[2dogs]

Would anyone here be surprised if this story, or the one about the police raid on a school had been part of Orwell's 1984?

We're living it, eh?:(




http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35493

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
NYC busts shop owner for ashtray
Health inspectors enforce tough anti-smoking law with $6,000 fine

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: November 8, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

A business owner who left an ashtray sitting out in his shop has been fined $6,000 by New York City's health inspector, who was enforcing the city's tough, new anti-smoking law.


Brooklyn video-store owner Marty Arno holds ashtray that violated smoking ban. (Photo: David S. Burns, New York Post)

Brooklyn video-store owner Marty Arno also was charged with not having "No Smoking" signs and not posting his company's official nonsmoking policy, the New York Post reported.

On the ticket, health inspectors M. Dundas and S. Holloway reported: "One (1) ashtray with cigarette butt, and ashes, was seen on the counter of the establishment."

"I'm a tiny video store – it's just me and a girl who comes in part-time," Arno explained to the Post. "She knows smoking policy: We don't smoke in the store – it's bad for the videos."

The ashtray was there, he said, because a customer came in the store with a cigarette. Rather than make her go back outside, Arno let her snuff it out in the ashtray.

Ashtrays are outlawed, according to Health Department spokesman Andrew Tucker, so that "there is not an invitation to smoke in the establishment."

"How can they take an inanimate object and make it illegal?" Arno told the New York paper. "During Prohibition, alcohol was illegal, but they didn't make the shot glasses illegal. Does anyone even know that this is the law?"

The inspectors have come back for two further inspections, which he passed.

"The guy was crawling under the counter looking for the damn ashtray," Arno said. "I said, 'Do you think I'm such a schmuck that I'd leave it out again?'"

Arno said he intends to fight the fines because of confusion surrounding the lesser known parts of the Smoke-Free Air Act, which went into effect March 30.

The law says, according to the Post, ashtrays "shall not be used or provided for use" and "No Smoking" signs must be "conspicuously posted so that they are clearly visible."

It also says "every employer shall establish and/or update a written smoking policy."

Promoted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ex-smoker, the law is aimed at protecting workers.

[WonderNine]

Promoted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ex-smoker, the law is aimed at protecting workers.


Doesn't Cuba now have a total smoking ban? Took effect after Castro quit cigars of course....


Well at least the store owner who owns the "illegal ashtray" knows he won't get any help from comrade Bloomberg.

[Sergeant Bob]

Eighth Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed , nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
___________________________________________________________
I'd say $6000 is excessive. That's aside from the fact the Nazi Bastiges have no right to restrict a legal activity (which was not even observed) in a privately owned business.
So smoking paraphenalia is outlawed too? They should have strip searched him to see if he had a Bic lighter, then they could just put him away for good, or send him to a re-education camp. He'd likely have been better off if they had found a crack pipe.
So, the budget's in the red (now there's a double entendre for ya)? Just send your minions out to rob the populace!
Where's the ACLU on this one? Oh, nevermind, they probably don't like smoking (guns smoke too).
Bloomberg is a criminal!!

[Bill Hook]

"How can they take an inanimate object and make it illegal?" Arno told the New York paper.

How indeed. They have a long and storied history of doing this in NYC, though.

[NIGHTWATCH]

Aahh, legalized extortion for the needs of the whole. :banghead:

[Navy joe]

When ashtrays are outlawed, only outlaws will have ashtrays. :banghead:

Yes, 6K qualifies as excessive. Further, it essentially denies due process since the king's man comes in, imposes a fine and then the shop owner (AKA guilty) is left to then fight it if he chooses(attempt to prove his innocence).

I guess the plan for NYC smokers is to dump the cigs and reload with weed, I'm sure the penalties are less severe.

[hammer4nc]

C'mon now. The usual statist THR members need to spice this thread up! Posts may elaborate on the following themes (choose one):

1. If the guy didn't like the law, he should get out there and elect someone else who will repeal it. Until then, shaddup!

2. I'm sick of this whining! Ignorance of the law is no excuse!

3. If the guy didn't like the law, he could have moved somewhere else! (aka "roll the dice, take yer chances")

4. Don't blame the enforcement guys, they're just doing their job!(aka "shooting the messenger")

5. Without enforcement of ALL laws, society would quickly devolve into anarchy!

6. I'm allergic to cigarettes, even the sight of one sends me to the ER, so this guy deserves everything he gets!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a related topic, NYC mayor Bloomberg established a new world record leap of logic, when he equated smokers to terrorists! Following is a NY Post editorial:

Such is the lesson that Marty Arno learned: As The Post reported yesterday, he faces up to $6,000 in fines after a health inspector discovered an ashtray in his Brooklyn video store.

Not only that - it had a cigarette butt in it.

And not only that, but he had failed to post two required signs - one informing patrons that smoking is illegal, the other outlining his business's official non-smoking policy.

Is Mayor Mike the only one who doesn't think all of this is getting pretty ridiculous?

Apparently so - after all, he's still making offensive and insulting moral equations between the alleged victims of second-hand smoke and the people who were killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

That can't possibly be true, you must be thinking. Not even Mayor Mike would stoop that low.



Guess again. Here's what the mayor told Vanity Fair in a newly published interview:

"Talk about all of the press attention to 9/11. That number of people die every year in the city from second-hand smoke."

Which, apart from its appalling insensitivity, is utter nonsense factually. (A leading British medical journal last May reported that "the association between [passive smoke] and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.")

But it certainly explains why cracking down on smokers seems to be the mayor's top priority these days.

Arno contends a customer entered his video store with a lit cigarette, and rather than send her outside, he offered her an ashtray to extinguish the butt.

Uh-uh, says the city, you can't do that - having an ashtray on the premises, says the department, is "an invitation to smoke in the establishment."

Indeed, the Smoke-Free Air Act, as it's known, specifically states that ashtrays "shall not be used or provided for use."

So it seems the city has the law on its side, however much it may be lacking in common sense.

If only Mayor Mike spent even half as much time solving the city's long-term fiscal woes as he does ensuring that no New Yorker ever again lights a cigarette in public, maybe the municipal budget would be in balance.

What a novel idea.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[BamBam]

Man, cigarette smoke really kills my sinuses and has even made me miss work.
My solution: Don't go into buisinesses where smoking is allowed. If I go into a smokey place, I can leave.

At some point in this country it will become easier to list things that ARE allowed than to list those that are not.

[Wildalaska]

OK lets see, in NYC I can go to a High School reserved exclsively for gays and call it choice. I can have sex with anonymous partners in a bathhouse and call it freedom. I can buy any type of porno and call it free speech. I can live in a park and poop in public and call it rights of the housingly challenged.. I can burn an american flag in public and call it the American way. I can pee in a jar, put a crucifix in it and call it art. I can stand on the steps of St Pats Cathedral, curse the pope and call it free speeech. I can smear myself in doggie do do, randomly pick a public servant, lie and blame him for doing it, then get a presidential candidate to support my lies and call it rascism. Finally, I can have an AIDs test, be found positive, but not have to reveal it and call it non discrimination.

But to protect the public, I cant smoke or own a gun.

WildgodblessAmericAlaska

[Monkeyleg]

It's no wonder so many politicians have bodyguards. :fire:

[Dashunde]

hammer4nc - - 6. I'm allergic to cigarettes, even the sight of one sends me to the ER, so this guy deserves everything he gets!

Yea, your position on this whole matter is clearly biased...
So how does you having a "issue" with smoking have any bearing whether or not "this guy deserves everything he gets"? He was not even the smoker...

The FBI Agents at Ruby Ridge were also the "enforcement guys" who were "just doing their job"...
It's a worn-out lame excuse used by those who abuse their position as enforcement officers. The word "discretion" comes to mind here.

[Don Galt]

Hey, all you guys who support the drug war, what are you complaining about?

Long ago they banned "drug parphenalia" which includes soda bottles, apples, spoons, syringes, etc. etc.

Now this guy is getting punished for having drug paraphenalia-- an ash tray.

Nicotine is a drug, is it not?

Just another day in the war on drugs... you should be happy!

Don

PS- WildAlaska-- sounds like you're just bitter that the gay kids aren't getting beaten up, anymore.

[Standing Wolf]

Yeah, but we're not a police state.

[Open Carry]

Was that a pre-ban ashtray? And since when does a city require a business to purchase signs? Sounds like a 'taking' without compensation to me.

[Sergeant Bob]

Dashunde
hammer4nc - - 6. I'm allergic to cigarettes, even the sight of one sends me to the ER, so this guy deserves everything he gets!

Yea, your position on this whole matter is clearly biased...
So how does you having a "issue" with smoking have any bearing whether or not "this guy deserves everything he gets"? He was not even the smoker...

The FBI Agents at Ruby Ridge were also the "enforcement guys" who were "just doing their job"...
It's a worn-out lame excuse used by those who abuse their position as enforcement officers. The word "discretion" comes to mind here.
[Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo] The sarcasm lamp is lit! The sarcasm lamp is lit! [/Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo]

[CommonSense]

I say we hang him. Who is he to think he should have a right to dictate what is and isn’t allowed in his business. I get red when I read about these business owners that kidnap people off the street and force them to breathe their second-hand smoke.

[Wildalaska]

PS- WildAlaska-- sounds like you're just bitter that the gay kids aren't getting beaten up, anymore.

Where does it say that in my sarcastic diatribe about NY left wing hypocrisy?

WildcuriousAlaska

[standingbear]

uh oh..the tobacco patrol is watching you.(as i lite another cigarette.)

[HankB]

Wildalaska wrote:I can pee in a jar, put a crucifix in it and call it art. You forgot something important: if you do that, you can get subsidized by at taxpayer expense through the National Endowment for the Arts. :fire:

[BamBam]

WildAlaska-- sounds like you're just bitter that the gay kids aren't getting beaten up, anymore.
Where did that come from? :rolleyes:

[Moparmike]

How can they take an inanimate object and make it illegal?" Arno told the New York paper. "During Prohibition, alcohol was illegal, but they didn't make the shot glasses illegal. Does anyone even know that this is the law?" Ah seenit, yessir Ah did. That thar gun there lept up on its own, started shooting people, lit itself a sigarete, and started smoking riite over thar, next to dem little chitlins in the restaruant. Dem things is aaeeevviill Ah tells ya. Ah want dem "inanimate objects" outlawed immedeatly. Dey done animated demselves...

:rolleyes: :cuss: :rolleyes:

http://www.classicphotos.com/celebs/misc/st-126.jpg
:fire: :scrutiny:

[ninjaj448]

C'mon! Are ashtrays really illegal in NYC?

[jimpeel]

I'm allergic to cigarettes, even the sight of one sends me to the ER, ...This is test.

http://pleinlesyeux.free.fr/Gifs/cigarette.gif

:D

[publius]

$6k is a death sentence. Clearly excessive, but that assumes that some level of fine for this "offense" is reasonable.
"How can they take an inanimate object and make it illegal?" Arno told the New York paper. "During Prohibition, alcohol was illegal, but they didn't make the shot glasses illegal. Does anyone even know that this is the law?"

I think public menace Tommy Chong might know.

Promoted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ex-smoker, the law is aimed at protecting workers.

Anyone who still believes the secondhand smoke myths should educate himself. Here's a start:

http://www.junkscience.com/news/euwsjets.htm
http://www.junkscience.com/feb99/sexton.htm
http://reason.com/sullum/031898.shtml
http://www.junkscience.com/news2/wtedets.htm

[foghornl]

Hizzonner the Mayyor is the biggest source of pollution..all that hot air from Gassbag Bloom(ing idiot) berg

[Brat7748]

What was a HEALTH inspector doing in a video store in the first place? They already inspected all the hot dog carts?

[Andrew Rothman]

OK lets see, in NYC I can go to a High School reserved exclsively for gays and call it choice. I can have sex with anonymous partners in a bathhouse and call it freedom. I can buy any type of porno and call it free speech. I can live in a park and poop in public and call it rights of the housingly challenged.. I can burn an american flag in public and call it the American way. I can pee in a jar, put a crucifix in it and call it art. I can stand on the steps of St Pats Cathedral, curse the pope and call it free speeech. I can smear myself in doggie do do, randomly pick a public servant, lie and blame him for doing it, then get a presidential candidate to support my lies and call it rascism. Finally, I can have an AIDs test, be found positive, but not have to reveal it and call it non discrimination.

Well, sorry, yes. As long as you're not hurting others (pooping in public qualifies, I think), why not? Your perception of morality does not and should not limit my rights.

Freedom's for everyone, not just gun owners.

As I like to say, freedom's a bitch, ain't it?

[Don Galt]

Thank you MPayne for pointing out what I was trying to point out.

[JimJD]

Yet another reason on why I left NYC!
The B.S. meter up there is on overdrive I tells ya!
'Dem bums!:neener:

[pdog]

So what happens when someone chucks his cigarette in a trash can and the whole place goes up?

[Wildalaska]

Your perception of morality does not and should not limit my rights.

I think you should re read my post in terms of that literary device called irony....

WildtriestobecreativeAlaska

[Don Galt]

Maybe you can clarify, wildalaska. I think the issue is approaching beating a dead horse, but if you were misunderstood, feel free to clarify.

Irony, like sarcasm, can be lost in forums like this.

Back on topic--

I see all of this as part of the same thing, the same trend. Whether its guns, drugs, fatty foods, whatever, the government wants more and more control. We have to stop the social acceptability of government control over peoples lives if we want to defend gun rights.