhards, and 2) nothing gets decided on in meetings. I could see where every agenda item had been previously discussed and the council session was a formality in which prepared statements were issued by concurring and dissenting votes.
Did I mention they were blowhards? Professional, salaried blowhards?
The purpose of this longwinded missive is to show my frustration over publicly elected officials voting their own interests rather than voting for what the voters ask.
The reason I attended the council session was to watch the introduction of a smoking ban in bars and restaurants get quickly referred to a committee. Did you think the council would actually openly discuss their views on the matter, unrehearsed, council member-to-council member, making a stand and possible decision on a sensitive subject that has no doubt been on their minds for some time. Do not be a fool. OF COURSE they aren’t going to outright state their opinion. Not with the members of the media there hawking for off-the-cuff statements to turn into a luscious front page story in which Minneapolis council members are painted as unsensitive public health slayers. No, instead, the council quietly usher the smoking ban to several committees, where it will no doubt be fattened with political stagnation and slaughtered before it can ever rise up for actual ratification.
Actually, there had been a good amount of press coverage regarding the issue. Last week, 6 of the 13 Minneapolis council members called a press conference introducing the ordinance to ban smoking. Media had been informed. Public had been teased. And the public responded. Apparently, all 13 council member offices were flooded with calls, the large majority of which asked for a smoking ban. Yes, actual voters called in. Asking for a ban.
How do I know this? Because I called each council member’s office. And their assistant gave me the council member’s stance on the issue. So, they all have a stance. The all have a position. But they won’t discuss it at the council meeting. Especially my council member who is against the ban because he thinks patrons will flee the city and go to surrounding areas that allow smoking.
www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/council/ward13
This dude is either thinking in a fat, Upper Midwest, whitebread bubble or is getting influenced by a local hospitality industry sweetened with supplier support dollars from Big Tobacco. But he is not alone. Other council members follow this link of thinking.
This reason is absurd. The hospitality industry wants them to believe this fallacy. Look around the country: where has a ban on smoking hurt a large city? NYC and Boston citizens aren’t running from the metro to other cities that offer smoking. There is no precedent or data that shows a ban to destroy the local economy. Patrons aren’t going to run from Minneapolis to St. Paul. In fact, more people will go out to Minneapolis nightclubs & restaurants and spend more money. People are waiting for this ban to become a reality. Remember? They all called in to say so?
Most importantly, recent medical studies show that the elimination of smoking in public places reduces heart risk in metro areas (ACC 2004). There is, however, no stastical evidence from the hospitality assocation that shows how a smoking ban depresses their revenues. A vote against a smoking ban demonstrates that my council member cares more for a dollar sign than the long-term health of citizens.
Plus, there’s been talk over the government’s role in restricting how businesses serve their customers. But who was skeptical when Minnesota became the first state to ban smoking in the private workplace? No one seemed skeptical when the government forced private airlines to ban smoking in their planes for health reasons. The government has also forced private hospitals to ban smoking in public areas for health reasons as well.
Here’s what I don’t get (my overall point): the majority of constituents are in favor of a ban. Is it not my council member’s representational duty to carry out the wishes of voters? Voters understand the issue and are aware that the long-term health effects outweigh any unfounded assertion of commercial loss.
Aren’t these council members supposed to listen to their voters and execute?
I can think of a couple strategies for attacking my council member, because direct face-to-face isn’t going to work. I tried this yesterday when I approached him at the council city meeting break. He said, “You and I just see differently on this issue.” He made this point clear when he voted against sending the issue into committee!
(Because I’ve been scolded before for issuing vulgarity on this site I will refrain from calling my council member a SMUG PRICK.)
My strategy is to create a loosely legitimate new neighborhood task force called the Linden Hills Against Smoking and to start calling around the papers detailing how my council member is for cancer and disease and heart failure and cancer while his constituents have asked him to ratify a ban.
Word up.
Get in Groove, Sammy G
EDIT by matthew: Linked.
as I recall…
As I recall, the smoking ban in NYC was initially lobbied for by the restaraunt and hospitality industry because of the huge liability places of business were carrying by exposing their employees to second-hand smoke. I clearly don’t know the political climate in your area but I would bet that big tobacco and hospitality are not in bed on this one. Most restaraunts and even bars know that the vast majority of people would rather patronize a non-smoking establishment; that far more non-smokers will avoid a restaraunt because there’s smoking than will smokers because its not allowed.
Political realities
I think, unfortunately, there are political realities that the politician you despise must certainly be considering. I’m a big fan of the idea of “enlightened self-interest”. A politician, first and foremost, will generally try to do things to ensure his re-election. Now, if democracy is working as it should, this will be things like voting as his constitutencies would have him do, avoiding ticking off large portions of his voter base, avoiding scandals, and that kind of thing.
Realistically, politicians soon realize a simple rule, if they haven’t coming into the race: it’s how widely-known your name is, and the association of your name with things people approve of, that determines whether you win the race. By avoiding publicly inflammatory statements, they hope to preserve their smoking voter base (who would probably vote them out; hey, I’m often a single-issue voter, life is simpler that way), without ticking off their large non-smoking voter base.
I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. My instinct to stand up and cry foul would be at war with the political reality that to do so would probably be political suicide. Although there’s a big part of me that wants to run for office just so I can get on the House floor and, one day, shout “That’s utter and complete bull—-!”. And put up posters that say “No more horse pucky. Vote Barnson.”
I wonder if a scatalogically-themed poster campaign could win me a local office. “Stop taking crap. Vote Barnson.” “No more bullpoop from your representatives. Vote Barnson.” “Cleaning up the steaming mess that is local government — Vote Barnson.”
Probably wouldn’t go over well in conservative Tooele, UT, but who knows?
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Political Surrealities
–A politician, first and foremost, will generally try to do things to ensure his re-election. Now, if democracy is working as it should, this will be things like voting as his constitutencies would have him do, avoiding ticking off large portions of his voter base, avoiding scandals, and that kind of thing.–
Well, unfortunately it’s not always that simple. Sometimes the “right” thing to do is not the “popular” thing to do. For instance, right before interracial marriage was legalized in the 1950s, polls showed that 99% of whites in America were opposed to it.
So even if your constituency includes a large number of smokers, any good politician should weigh the health factors in with the desires of his constituents. (Of course, I believe that the national average is like 25% smokers, 75% non-smokers, so it’s probably not an issue that can get him voted out regardless.)
On a related note, a study was released last week that showed that not only have NYC businesses NOT suffered since the smoking ban, but smoking in NYC has dropped 11% since last year. That’s thousands of people who have quit smoking in the last year. Rock on.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
A Greater Liability
Paul, 4.5 years later and this is released: ‘Fires caused by smoking are the leading cause of fire-related deaths in the United States.’
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/news/20081219CarelessSmoking.asp
The leading cause? I had no idea. You think it would be something like all those vigilantes trying to escape the cops on those ‘The Most Amazing Cops Stories EVER (This Week)’ shows where they grind the axles down to nothing and flames start shooting out all over the highway while the 4 Crown Vic cop cars keep up in pursuit.
Granted, the 700-900 count isn’t a terrifying jaw-dropper but I still don’t want to downplay the idiocy. There’s the real liability. I wonder how many of those 700-900 are the simultaneous culprits and victims? Serves ’em right. Yeah, I wrote that. If you’re stupid enough to smoke, and you’re stupid enough to light your house on fire, then they can throw the same dirt over your grave that they did to put out the smoldering embers. I’m in that kind of mood today.
And did anybody even know that ‘careless smoking’ was a term bandied by the media?
losing your freedom
I understand people want to stop smoking all together for health reasons. Think about it people! After you ban smoking, what’s next? Your freedom. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Imagine not being able to choose your own doctor. Imagine never eating meat again. Imagine uniforms for EVERVYBODY no matter what your profession. Why would this happen? Giving the government control. Our fathers fought for our freedom and now all we are doing is giving it back.
Slippery slope fallacy
Unfortunately, your argument is unconvincing due to relying on a logical fallacy for impact. The fallacy is the “slippery slope” fallacy, or positing that because A happens, B will inevitably follow, then C, then D, and ultimately some horrible end occurs.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that every link in the chain must hold for it to be true. While I agree that certain freedoms have eroded in the wake of 9/11, the PATRIOT act, and local indoor smoking bans, I have confidence that, with time and tenacity on the part of civically-minded Americans such as yourself, we’ll stop eroding our civil liberties well short of prohibiting the eating of meat, requiring mandatory uniforms in all professions, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria.
And if we don’t, there’s always revolution. That’s the ultimate solution to social injustice. Americans have already taken it upon themselves to attempt it twice (once successfully in the late 1700’s, once unsuccessfully in the mid-1800’s). We could always try again if we have to.
I don’t know that smoking is that important to most people, though. And I have to say it: the revolutionaries would be winded and coughing. The incumbents would have them at a profound disadvantage in the ‘being able to run a mile without coughing up a lung’ category.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Missing the point
The ban on smoking is not about taking away your liberty. It is about preserving mine.
You may choose to smoke but not where I am because I choose not to smoke. Do you think that the smoke from your cigarette stays only in the air you breathe? I suffer from severe asthma as a result of second-hand smoke (my father smoked in out home, car, faces for the first 12 years of my life).
Don’t you dare equate your perceived right to smoke with my inherent right to breathe. Smokers don’t have a leg to stand on in the argument against public health. Kill yourself all you want, but the growing majority of non-smokers will not let you help them be robbed of clean air.
Some may say, “what’s the big deal, cigarette smoke isn’t that bad?”. Those people have no perception of reality. Smoking is horrid. It smells like total crap, and smokers have no way of knowing that because they can’t smell.
I have no sympathy for your plight. Now shut up and go back behind the high school where you belong.
——– Visit my blog, eh! The Murphy Maphia
Eight Months Later
Apparently, this link has been getting some reads.
To provide a quick follow-up, the Minneapolis smoking ban ultimately reached the city council for a vote, after public support ads with costs exceeding a million dollars had been spent by both sides, the public health and hospiality industry, on the issue.
My councilman, the SMUG PRICK, was the only person on the city council to vote in opposition of the ban. Even though the large majority of folks in my Ward 13 personally contacted the city councilman to request a vote for the ban, he stood alone in protest on the final vote. The final vote was 12-1.
On April 2, 2005, I played my first gig in a smoke-free bar.
The Star Tribune gave a lot of press coverage in the following months on the revenue dip that bars and restaurants endured. Since then, the hospitality industry has had little room for complaint. I believe that the hospitality tax base for the city in wake of the ban is not in danger of any decrease.
Smoking in bars and clubs…
Right now, all over Utah, there are signs with a smoldering cigarrete which say this:
“80% of Utahns want smoke-free bars and clubs”
The statistic they neglect to mention? 75% of Utahns are at least nominal members of a church which forbids its members to smoke.
I think such a straw-poll would be much better taken at the doors to bars and clubs. It’s one of those “fringe issues” where a general vote by people who generally oppose smoking won’t capture the demographic who actually uses the facilities in question.
Kind of like voting about tax dollars to be used for facilities at a public library. Only a small fraction of the population uses public libraries, and are aware of their needs…
(Of course, libraries are a little different, since they involve communal tax dollars…)
Note I’m not saying banning smoking in bars and clubs is a bad thing. I’m objecting to the reprehensible misuse of statistics.
Most politicians use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp-post: more for support than for illumination.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
sammy eats poop
my name is sammy g and i eat poop for breakfast
Wow
You know, you think you know a guy. You hung out with him in college for 4 years, roomed with him for 2 of those. Spent countless hours watching HBO, playing hockey and video games, going to classes, and then
WHAM!
You find out something about the guy you never knew before. I mean, Sammy, we were TIGHT! You couldn’t have told me about your little scatalogical secret? Everyone has quirks, Sam, everyone. I wouldn’t have held this one against you. I just probably would have kissed you less…
As stupid and inane as the previous post was, I do give the brave poster (who remained anonymous) credit for one thing: They obeyed the language laws of the board.
My $.02 Weed
One Year After
One year after the ban was implemented, the data collected from the city showed that the restaurants and bars in Minneapolis experienced an aggregate INCREASE in revenues from the prior year.
I can’t even tell you all how fantastic it is to play gigs without breathing in that crap.
Surgeon General ends the debate
This week, Surgeon General Richard Carmona said, “the debate is over.” Secondhand smoke is a health risk at any level. The SG states that the science community has reached consensus on the evidence and that any exposure to secondhand smoke renders one open to contracting heart disease and cancer.
According to the big report (700 pages!) the only option to protect the health of innocent is to enact full-out bans.