Posted on 09/27/2013 4:12:43 AM PDT by suspects
This week, low-income minority residents of Cambridge public housing learned a cold, hard truth about their “homes.” These apartments aren’t their homes at all. They belong to the government.
And because the liberals who run Cambridge government don’t like smoking, the citizen-residents of Cambridge’s housing projects must learn to not like it, too. Smoking has been banned. The new policy takes effect next August.
Massachusetts software businesses just learned a similar lesson. For years, these businesses overwhelmingly gave their political contributions to Democrats.
Those same liberal pols turned around and hit these Obama-supporting, Prius-driving computer geek friends with the “tech tax.” “You just think it’s your money,” was the message from Beacon Hill. “But as long as you keep us in power, all your stuff really belongs to us.”
There is one glaring difference between the smokers of Cambridge and their software-selling neighbors: Low-income smokers don’t write lots of checks to politicians.
As a result, the smoking ban will take effect as scheduled, while the tech tax is being repealed even as we speak.
The moral of both stories, however, is the same: Power is a zero-sum game. The more the government has, the less you do.
I have no doubt that the residents of Cambridge public housing are overwhelmingly Democrats and, when they vote, enthusiastically vote for politicians who love to tell people how to run their businesses, who they must hire, what sort of bag is acceptable to carry your take-home Chinese in (with or without Styrofoam containers, of course) etc.
Now their elected nannies are telling them they have to leave their own apartments and go outside to smoke a cigarette. As Cantabrigian Stephen Helfer pointed out,
“Telling [elderly smokers] that they have to go out in the snow at night to have a cigarette doesn’t...
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Filthy habit it is - electing Democrats...
I assume Cannabis is OK?
Marijuana, meth, crack, coke, heroin, ok.
Tobacco...gasp !!
Can you see it? SWAT teams closing in “Elian Gonzalez style” confiscating cartons of cigarettes. Some might have even been purchased in another state. What about the tax implications of that malfeasance.
I had two smokers in my freshly renovated rental. In six months they made it uninhabitable. The white walls were off-gray. I had to literally fumigate the air conditioning ducts. I had to repaint everything including the inside of bare wood cabinets and under the sink.
The new lease forbids smoking inside. (They had EBT cards but smoked 3-4 packs a day and always had a beer in their hands. When they left with an unpaid power bill in August, they abandoned $100 worth of EBT steaks in the refrigerator, which was off, but took the beer. The smoking and beer was paid for with EBT, but not by a legal mechanism. I think they sold steaks for cash.)
These libtards are something else. On one hand, they will toss smokers out of public housing. On the other, they will force the rest of us to subsidize them through ObaMaoCare. It is all about control.
If they can afford cigarettes, they can afford to live without a rent subsidy. If you take the king’s shilling, you do take the king’s orders. Or, he who pays the piper, calls the tune.
That sort of regulation is being instituted in public housing her in York, PA, too, and the whining is deafening.
I have a problem with the government telling you whether you can smoke in your own property, but this is government property. If you don’t like that little detail, then we must prevent the government from owning and subsidizing property, which we should to.
If they quit in order to keep their homes then taxes will drop.
Oh dear. More confusion for the power-and-money grabbers.
sucks to be a smoker.
As you know, a common scam is for a corrupt grocer to redeem EBT cards for cash, skim some off the top for him/herself and give the rest of the cash to the EBT holder. The EBT holder can then spend the money on cigarettes, drugs, booze, lap dances, gambling - whatever. Are you glad to be doing your part to keep all those vice industries solvent?
Tell it brother!
If you take the king’s shilling, you do take the king’s orders.
Amen.
Then legally limiting what EBT can be used on would have no effect on the abuse rate.
The only solution that comes to my mind at this point is to eliminate the fungibility/currency factor of EBT and have the needy come to a distribution point for food.
” Are you glad to be doing your part to keep all those vice industries solvent?”
I’m not sure how I’m personally keeping them solvent. But I’ll be running credit checks from now on. Talking to other landlords they have their worst problems (damage) from EBT users and Section 8 renters.
They don't care. They will ignore this rule just as they ignore all the other rules. What is the State going to do? Kick those poor creatures and their pitiful childrens in to the streets? Ha!
Can't do that! It would be humiliating for people to go to a food bank. We wouldn't want to cause anyone to feel shame. /sarcasm
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