By Ralph Smeed
The Idaho Statesman
February 5, 1994
In all probability the San Francisco news this past week will not impress many Idahoans. But it most certainly should.
Was it another severe California earthquake? No. Well, sort of. Still, it was more like a governmental “earthquake,” one with which, by the way, I have an uneasy sympathy as a reformed, or if you’d rather, ex-smoker. Here’s why.
The onslaught against property rights got a big boost last week from people who, one supposes, have no intention of destroying or even diminishing property rights or the peaceful enjoyment thereof.
The AP story read: “Smokers in San Francisco businesses were forced out of their buildings and onto the streets Tuesday, as a city ordinance banning smoking in all workplaces took effect.”
This has far-reaching repercussions, big ones, so read on, carefully:
“While past ordinances have outlawed smoking in public areas and restricted smoking to private offices and designated rooms, the new ordinance knocks out the last indoor refuges for employees and employers who smoke…” said the city’s senior health inspector, “I can’t think of a building in San Francisco that won’t be covered.”
All in the name of the “pee-pull’s” rights to health, one supposes. OK? Well, maybe. But stay tuned and I’ll show you how this must affect Idahoans. The AP storyteller went on:
Anne Peterson, standing outside her building on Market Street, said, “It’s very inconvenient. I just don’t agree with the government telling us what we can and cannot do.” At least Peterson’s perception was more accurate than that of another San Francisco smoker, Edwina Brazier, who said, “The non-smokers have taken away all our rights.”
Not so. It is not the non-smokers who are doing away with Brazier’s rights. It is the government. Or, if you’d rather, it is only 51 percent of the San Franciscans. Maybe less. In all probability, if, indeed there was a vote at all, it is likely only a minority percentage turned out to vote. Of these then, it is likely from them some 51 percent was gleaned. Rule by consensus? rule by majority? Perhaps. Yet the bigger Big Brother gets, the smaller the little individual gets with his or her place in the sun. You can see it happening all over America.
That, my friends, includes Idahoans. Boise, Nampa, Caldwell and people all over the state are being affected by government exploiting the lack of understanding, if not also the dull-wittedness and the envy of the lumpen-proletariat, a Russian term for ordinary people, but one that is becoming alarmingly more appropriate here in America. Thanks mostly to the liberal educators, by the way.
Take for a fine example, one out of many, the newly authorized recreation complex now under way in Nampa. Its admitted cost is $6.5 million plus another big chunk for the senior citizens center. Hard to say what the final cost will be after the typical cost overruns, but the facility will be 100 percent Nampa city government-owned. How would you like to be a little entrepreneur with your life’s savings invested in one of the many competing private recreation centers already in the surrounding area? And guess how many private new ones are likely to compete now.
OK then, here are my recommendations for Idaho citizens in general and Boise property owners in particular. Be concerned and give moral support, publicly, to others whose private property rights are also currently under attack, e.g., Boise’s recently defeated recreational park bond election, the first of a massive proposed $100 million series. The timid Boise Chamber of Commerce should please take note that it is both freedom and people’s property rights that are at issue, not just property taxes or the smoker’s pleasure-driven habit.
And now you smokers should remember, somebody’s property rights breathed life into your freedom to stink up the whole place for everyone else. That may be partly why private property itself is under attack.