Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Marion County (LPMC), Indianapolis, IN
The Maguire Team
Is Ben Hunter leading a strategic retreat?
Rumors abound that tomorrow’s final vote on the total, complete, draconian smoking ban; will not be so.
The proposed smoking ban (Prop 371) passed out of committee 4-2. The last council vote was on Monday, October 26, but failed to garner the needed votes to either pass or fail. The proposal was then, due to some political manevering, tabled until Monday, Nov 30, 7:00pm.
Supposedly, Ben Hunter, sensing that his Smoke Free coalition doesn’t have the support needed to take away this amount of freedom, is going to be pushing for the proposal to be sent back to committee, rather than watch it die by a decisive “NO” vote on Monday.
Obviously, in addition to saving face, Hunter and his Smoke-Free accomplices hope to use this strategic retreat to stall. One can only imagine the intimidation that will happen behind closed doors as Hunter and the Democrat caucus twist the arms of other councillors, so they can bring back this same proposal in a few months.
Confronted with a losing proposal, the Smoke-Free Nannies are only looking for time to build their power base so that they can raise the issue more successfully in the future. This may involve having more of their out-of-state henchmen putting pressure on councillors, re-defining their justifications for taking away freedoms, finding more junk science to use as propaganda, or even using more of their funds to purchase more supporters.
The best course of action for lovers of liberty like us? VOTE NO on anything that keeps this awful proposal alive. Let’s keep our smoking-ban compromise, let’s vote this down tomorrow (Monday), and let’s allow peaceful business owners go back to their lives.
…and for a counterpoint article by Brad Klopfenstein: http://www.indystar.com/article/20091129/OPINION03/911290331/1032/OPINION03/Further-smoking-restrictions-would-hurt-businesses
UPDATE: seems like Francesca Jarosz from the IndyStar is hearing the same news…
http://www.indystar.com/article/20091130/NEWS05/911300363/Smoking-vote-likely-to-go-on-the-backburner
