A comment by Virginia Ironside in the Daily Mail about cat bin woman set me thinking today:
I’ve never had a pet chicken, but I somehow doubt that they’re just as intelligent as cats. Chickens always seem real stupid to me. Cats always seem real smart. And it reminded me of comments under DP’s post about it a few days back, where someone had written:
DP’s own answer had been that the cat was someone’s property. My response was that the cat was part of a family, and dropping a cat into a wheelie bin wasn’t much different from dropping a child into one. And when I saw a photo of the family the next day, with Ma and Pa and daughter standing together, with the cat cradled in Ma’s arms, I felt that was the way they saw it too (I’ve got the picture, but I won’t post it, because they’re probably sick of the publicity). It was why they’d made their Facebook appeal. The cat was part of their tight-knit little family. Other animals weren’t part of the family, so didn’t merit the same treatment.
I guess that how people reacted to that story depended on their personal experience of animals. Personally, I like cats. I’ve known quite a few. But I’ve encountered very few dogs, so dogs are a bit of a mystery to me. The result is that I tend to see the down side of dogs. The barking. The hair that gets everywhere. The need to take them for walks. So dog stories don’t work for me.
And that set me wondering why the righteous haven’t started banning pets. If smoking and drinking are health risks, then so are cats and dogs. They shed fur, and quite a few people are allergic to that. They crap all over the place. They’re noisy. They bite and scratch. Why haven’t the righteous started banning them too? Well, from a comment on Fuel Injected Moose, it seems that in California (where else?) they are:
That’s not actually a ban on pets, but it would have the same effect. For if you’d only be able to own a pet which had been rescued from some cruel owner, there would gradually be fewer and fewer of them, and eventually none at all. And you’d have a “pet-free” society.
The anonymous comment struck me as most likely reporting something that was probably happening. Because that’s how the righteous work. They’d pose as friends of animals, but really they’d be out to get rid of them all. Just like they pose as friends of smokers, ‘helping’ them to give up smoking, when really they just want to get rid of them all. A while back I read about some UK cat protection charity which had only managed to get new owners for about a dozen cats in its care. All the rest – thousands of them – had been put down. And perhaps that was the whole point? It’s all done hiding behind a righteous facade, like a “charity”.
Pets of any sort also provide something that the righteous don’t understand. They provide company. There are lots and lots of people whose only friend is their cat or dog. But companionship is something that the righteous set no value by. We’ve seen that with the smoking ban, which has destroyed the social lives of a great many people. But the antismokers don’t care. It means absolutely nothing to them. “Awwww widdums!” is about all they’ll say, derisively. Yet to me, this is the great crime of the smoking ban.
I think another thing about the cat bin woman story, and the protests that “It was only a cat,” and “What about all those other animals?” is that the socialist righteous demand equal treatment for all animals. If you’re not going to fret about the piece of animal that’s served up on your plate for lunch, then you shouldn’t fret when a cat is dropped in a bin. All must be treated equally. And the Coventry cat’s owners were discriminating against all other cats by getting angry about just the one that they owned. They could equally well be told that by lavishing their care and attention on their (very well fed, borderline obese) daughter, they were denying it to all the other children in the world. Socialists don’t seem to like the family values that underlie caring for a pet cat or dog or child, because it’s “antisocial”. People should care about everybody’s children and cats and dogs. We should all belong to one big family, with nobody being left out (I remember Shirley Williams saying something like that about 40 years ago). Anything else is “unfair”. Unless of course it’s being done to smokers. Or drinkers. Or fat people.
And in an ideal world, maybe we would all live in one great big happy family. But, the way I see it, we’re not living in an ideal world. We’re living in a toiling, struggling, hard-working world. Like the one I was describing yesterday.
Personally I don’t want to see cat bin woman punished. I suspect she’s been punished more than enough already. And that’s what the Coventry family think too. But she’ll probably still be crucified all the same.
Frank Davis 
Cats
http://sheilaashscotland.blogspot.com/2010/08/inspiring-women.html
This woman knows someone whose cat prompted her to stop smoking. They are potential victims of passive smoking, these pets. Probably too useful, until they’ve got rid of tobacco anyway.
Belinda
Cats
http://sheilaashscotland.blogspot.com/2010/08/inspiring-women.html
This woman knows someone whose cat prompted her to stop smoking. They are potential victims of passive smoking, these pets. Probably too useful, until they’ve got rid of tobacco anyway.
Belinda
OT
There is a leaked “template” for reporting on tobacco issues. It explains why we’ve seen standard antismoking slogans in media reporting for the last few decades.
Anon1
OT
There is a leaked “template” for reporting on tobacco issues. It explains why we’ve seen standard antismoking slogans in media reporting for the last few decades.
Anon1
They’ve already started on pets. More and more stories of how dogs attack cheeeldren are appearing. Dog-free zones exist already. It’s the equivalent of that one non-smoking carriage on the trains. It’s on the way.
Dogs can defend people and defence is not allowed.
The Green Men come from the other direction. Keeping pets is imprisoning a wild creature (that has been born and bred in captivity for generations and wouldn’t last even as many days as the average Green in the wild). Same target.
Cats crap on my garden. I have a trowel for the purpose of moving the crap to the rhubarb. I don’t like cats because I kept fish (until last winter, which killed them all) but the cats never caught one fish. A heron did far more damage. Okay, I just don’t like cats.
But I don’t mind other people liking them. I don’t even mind them being around my garden now I’ve given up on the pond.
The Righteous, as you say, can’t understand pet animals. They keep pet people.
Pets should not have pets. Perhaps that’s their problem?
They’ve already started on pets. More and more stories of how dogs attack cheeeldren are appearing. Dog-free zones exist already. It’s the equivalent of that one non-smoking carriage on the trains. It’s on the way.
Dogs can defend people and defence is not allowed.
The Green Men come from the other direction. Keeping pets is imprisoning a wild creature (that has been born and bred in captivity for generations and wouldn’t last even as many days as the average Green in the wild). Same target.
Cats crap on my garden. I have a trowel for the purpose of moving the crap to the rhubarb. I don’t like cats because I kept fish (until last winter, which killed them all) but the cats never caught one fish. A heron did far more damage. Okay, I just don’t like cats.
But I don’t mind other people liking them. I don’t even mind them being around my garden now I’ve given up on the pond.
The Righteous, as you say, can’t understand pet animals. They keep pet people.
Pets should not have pets. Perhaps that’s their problem?
Oh, the pet-haters are already flexing their muscles, Frank – don’t you worry about that. One of the worst things about the smoking ban, and the one that I always worried about most, was that it gave a tacit thumbs-up for anybody who didn’t like anything to start up their own little pet “hate” campaign (no pun intended). We have already seen the next most likely candidates are drinkers and overweight people, but the fact that it isn’t their “turn” yet hasn’t stopped other groups from stirring at the back of the queue and looking on with newly-ignited interest. Because the chances are high that once all the “lifestyle” pleasures have been criminalised and the necessary “lifestyle” chores have been made compulsory, these other groups will be waiting in the wings for their day.
There are plenty of anti-dog people out there, quite a few anti-cat people, and lots of anti-caged-animals people, as well as anti computer-games people, anti-swearing people, anti-car people, anti-burkha people – Christ, I even read today that there’s a council somewhere in the UK which has just banned people from singing in public open spaces – which will make Proms in the Park a bit of a non-event if it spreads! And, like all “anti” movements, their ultimate aim is, as you point out, total eradication of whatever it is that they don’t like – no compromise, no prisoners, no exceptions.
The anti-smoking lobby has provided these people with the perfect template for successful campaigning, and the smoking ban has showed that their tactics work. And I think that in the long-term this may prove to be the ban’s most damaging effect of all.
Oh, the pet-haters are already flexing their muscles, Frank – don’t you worry about that. One of the worst things about the smoking ban, and the one that I always worried about most, was that it gave a tacit thumbs-up for anybody who didn’t like anything to start up their own little pet “hate” campaign (no pun intended). We have already seen the next most likely candidates are drinkers and overweight people, but the fact that it isn’t their “turn” yet hasn’t stopped other groups from stirring at the back of the queue and looking on with newly-ignited interest. Because the chances are high that once all the “lifestyle” pleasures have been criminalised and the necessary “lifestyle” chores have been made compulsory, these other groups will be waiting in the wings for their day.
There are plenty of anti-dog people out there, quite a few anti-cat people, and lots of anti-caged-animals people, as well as anti computer-games people, anti-swearing people, anti-car people, anti-burkha people – Christ, I even read today that there’s a council somewhere in the UK which has just banned people from singing in public open spaces – which will make Proms in the Park a bit of a non-event if it spreads! And, like all “anti” movements, their ultimate aim is, as you point out, total eradication of whatever it is that they don’t like – no compromise, no prisoners, no exceptions.
The anti-smoking lobby has provided these people with the perfect template for successful campaigning, and the smoking ban has showed that their tactics work. And I think that in the long-term this may prove to be the ban’s most damaging effect of all.
There is one simple reason why so few cats (and dogs and rabbits) are adopted from rescue charities – the conditions they place on you before allowing you to take one home. It’s not unlike the criteria for adopting a child, with one addition: there must always be someone at home. Some rescue centres don’t let smokers have animals. And if your home is mildly chaotic or untidy, forget it. The criteria for adoption have tightened gradually over the last twenty years so that probably there are about three people in the entire country who can adopt. So it’s no surprise that (a) people acquire their animals from pet shops, breeders or friends and (b) that the Californian Animal Police want to control the supply of animals absolutely.
Having adopted eight cats from rescue centres over two decades, I’m now barred by their criteria. So now I’m only taking in strays to protect them from the gas chambers run by those ‘rescuers’.
There is one simple reason why so few cats (and dogs and rabbits) are adopted from rescue charities – the conditions they place on you before allowing you to take one home. It’s not unlike the criteria for adopting a child, with one addition: there must always be someone at home. Some rescue centres don’t let smokers have animals. And if your home is mildly chaotic or untidy, forget it. The criteria for adoption have tightened gradually over the last twenty years so that probably there are about three people in the entire country who can adopt. So it’s no surprise that (a) people acquire their animals from pet shops, breeders or friends and (b) that the Californian Animal Police want to control the supply of animals absolutely.
Having adopted eight cats from rescue centres over two decades, I’m now barred by their criteria. So now I’m only taking in strays to protect them from the gas chambers run by those ‘rescuers’.
Well, that’s exactly how it is, isn’t it? I might even try to write a spoof piece myself, using those guidelines.
Frank
Well, that’s exactly how it is, isn’t it? I might even try to write a spoof piece myself, using those guidelines.
Frank
Some rescue centres don’t let smokers have animals.
I’ve yet to encounter a cat which is bothered by tobacco smoke. Some years back there was a cat that would sit for hours on my lap, getting slowly sprinkled with ash.
I suppose it’ll be drinkers next. And then fat people. And then 4×4 owners.
Frank
Some rescue centres don’t let smokers have animals.
I’ve yet to encounter a cat which is bothered by tobacco smoke. Some years back there was a cat that would sit for hours on my lap, getting slowly sprinkled with ash.
I suppose it’ll be drinkers next. And then fat people. And then 4×4 owners.
Frank
The anti-smoking lobby has provided these people with the perfect template for successful campaigning, and the smoking ban has showed that their tactics work.
So far. But I think that the tide is now turning. Those same tactics may came to spell the end for anyone who uses them.
Frank
The anti-smoking lobby has provided these people with the perfect template for successful campaigning, and the smoking ban has showed that their tactics work.
So far. But I think that the tide is now turning. Those same tactics may came to spell the end for anyone who uses them.
Frank
I don’t have any pets these days. But in winter I feed the birds. Some of them more or less come and tap on the window for a few crumbs. So I’m more a bird lover these days. And I chase away the cats.
Frank
I don’t have any pets these days. But in winter I feed the birds. Some of them more or less come and tap on the window for a few crumbs. So I’m more a bird lover these days. And I chase away the cats.
Frank
The smokles “scoop” appears to be a “send up”. However, if you peruse Tobacco Control media-advocacy manuals (e.g., as in the Godber Blueprint) they are an exercise in the manufacture of inflammatory propaganda. These manuals advise in the use of the most inflammatory terms possible that go far beyond the implications of fact. A scrutiny of [antismoking] articles appearing in newspapers over the last many years certainly highlights a “formula”. The formula is to include a number of successful, albeit fraudulent, slogans – even if disjointed to the story at hand – such as “the leading cause of preventable death”, the “4000 carcinogenic/toxic chemicals”, the “great financial cost to society”, the “chemicals that are also found in lead batteries and rat poison, etc”. Also included should be comments from a few nonsmokers that believe that antismoking policies are wonderful and comments from smokers who believe that their denormalization is also wonderful. The impression must always be that smoking should “justifiably” be eradicated from public and that everyone, smokers and nonsmokers alike, think it’s a grand, noble quest. The “formula”, however, is most probably not with the journalists, but with the TC advocates. Journalists simply print what they are fed by TC advocates.
http://www.rampant-antismoking.com
Anon1
The smokles “scoop” appears to be a “send up”. However, if you peruse Tobacco Control media-advocacy manuals (e.g., as in the Godber Blueprint) they are an exercise in the manufacture of inflammatory propaganda. These manuals advise in the use of the most inflammatory terms possible that go far beyond the implications of fact. A scrutiny of [antismoking] articles appearing in newspapers over the last many years certainly highlights a “formula”. The formula is to include a number of successful, albeit fraudulent, slogans – even if disjointed to the story at hand – such as “the leading cause of preventable death”, the “4000 carcinogenic/toxic chemicals”, the “great financial cost to society”, the “chemicals that are also found in lead batteries and rat poison, etc”. Also included should be comments from a few nonsmokers that believe that antismoking policies are wonderful and comments from smokers who believe that their denormalization is also wonderful. The impression must always be that smoking should “justifiably” be eradicated from public and that everyone, smokers and nonsmokers alike, think it’s a grand, noble quest. The “formula”, however, is most probably not with the journalists, but with the TC advocates. Journalists simply print what they are fed by TC advocates.
http://www.rampant-antismoking.com
Anon1
“The anonymous comment struck me as most likely reporting something that was probably happening.”
I am the one who posted that anonymous comment on Fuel Injected Moose the other day and that is not something I made up. It is true. It is either really happening or has already happened.
Our “news”papers every week, which only 6 are “approved” to be on display in the city streets of SF, gleefully report that latest “ban de jour” – a few weeks was a ban on fast food, a few months ago was a ban on parking garages giving early bird discount rates or any discounts at all below what the city owned garages charge, before that outdoor smoke bans at all sidewalk cafes (which is pretty much outdoor smoking banned anyhow everywhere with a $500 fine), before that, I can’t remember them all – because in SF it is a weekly experience.
But yes, if you research the local SF mainstream propaganda sources such as SF Chronicle or SF Examiner, you will find, that was headline “news” about a month ago – and immediately at small pet shops across the city came up protest signs denouncing it – well of course, it will put the pet stores out of business.
I saw some of the protest signs and couldn’t help but wonder, where were all these pet store owners when they first started banning smoking outdoors – let alone the indoor smoking bans CA “enjoyed” starting 16 years ago.
Didn’t seem to bother them then that the righteous were banning normal activity.
I am not sure if the pet store ban on selling pets has become law “yet” – or if it WILL be, soon.
They have a funny way of doing things in SF, CA, USA. Someone gets the idea of how to protect the government or quango interest. They go to city-hall through the back doors and get a 100% stamp of approval from like-minded communist ideologists, someone in government calls the propaganda machine who prints the headline and gives all the reasons why the latest ban being announced will be “needed” – then they pass it 100% across the board, no opposition permitted.
They have already banned retail tobacco sales in pharmacies and are beginning to do so with grocery stores next. The day they were pulling all the tobacco products at the local Walgreen’s and replacing them with NRTs which filled in the displays was a sad day indeed.
Now, the same, only with pets. This increases the monopoly for the SPCA quango and government animal protection department and will of course insure more bloated budgets go to their favor, in a city that is drowning in red tape, the same way smoke-banned CA is drowning in red tape, beginning coincidentally around the same time everyone started becoming smoke-ban frenzied, approximately 16 years ago leading to the soviet state they have now created for us.
But yes, that is not just hear-say, about the pet store pet sale banning in SF, CA. That is the “logical” next step.
And to think, it all began with smoke-bans. How lovely nobody figured that out earlier on what the consequences would be, once freedom of choice and property rights have been declared null and void, what the results would be.
“The anonymous comment struck me as most likely reporting something that was probably happening.”
I am the one who posted that anonymous comment on Fuel Injected Moose the other day and that is not something I made up. It is true. It is either really happening or has already happened.
Our “news”papers every week, which only 6 are “approved” to be on display in the city streets of SF, gleefully report that latest “ban de jour” – a few weeks was a ban on fast food, a few months ago was a ban on parking garages giving early bird discount rates or any discounts at all below what the city owned garages charge, before that outdoor smoke bans at all sidewalk cafes (which is pretty much outdoor smoking banned anyhow everywhere with a $500 fine), before that, I can’t remember them all – because in SF it is a weekly experience.
But yes, if you research the local SF mainstream propaganda sources such as SF Chronicle or SF Examiner, you will find, that was headline “news” about a month ago – and immediately at small pet shops across the city came up protest signs denouncing it – well of course, it will put the pet stores out of business.
I saw some of the protest signs and couldn’t help but wonder, where were all these pet store owners when they first started banning smoking outdoors – let alone the indoor smoking bans CA “enjoyed” starting 16 years ago.
Didn’t seem to bother them then that the righteous were banning normal activity.
I am not sure if the pet store ban on selling pets has become law “yet” – or if it WILL be, soon.
They have a funny way of doing things in SF, CA, USA. Someone gets the idea of how to protect the government or quango interest. They go to city-hall through the back doors and get a 100% stamp of approval from like-minded communist ideologists, someone in government calls the propaganda machine who prints the headline and gives all the reasons why the latest ban being announced will be “needed” – then they pass it 100% across the board, no opposition permitted.
They have already banned retail tobacco sales in pharmacies and are beginning to do so with grocery stores next. The day they were pulling all the tobacco products at the local Walgreen’s and replacing them with NRTs which filled in the displays was a sad day indeed.
Now, the same, only with pets. This increases the monopoly for the SPCA quango and government animal protection department and will of course insure more bloated budgets go to their favor, in a city that is drowning in red tape, the same way smoke-banned CA is drowning in red tape, beginning coincidentally around the same time everyone started becoming smoke-ban frenzied, approximately 16 years ago leading to the soviet state they have now created for us.
But yes, that is not just hear-say, about the pet store pet sale banning in SF, CA. That is the “logical” next step.
And to think, it all began with smoke-bans. How lovely nobody figured that out earlier on what the consequences would be, once freedom of choice and property rights have been declared null and void, what the results would be.
“And to think, it all began with smoke-bans. How lovely nobody figured that out earlier on what the consequences would be”
As I mentioned in my comment above, some of us did, but we were very, very few and far between, and nobody (and I mean nobody – from the Civil Liberties organisations right down to the chaps in the local pub) believed it when we told them. Even now, a lot of drinkers and overweight people can’t see the connection. They’ve been so brainwashed into thinking that smoking is in some way “different” from everything else that they simply aren’t able to spot the huge similarities in the current modus operandi of the anti-alcohol or anti-obesity movements to those of the anti-smoking movement in its infancy. Maybe some of them are too young to remember back to the 1970’s, when anti-smoking really began to get the bit between its teeth, but certainly a lot of them are plenty old enough, yet they still continue in blissful/wilful ignorance, digging their heads in the sand further and further even now, with the Bansturbators pretty much knocking at their front doors. It’s almost as if, when all the “smoking kills” messages were drummed into them, another part was removed to make room for it, i.e. the part which enables them to look at something in principle, rather than just in essence.
And being proved right when so many others doubted your words, and being able to say “I told you so” is little, if any, consolation.
“And to think, it all began with smoke-bans. How lovely nobody figured that out earlier on what the consequences would be”
As I mentioned in my comment above, some of us did, but we were very, very few and far between, and nobody (and I mean nobody – from the Civil Liberties organisations right down to the chaps in the local pub) believed it when we told them. Even now, a lot of drinkers and overweight people can’t see the connection. They’ve been so brainwashed into thinking that smoking is in some way “different” from everything else that they simply aren’t able to spot the huge similarities in the current modus operandi of the anti-alcohol or anti-obesity movements to those of the anti-smoking movement in its infancy. Maybe some of them are too young to remember back to the 1970’s, when anti-smoking really began to get the bit between its teeth, but certainly a lot of them are plenty old enough, yet they still continue in blissful/wilful ignorance, digging their heads in the sand further and further even now, with the Bansturbators pretty much knocking at their front doors. It’s almost as if, when all the “smoking kills” messages were drummed into them, another part was removed to make room for it, i.e. the part which enables them to look at something in principle, rather than just in essence.
And being proved right when so many others doubted your words, and being able to say “I told you so” is little, if any, consolation.
So how exactly does a smoking ban or a pet shop ban get put in place in SF? I don’t know anything about SF politics. The impression I get is that elected officials just decide among themselves that they’re going to ban this or that, and vote it through. Nobody else gets a look in. Or is it that they propose something, and the voters get to vote on that proposition, and then it goes through if they approve it? The latter would be democratic, but not the former.
The UK smoking ban is an example of the former. The British people didn’t vote for one. The Labour government said it would implement a partial ban. In the event, they broke their own promise, and imposed a total ban. They just decided among themselves that’s what they wanted, and voted it through, screw the manifesto promise. And now the Coalition says it’s not going to change anything.
Frank
So how exactly does a smoking ban or a pet shop ban get put in place in SF? I don’t know anything about SF politics. The impression I get is that elected officials just decide among themselves that they’re going to ban this or that, and vote it through. Nobody else gets a look in. Or is it that they propose something, and the voters get to vote on that proposition, and then it goes through if they approve it? The latter would be democratic, but not the former.
The UK smoking ban is an example of the former. The British people didn’t vote for one. The Labour government said it would implement a partial ban. In the event, they broke their own promise, and imposed a total ban. They just decided among themselves that’s what they wanted, and voted it through, screw the manifesto promise. And now the Coalition says it’s not going to change anything.
Frank
WTF
I’m confused do you mean to say this cat smokes?
WTF
I’m confused do you mean to say this cat smokes?
Re: WTF
The one that sat on my lap? No, she didn’t actually smoke herself. But she didn’t mind that I did. If she had, she wouldn’t have sat on my lap.
Frank
Re: WTF
The one that sat on my lap? No, she didn’t actually smoke herself. But she didn’t mind that I did. If she had, she wouldn’t have sat on my lap.
Frank
There is very seldom a voter referendum required. If someone managed to get a referendum on the ballot, it’s usually because a special interest group meets in secret and gets the mayor or someone on council into placing it there. And it’s usually for something extremely controversial that it will go to ballot, like the city wanting to take over and own the entire gas and electrical utilities, which is currently owned by PG&E, a private company and people would otherwise fight like hell if it was passed without having a referendum, even a crooked one. SF election office has been in trouble in the past for politically zealous left-wing civil servants being caught throwing uncounted voter ballots in the middle of SF Bay and in one major case going unconvicted for her crime, since she was helping to keep the party in power, in power. I think in that one she even got her job back, with pay increase for all I know.
It’s not like anyone gets to vote on the tobacco retail ban for pharmacies, outdoor smoking ban with $500 fine, unapproved newspaper racks ban, tobacco retail licensing cutbacks and elimination, pet stores selling pets ban, beer vending ban at street fairs on top of outdoor smoking ban, fast food bans and restrictions, plastic bag bans, styrofoam cup bans, improper recycling bans and fines, the pet store selling pets ban which is for real – I can’t think of them all – but it’s always just “said so”, in the papers, then it becomes law, by the end of the same month, and usually its 100% approved across the board, no dissention, no discussion, no argument, no calling for public input – it’s just pre-announced with jolly-like zeal in the papers and on TV then it’s announced by end of month the vote was quickly taken and 100% approved because some “horrible” “problem” “needed solved”. The early announcements will even say, there will be a new ban soon, as if to question it would be unthinkable. It’s stated as fact of life.
The mayor is a Getty heir, a billionaire. The board members are all millionaires. They sleep around together in backroom cabals with Nancy Pelosi and other socialists and parade themselves as “progressive” in public. Their deals are struck long before the initial propaganda announcement of “their will shall be done”. And the people of SF, mostly “progressive”, all think it’s just wonderful and they fawn over themselves, like it’s the new utopia on earth.
They have Stanton Glantz’s office-mate, Mitch Katz embedded as “health” director for the billionaire mayor and of course is the one coming up with all the smoking-ban “requirements”. And Katz is the same one who with Pelosi threw an extremely profitable asbesto clean-up contract for a military base to their buddies, which the contractor screwed up and flung asbestos over an entire neighborhood – and Glantz’s office-mate, Katz, goes on the local news, and it’s on record, to say that a little asbestos never hurt anyone, mind you this coming from the same UCSF office, Glantz’s, that started up with the need for outdoor smoking bans.
The statewide indoor smoking ban was also not voted on 16 years ago but came in by royal decree from the state legislature which has been steadily occupied and controlled by communists for well over a decade.
There is very seldom a voter referendum required. If someone managed to get a referendum on the ballot, it’s usually because a special interest group meets in secret and gets the mayor or someone on council into placing it there. And it’s usually for something extremely controversial that it will go to ballot, like the city wanting to take over and own the entire gas and electrical utilities, which is currently owned by PG&E, a private company and people would otherwise fight like hell if it was passed without having a referendum, even a crooked one. SF election office has been in trouble in the past for politically zealous left-wing civil servants being caught throwing uncounted voter ballots in the middle of SF Bay and in one major case going unconvicted for her crime, since she was helping to keep the party in power, in power. I think in that one she even got her job back, with pay increase for all I know.
It’s not like anyone gets to vote on the tobacco retail ban for pharmacies, outdoor smoking ban with $500 fine, unapproved newspaper racks ban, tobacco retail licensing cutbacks and elimination, pet stores selling pets ban, beer vending ban at street fairs on top of outdoor smoking ban, fast food bans and restrictions, plastic bag bans, styrofoam cup bans, improper recycling bans and fines, the pet store selling pets ban which is for real – I can’t think of them all – but it’s always just “said so”, in the papers, then it becomes law, by the end of the same month, and usually its 100% approved across the board, no dissention, no discussion, no argument, no calling for public input – it’s just pre-announced with jolly-like zeal in the papers and on TV then it’s announced by end of month the vote was quickly taken and 100% approved because some “horrible” “problem” “needed solved”. The early announcements will even say, there will be a new ban soon, as if to question it would be unthinkable. It’s stated as fact of life.
The mayor is a Getty heir, a billionaire. The board members are all millionaires. They sleep around together in backroom cabals with Nancy Pelosi and other socialists and parade themselves as “progressive” in public. Their deals are struck long before the initial propaganda announcement of “their will shall be done”. And the people of SF, mostly “progressive”, all think it’s just wonderful and they fawn over themselves, like it’s the new utopia on earth.
They have Stanton Glantz’s office-mate, Mitch Katz embedded as “health” director for the billionaire mayor and of course is the one coming up with all the smoking-ban “requirements”. And Katz is the same one who with Pelosi threw an extremely profitable asbesto clean-up contract for a military base to their buddies, which the contractor screwed up and flung asbestos over an entire neighborhood – and Glantz’s office-mate, Katz, goes on the local news, and it’s on record, to say that a little asbestos never hurt anyone, mind you this coming from the same UCSF office, Glantz’s, that started up with the need for outdoor smoking bans.
The statewide indoor smoking ban was also not voted on 16 years ago but came in by royal decree from the state legislature which has been steadily occupied and controlled by communists for well over a decade.
Nevada next door got a statewide vote for a smoking ban of more limited nature, that still permitted it in non-food serving bars and casino areas, but that ballot measure was purposefully lied about by the anti-smokers who claimed if people refused to implement the smoking ban then marijuana and other drugs would become legal in NV, which was an outright lie, though a court later refused to hear a case brought against the anti-smokers alleging that they lied. In the case of NV, it was a slim margin that it passed too, maybe 52% to 48%, something like that, just barely, but because the electorate was lied to by anti-tobacco.
Our subways are like Hitler’s playground with fully armed uniformed police squadrons entering trains at random and demanding everyone on board show their proof of payment or be pulled off at the next station and cited with a huge fine. They also greet you at the top of the stairs, sometimes up to as many as 6 armed police thugs to scream at everyone to stop and show their proof of payment – they get a thrill from the intimidation I think.
In this sort of political atmosphere and with that much abuse going on in plain daylight and unchallenged – I have even seen smokers accosted in the street by non-smokers and get away with it – but it’s even worse than the thuggery at city hall back in the old days of NYC corruption – yet no-one would believe it and instead prefer to hang on to some quaint liberal myth about California and freedom and peace and love and tolerance and democracy – when in fact there’s none of it there.
SF also unfortunately has become home to more and more big drug companies, not just Genetech to the south but the more conventional names like Merck, Glaxo, others have started filling up the big skyscrapers downtown and I’m certain they have influence behind what goes on in politics too. UCSF has expanded its campus into new geographic areas at this same time, with land sometimes the city has given or sold to them very cheaply and zoned it to suit whatever UCSF wanted.
But to answer your question, no there is no voter input on these bans. It’s pre-announced in the papers, if there’s dissent then the papers take care of writing it up to make it look like it’s just a few crazies and the majority would agree, then the council votes it 100% across the board and the mayor signs it into law. They’re high on power and they’re also running the city bankrupt, same as with the state.
I will say this though. Stanton Glantz’s office-buddy turned city health director, Mitch Katz, under the mayor, he is so inept and transparently political and has so much screwed up entire hospital budgets and irritated even the socialist-leaning labor unions, he’s not very well liked, even among the left-wingers, which in this town there is no right-wing. There’s communist left and then there’s slightly left of center, and it’s as far as the spectrum runs. Google Mitch Katz and you can probably find lots of unsavory comments on him, then associate those comments to Stanton Glantz, because they work side by side, in the same department at UCSF.
Nevada next door got a statewide vote for a smoking ban of more limited nature, that still permitted it in non-food serving bars and casino areas, but that ballot measure was purposefully lied about by the anti-smokers who claimed if people refused to implement the smoking ban then marijuana and other drugs would become legal in NV, which was an outright lie, though a court later refused to hear a case brought against the anti-smokers alleging that they lied. In the case of NV, it was a slim margin that it passed too, maybe 52% to 48%, something like that, just barely, but because the electorate was lied to by anti-tobacco.
Our subways are like Hitler’s playground with fully armed uniformed police squadrons entering trains at random and demanding everyone on board show their proof of payment or be pulled off at the next station and cited with a huge fine. They also greet you at the top of the stairs, sometimes up to as many as 6 armed police thugs to scream at everyone to stop and show their proof of payment – they get a thrill from the intimidation I think.
In this sort of political atmosphere and with that much abuse going on in plain daylight and unchallenged – I have even seen smokers accosted in the street by non-smokers and get away with it – but it’s even worse than the thuggery at city hall back in the old days of NYC corruption – yet no-one would believe it and instead prefer to hang on to some quaint liberal myth about California and freedom and peace and love and tolerance and democracy – when in fact there’s none of it there.
SF also unfortunately has become home to more and more big drug companies, not just Genetech to the south but the more conventional names like Merck, Glaxo, others have started filling up the big skyscrapers downtown and I’m certain they have influence behind what goes on in politics too. UCSF has expanded its campus into new geographic areas at this same time, with land sometimes the city has given or sold to them very cheaply and zoned it to suit whatever UCSF wanted.
But to answer your question, no there is no voter input on these bans. It’s pre-announced in the papers, if there’s dissent then the papers take care of writing it up to make it look like it’s just a few crazies and the majority would agree, then the council votes it 100% across the board and the mayor signs it into law. They’re high on power and they’re also running the city bankrupt, same as with the state.
I will say this though. Stanton Glantz’s office-buddy turned city health director, Mitch Katz, under the mayor, he is so inept and transparently political and has so much screwed up entire hospital budgets and irritated even the socialist-leaning labor unions, he’s not very well liked, even among the left-wingers, which in this town there is no right-wing. There’s communist left and then there’s slightly left of center, and it’s as far as the spectrum runs. Google Mitch Katz and you can probably find lots of unsavory comments on him, then associate those comments to Stanton Glantz, because they work side by side, in the same department at UCSF.
I’ve gained the impression, from a variety of sources, that a great many conservatives and even centrists have simply upped sticks and left. Sometimes left California entirely. And taken their businesses with them.
Could that be part of the explanation why the people of SF are mostly ‘progressive’? They’re the only ones left. And in that sort of environment, and in the absence of dissent, everyone sings from the same leftist hymn sheet, and everyone feels more and more ‘righteously’ right about everything.
But it seems to me that it’s the bottom line that counts in the end. If SF and CA are bankrupt, the party has to stop sometime. Why hasn’t it stopped? Do they keep borrowing money from somewhere?
Interesting that there are a lot of rich people running things. I didn’t know that. Shades of Bloomberg in NY. I know that in Bloomberg’s case, he can do what he likes because he’s very rich, and isn’t vulnerable.
And when very rich people are running things, can they really be called Left? The old left used to be opposed to wealth and power and privilege. I sometimes think that Left and Right have become swapped around.
I guess that being a Getty heir might mean that you have zero business sense, because you just got everything handed to you on a plate. J P Getty (who actually was a businessman) used to live in England back in the 60s. He had a payphone installed for the use of house guests. How mean can you get? But it’s probably how he got to be so rich in the first place.
Frank
I’ve gained the impression, from a variety of sources, that a great many conservatives and even centrists have simply upped sticks and left. Sometimes left California entirely. And taken their businesses with them.
Could that be part of the explanation why the people of SF are mostly ‘progressive’? They’re the only ones left. And in that sort of environment, and in the absence of dissent, everyone sings from the same leftist hymn sheet, and everyone feels more and more ‘righteously’ right about everything.
But it seems to me that it’s the bottom line that counts in the end. If SF and CA are bankrupt, the party has to stop sometime. Why hasn’t it stopped? Do they keep borrowing money from somewhere?
Interesting that there are a lot of rich people running things. I didn’t know that. Shades of Bloomberg in NY. I know that in Bloomberg’s case, he can do what he likes because he’s very rich, and isn’t vulnerable.
And when very rich people are running things, can they really be called Left? The old left used to be opposed to wealth and power and privilege. I sometimes think that Left and Right have become swapped around.
I guess that being a Getty heir might mean that you have zero business sense, because you just got everything handed to you on a plate. J P Getty (who actually was a businessman) used to live in England back in the 60s. He had a payphone installed for the use of house guests. How mean can you get? But it’s probably how he got to be so rich in the first place.
Frank
it’s even worse than the thuggery at city hall back in the old days of NYC corruption – yet no-one would believe it and instead prefer to hang on to some quaint liberal myth about California and freedom and peace and love and tolerance and democracy – when in fact there’s none of it there.
Well, even I still have that notion! Haight Ashbury, for a while, stood for exactly that back in, oh, 1966 or something. It had a global influence. One which I felt myself. It’s hard to shrug off these illusions. But is it that CA residents have these illusions about themselves, or just that everyone else tends to have them?
SF also unfortunately has become home to more and more big drug companies, not just Genetech to the south but the more conventional names like Merck, Glaxo, others have started filling up the big skyscrapers downtown and I’m certain they have influence behind what goes on in politics too.
I suppose that’s not too surprising, given that healthism and antismoking and Big Pharma are hand in glove with each other.
Frank
it’s even worse than the thuggery at city hall back in the old days of NYC corruption – yet no-one would believe it and instead prefer to hang on to some quaint liberal myth about California and freedom and peace and love and tolerance and democracy – when in fact there’s none of it there.
Well, even I still have that notion! Haight Ashbury, for a while, stood for exactly that back in, oh, 1966 or something. It had a global influence. One which I felt myself. It’s hard to shrug off these illusions. But is it that CA residents have these illusions about themselves, or just that everyone else tends to have them?
SF also unfortunately has become home to more and more big drug companies, not just Genetech to the south but the more conventional names like Merck, Glaxo, others have started filling up the big skyscrapers downtown and I’m certain they have influence behind what goes on in politics too.
I suppose that’s not too surprising, given that healthism and antismoking and Big Pharma are hand in glove with each other.
Frank
Haight Ashbury is like this. The streets fill up on weekends with wealthy liberals – yes, liberals are wealthy elitists, and they’re the only wealthy elistists left here in SF as anyone with sense has already geographically left – but the Haight fills up with these local wealthy tourists and progressive adherents, mainly from Marin – and on any day of the week the rough and tumble homeless population seems to make its way to the streets of Haight to demand money from passer-by’s. Many are not even US citizens and because the corrupt ACORN sourced District Attorney has made SF a “sanctuary city”, then even when a felony, such as assault and battery is committed, even by illegal non-citizens, the police are by law required to turn a blind eye and the court to release them to custody of a 6 week “training program”, upon which they are returned to the streets without penalty, the victims left uncompensated and the crimes left unpunished, to start the cycle again.
A neighbor recently complained that a friend’s eye was poked out on in the Haight by a non-US-citizen violent offender who demanded money and poked out his friend’s eye when he didn’t hand it over as demanded. There was also no punishment for that assault, and it’s not the only one happening in SF. The liberal-progressives have made certain that is the rule of law here is a progressive one – and the majority, with anyone from center to right having vacated – thoroughly agree this is the most progressive, liberal and best way to run a government on the face of this earth – ever.
When they have the annual Haight Asbury street fair, smoking is of course banned outdoors as at all street fairs city-wide and a few years back they took to banning beer.
Across Stanyan Street from Haight at Golden Gate Park, hundreds of acres of outdoor land are all outdoor smoking-banned with a $500 fine if caught – while the wealthy liberals in charge have used the media to commend themselves on their vast wisdom and tolerant attitudes.
Smoke anywhere in Marina District, another uberly wealthy enclave and hear tolerant minded progressives from blocks away complaining of “the smell”, when it’s nowhere around them and their own smoke-belching fireplaces sooten the air over the entire Marina District every wintertime.
Currently, smoke shops in Haight are losing their business licenses and it has the tone of more to do with them selling tobacco than it does with them selling pipes for marijuana or hash-hish. After all, marijuana is fairly legal in SF, tobacco in most respects, is not. And legalization of marijuana forces here in SF are the same forces who are violently opposed to tobacco and wish to see it made illegal, one in lieu of the other, not both legal at the same time.
Pelosi is from Marin, north of SF and her estate and vineyards are worth tens of millions. Finestein has a gated mansion with black CIA SUVs parked outside in Presidio Heights and her worth is in the billions, not counting the scandal and federal crime of her throwing FNMA defaulted mortgage clean-up operations directly to her husband’s corporation, which has been nicely cleaned-up in the local papers and her name sanctified, along with Pelosi’s for any of her scandals, so there is never a threat come election time of anyone winning against them – not that anyone would be so foolish as to waste time and money running against a political machine larger than Boss Tweed’s of NYC from this same point in time last century was.
The mayor inherited his 8-billion or so dollars from his uncle, a Ghetty and is another billionaire playboy with “good intentions” and who knows how to play the political correctness card to make sure what the wealthy liberal progressives want, becomes law – especially when it comes to smoking-bans. He hasn’t business sense – his choice of Mitch Katz, friend of Stanton Glantz, as health director, who has run hospitals into the red makes that clear – but has shrewd political sense and knows how to play the cards in the backrooms, which is where he and the board of socialist millionaires do their deals.
Haight Ashbury is like this. The streets fill up on weekends with wealthy liberals – yes, liberals are wealthy elitists, and they’re the only wealthy elistists left here in SF as anyone with sense has already geographically left – but the Haight fills up with these local wealthy tourists and progressive adherents, mainly from Marin – and on any day of the week the rough and tumble homeless population seems to make its way to the streets of Haight to demand money from passer-by’s. Many are not even US citizens and because the corrupt ACORN sourced District Attorney has made SF a “sanctuary city”, then even when a felony, such as assault and battery is committed, even by illegal non-citizens, the police are by law required to turn a blind eye and the court to release them to custody of a 6 week “training program”, upon which they are returned to the streets without penalty, the victims left uncompensated and the crimes left unpunished, to start the cycle again.
A neighbor recently complained that a friend’s eye was poked out on in the Haight by a non-US-citizen violent offender who demanded money and poked out his friend’s eye when he didn’t hand it over as demanded. There was also no punishment for that assault, and it’s not the only one happening in SF. The liberal-progressives have made certain that is the rule of law here is a progressive one – and the majority, with anyone from center to right having vacated – thoroughly agree this is the most progressive, liberal and best way to run a government on the face of this earth – ever.
When they have the annual Haight Asbury street fair, smoking is of course banned outdoors as at all street fairs city-wide and a few years back they took to banning beer.
Across Stanyan Street from Haight at Golden Gate Park, hundreds of acres of outdoor land are all outdoor smoking-banned with a $500 fine if caught – while the wealthy liberals in charge have used the media to commend themselves on their vast wisdom and tolerant attitudes.
Smoke anywhere in Marina District, another uberly wealthy enclave and hear tolerant minded progressives from blocks away complaining of “the smell”, when it’s nowhere around them and their own smoke-belching fireplaces sooten the air over the entire Marina District every wintertime.
Currently, smoke shops in Haight are losing their business licenses and it has the tone of more to do with them selling tobacco than it does with them selling pipes for marijuana or hash-hish. After all, marijuana is fairly legal in SF, tobacco in most respects, is not. And legalization of marijuana forces here in SF are the same forces who are violently opposed to tobacco and wish to see it made illegal, one in lieu of the other, not both legal at the same time.
Pelosi is from Marin, north of SF and her estate and vineyards are worth tens of millions. Finestein has a gated mansion with black CIA SUVs parked outside in Presidio Heights and her worth is in the billions, not counting the scandal and federal crime of her throwing FNMA defaulted mortgage clean-up operations directly to her husband’s corporation, which has been nicely cleaned-up in the local papers and her name sanctified, along with Pelosi’s for any of her scandals, so there is never a threat come election time of anyone winning against them – not that anyone would be so foolish as to waste time and money running against a political machine larger than Boss Tweed’s of NYC from this same point in time last century was.
The mayor inherited his 8-billion or so dollars from his uncle, a Ghetty and is another billionaire playboy with “good intentions” and who knows how to play the political correctness card to make sure what the wealthy liberal progressives want, becomes law – especially when it comes to smoking-bans. He hasn’t business sense – his choice of Mitch Katz, friend of Stanton Glantz, as health director, who has run hospitals into the red makes that clear – but has shrewd political sense and knows how to play the cards in the backrooms, which is where he and the board of socialist millionaires do their deals.
On the peninsula to the south are cities where no home is worth less than 1-million and by default the enclaves are crawling with wealthy socialist leaning progressives. They use liberalism to keep the poor and uncleansed at a distance and maintain their control the same way a century earlier the conservatives may have done so. The DuPonts have a secret mansion tucked away in the woods down there and to the north in Marin, one of the youngest Rothschild inheritees has his living place, his involvement here being in all the green movements.
If you go to http://www.bapd.org/cities.html and check on SF alone, you will see the list of progressive, green and even communist named quangos who are receiving their money from taxpayers and liberal elitists to make sure the current status quo remains in charge. It’s a long list.
It’s not wealthy old conservatives running the show out here because there are none, or if there are then they know to keep their mouths shut and be lucky they are allowed to enjoy their wealth in peace, letting the progressive liberals run the show. The new ideology has replaced the old, but it’s the same as before, just a new name to it and the old name used as whipping boy, for the propaganda, to keep people riled up, so there is always support for the powers that be.
In Santa Cruz to the south, where even possession of tobacco is a crime demanding a $50 fine and instant confiscation, the wealthy there are emboldened to actually use the socialist and communist party on the printed ballots – so everyone knows full well what they are voting for – and vote them back in, in mass support. The university there caters to mainly white upper class and has gotten rid of traditional grading based on ability and instead issues a pass/fail system based on a single essay at the end of each course, during which time each student is expected to extoll the virtues of whatever political correctness the university has indoctrinated them with – and thus a load of support from the upper classes who serve as the role models. It is currently one of the most expensive areas in which to buy and live in the entire country, and it’s communist held.
This is no small operation and it is communist literally in name like in Santa Cruz, clandestinely under the name of liberal or progressive, in local communities not yet fully accepting of the ideology. And it’s in plain daylight to the rest of the US, who hasn’t a clue – not a clue – that an entire section of the US is under control by communists.
The only role I think the few so-called conservatives-in-name-only play in this area is to take the blame and be the fall-guys in the propaganda papers. The democrat controlled assembly in Sacramento has squandered the budget into bankruptcy, is proud of the loss of tobacco tax and tobacco sales tax revenue, is proud of their overspending on government employee pensions, some in excess of $400,000 a year thanks to liberal-progressive Moon-beam Jerry Brown, another millionaire running for governor this year, but it is the republican governor who has to approve their budget or veto it, who gets all the blame. What is conservative is just a label, as someone to play the role of fall-guy, to enhance the power of the established forces, who operate under the liberal ideology. It’s a con job in the propaganda.
Pelosi good, Obama good, Feinstein good, every socialist and communist good – anyone else, bad. That’s how they do it and it’s a non-stop drumbeat – controlled. And the good people, they all moved out and continue to do so when they get the opportunity.
I don’t know if you still have a favorable impression of Haight Asbury, but whatever it was back then, it’s not anymore.
On the peninsula to the south are cities where no home is worth less than 1-million and by default the enclaves are crawling with wealthy socialist leaning progressives. They use liberalism to keep the poor and uncleansed at a distance and maintain their control the same way a century earlier the conservatives may have done so. The DuPonts have a secret mansion tucked away in the woods down there and to the north in Marin, one of the youngest Rothschild inheritees has his living place, his involvement here being in all the green movements.
If you go to http://www.bapd.org/cities.html and check on SF alone, you will see the list of progressive, green and even communist named quangos who are receiving their money from taxpayers and liberal elitists to make sure the current status quo remains in charge. It’s a long list.
It’s not wealthy old conservatives running the show out here because there are none, or if there are then they know to keep their mouths shut and be lucky they are allowed to enjoy their wealth in peace, letting the progressive liberals run the show. The new ideology has replaced the old, but it’s the same as before, just a new name to it and the old name used as whipping boy, for the propaganda, to keep people riled up, so there is always support for the powers that be.
In Santa Cruz to the south, where even possession of tobacco is a crime demanding a $50 fine and instant confiscation, the wealthy there are emboldened to actually use the socialist and communist party on the printed ballots – so everyone knows full well what they are voting for – and vote them back in, in mass support. The university there caters to mainly white upper class and has gotten rid of traditional grading based on ability and instead issues a pass/fail system based on a single essay at the end of each course, during which time each student is expected to extoll the virtues of whatever political correctness the university has indoctrinated them with – and thus a load of support from the upper classes who serve as the role models. It is currently one of the most expensive areas in which to buy and live in the entire country, and it’s communist held.
This is no small operation and it is communist literally in name like in Santa Cruz, clandestinely under the name of liberal or progressive, in local communities not yet fully accepting of the ideology. And it’s in plain daylight to the rest of the US, who hasn’t a clue – not a clue – that an entire section of the US is under control by communists.
The only role I think the few so-called conservatives-in-name-only play in this area is to take the blame and be the fall-guys in the propaganda papers. The democrat controlled assembly in Sacramento has squandered the budget into bankruptcy, is proud of the loss of tobacco tax and tobacco sales tax revenue, is proud of their overspending on government employee pensions, some in excess of $400,000 a year thanks to liberal-progressive Moon-beam Jerry Brown, another millionaire running for governor this year, but it is the republican governor who has to approve their budget or veto it, who gets all the blame. What is conservative is just a label, as someone to play the role of fall-guy, to enhance the power of the established forces, who operate under the liberal ideology. It’s a con job in the propaganda.
Pelosi good, Obama good, Feinstein good, every socialist and communist good – anyone else, bad. That’s how they do it and it’s a non-stop drumbeat – controlled. And the good people, they all moved out and continue to do so when they get the opportunity.
I don’t know if you still have a favorable impression of Haight Asbury, but whatever it was back then, it’s not anymore.
And upon moving into northern California, the first thing you begin to receive is indoctrination propaganda from everyone already enslaved as to what a wonderful place, most progressive in the world, most healthy and anti-smoking and a worker’s paradise here on earth – until one begins to believe it – as one has to, in order to survive in that sort of establishment. It’s how the rules work.
But that is what northern CA and SF in particular are like and it is not some poor rag-tag group of idealistic workers and impoverished classes struggling and fighting the tyranny of established conservative fascist republican Americans, as the propaganda puts out. It is extremely wealthy, powerful, greedy, selfish, anti-smoking, fascist, lying and corrupt illiberal non-progressive status-quo fascist/communists who hold all levels of power and will continue to do so – increasing bans, controls and restrictions in the name of goodness – while all the good people move out and only those who want to believe this myth move in or remain behind and are happy in the bliss of ignorance.
The problem is now that as it becomes more crowded, more expensive and less room for more wealthy illiberal non-progressives to move in and find root here, they are slowly spreading outward too and invading nearby cities and states, but bringing their northern Californication ideologies with them. That is how NV for example ended up with their smoking ban, when enough Californians crossed over the state line and wanted the same there as here, which began shuttering small businesses within the first month of it going into effect, something good for the big casino chains who have monopoly control now. And even some of them are experimenting with smoke-banned casinos but some not profitably, though the ideology is beginning to become more important than the profit motive in NV too.
That pretty much is the CA, SF and Haight Asbury myth, as simple as I can explain it, but not like it was in the 1960’s, not hardly.
And upon moving into northern California, the first thing you begin to receive is indoctrination propaganda from everyone already enslaved as to what a wonderful place, most progressive in the world, most healthy and anti-smoking and a worker’s paradise here on earth – until one begins to believe it – as one has to, in order to survive in that sort of establishment. It’s how the rules work.
But that is what northern CA and SF in particular are like and it is not some poor rag-tag group of idealistic workers and impoverished classes struggling and fighting the tyranny of established conservative fascist republican Americans, as the propaganda puts out. It is extremely wealthy, powerful, greedy, selfish, anti-smoking, fascist, lying and corrupt illiberal non-progressive status-quo fascist/communists who hold all levels of power and will continue to do so – increasing bans, controls and restrictions in the name of goodness – while all the good people move out and only those who want to believe this myth move in or remain behind and are happy in the bliss of ignorance.
The problem is now that as it becomes more crowded, more expensive and less room for more wealthy illiberal non-progressives to move in and find root here, they are slowly spreading outward too and invading nearby cities and states, but bringing their northern Californication ideologies with them. That is how NV for example ended up with their smoking ban, when enough Californians crossed over the state line and wanted the same there as here, which began shuttering small businesses within the first month of it going into effect, something good for the big casino chains who have monopoly control now. And even some of them are experimenting with smoke-banned casinos but some not profitably, though the ideology is beginning to become more important than the profit motive in NV too.
That pretty much is the CA, SF and Haight Asbury myth, as simple as I can explain it, but not like it was in the 1960’s, not hardly.
Thanks for these several comments. They’ve painted a compelling and disturbing picture of life in California. And it’s helped to make sense of that strange place.
It’s a picture of a plutocracy in which many of the major players are millionaires or billionaires, and who consequently have the clout to do more or less whatever they like. And what they’ve done has been to put into practice their idea of a socialist/communist paradise (albeit one in which they keep their personal fortunes). They could just as easily have recreated any other fantasy world. The old millionaires retreated to their private estates to build fantasy palaces. It seems the new ones combine together to create fantasy towns and cities. They build LaLa Land. They build a private playground world, which happens to be public, and in which real people live.
I’m beginning to think that although NY’s Bloomberg is a Republican, it doesn’t really matter what political colour you are once you have enough money. You just buy whatever you want.
And perhaps this explains why Tony Blair seems to be now trying to join the club. He’s only got a mere 20 million so far, but with the right friends who knows.
And since California is the command centre of antismoking, it may also explain the global power of Tobacco Control. Maybe they’ve just bought the WHO, and most of the governments of the Western world, and the media too, and they want to impose their utopia on everybody. It’s all driven by money. Not the prudent, sensible money of astute businessmen, but the imprudent, crazy money of billionaires who want to spend their money building an ideal world.
The picture you’ve painted is an illuminating and thought-provoking one. And I’ve never read or heard anything like it in the MSM. So I wonder if you’d consider writing a piece – incorporating most of what you have just written – for my blog, because I think it would interest quite a few people who are as puzzled about California as I am. Because this is beyond my experience. And probably beyond the experience of most people living in the UK. Here we’re not being run by a plutocracy (not yet (I think)). There are a few millionaires in David Cameron’s cabinet, and I believe he’s a millionaire as well (although wealth in the UK is always discreet).
If you want to keep your anonymity you can. If you want to contact me, then the email is cfd@idlex.freeserve.co.uk. Or, you could just post your piece in the comments here, in sections, exactly like you just have, and I could bolt them together. If it got too long, it could be broken in two (or three). You’re clearly capable of writing at great length.
I think the main things that have come out of it for me have been the ones I’ve commented on. What seems most important is that these are super-rich players. It might help to write something about their ideology. Does it have any foundation in anything? Or is it all some kind of late hippy New Age Che Guevara Green claptrap? How does the indoctrination work? Do people actually believe any of it, or are they just too scared to dissent?
What you say?
Frank
Thanks for these several comments. They’ve painted a compelling and disturbing picture of life in California. And it’s helped to make sense of that strange place.
It’s a picture of a plutocracy in which many of the major players are millionaires or billionaires, and who consequently have the clout to do more or less whatever they like. And what they’ve done has been to put into practice their idea of a socialist/communist paradise (albeit one in which they keep their personal fortunes). They could just as easily have recreated any other fantasy world. The old millionaires retreated to their private estates to build fantasy palaces. It seems the new ones combine together to create fantasy towns and cities. They build LaLa Land. They build a private playground world, which happens to be public, and in which real people live.
I’m beginning to think that although NY’s Bloomberg is a Republican, it doesn’t really matter what political colour you are once you have enough money. You just buy whatever you want.
And perhaps this explains why Tony Blair seems to be now trying to join the club. He’s only got a mere 20 million so far, but with the right friends who knows.
And since California is the command centre of antismoking, it may also explain the global power of Tobacco Control. Maybe they’ve just bought the WHO, and most of the governments of the Western world, and the media too, and they want to impose their utopia on everybody. It’s all driven by money. Not the prudent, sensible money of astute businessmen, but the imprudent, crazy money of billionaires who want to spend their money building an ideal world.
The picture you’ve painted is an illuminating and thought-provoking one. And I’ve never read or heard anything like it in the MSM. So I wonder if you’d consider writing a piece – incorporating most of what you have just written – for my blog, because I think it would interest quite a few people who are as puzzled about California as I am. Because this is beyond my experience. And probably beyond the experience of most people living in the UK. Here we’re not being run by a plutocracy (not yet (I think)). There are a few millionaires in David Cameron’s cabinet, and I believe he’s a millionaire as well (although wealth in the UK is always discreet).
If you want to keep your anonymity you can. If you want to contact me, then the email is cfd@idlex.freeserve.co.uk. Or, you could just post your piece in the comments here, in sections, exactly like you just have, and I could bolt them together. If it got too long, it could be broken in two (or three). You’re clearly capable of writing at great length.
I think the main things that have come out of it for me have been the ones I’ve commented on. What seems most important is that these are super-rich players. It might help to write something about their ideology. Does it have any foundation in anything? Or is it all some kind of late hippy New Age Che Guevara Green claptrap? How does the indoctrination work? Do people actually believe any of it, or are they just too scared to dissent?
What you say?
Frank
If I can think of any better way of explaining it, I will let you know. I hadn’t thought of it as a plutocracy, just that it’s corrupt and anti-smoking has been strong here for at least 30 years, much stronger than anything I experienced on the east coast of the US, although the east coast has now changed too, but I think only after CA seemed to have pioneered the way.
The anti-smoking and plutocracy as you call it run by millionaires and billionaires buiding a socialist paradise here on earth seem to run hand in hand, and the anti-smoking seems to be a prelude, something that was pushed early on, as if to get everyone among the people in the same mind-set, a cornerstone upon which all the rest has since been built.
It’s as if one takes a wooden board and nails it to another board and then another, and soon one has a house. It’s the same here, but with the social and political organization. You take one lie, the anti-smoking for starts, nail it to another, maybe the global warming myth, tack it to another and soon one is building a structure and it’s nearly as tangible to those who lose their freedoms because of it as if it were a physical structure. But the basement of that structure, it seemed to start with anti-smoking as I experienced it.
If I come up with an idea or explanation more detailed or explicit than I have tried thus far, I will let you know. I could tell you an interesting story just based on the subway and bus signs, “the writing on the wall” is quite literal here, if one realizes what it is saying and how it is cleverly juxtaposed next to one another, the message it spells out and how it leads to manufactured belief in what are illogical and incongruent falsehoods, 99% of the time with a health/fascist/eugenist inspired agenda running as common theme.
For example, it would be hard to explain any other way how “Fighting Aids” becomes “Fighting racism”, meanwhile abortions should be applauded and encouraged because “What you don’t know about stem cell research can hurt you”, all next to “Smoke-free San Francisco” bad mouthing “the outdoor smokers” as the “big health threat”. It’s like applauding abortion for the sake of harvesting cells and getting more money for AIDS research while not encouraging less sexual activity, which of course leads to abortions and communicable disesases, is offset by the “real health threat” of “those outdoor smokers”. It’s like the focus runs outside of logic – more abortions, more AIDS, but less outdoor smokers makes it “logical”.
And the latest sign this weekend is to log onto a website and someone wealthy will donate $10 to ban offshore oil drilling everytime you click. So maybe that is the plutocracy, billionaires funding anti-oil, something the state depends on, funding at their own expense but only by making sure they have clearly inspired a population dependent on automobile transportation to agree with it at the same time, so when the economy is shut down, those same people will be complacent in their welfare state.
I have no idea why people outside of California would think that San Francisco and California are so “cool” and mythical, when in fact it’s the land from where anti-smoking has arisen and there are nowadays much harsher bans and punitive laws being plotted and hatched, even as I speak.
If I can think of any better way of explaining it, I will let you know. I hadn’t thought of it as a plutocracy, just that it’s corrupt and anti-smoking has been strong here for at least 30 years, much stronger than anything I experienced on the east coast of the US, although the east coast has now changed too, but I think only after CA seemed to have pioneered the way.
The anti-smoking and plutocracy as you call it run by millionaires and billionaires buiding a socialist paradise here on earth seem to run hand in hand, and the anti-smoking seems to be a prelude, something that was pushed early on, as if to get everyone among the people in the same mind-set, a cornerstone upon which all the rest has since been built.
It’s as if one takes a wooden board and nails it to another board and then another, and soon one has a house. It’s the same here, but with the social and political organization. You take one lie, the anti-smoking for starts, nail it to another, maybe the global warming myth, tack it to another and soon one is building a structure and it’s nearly as tangible to those who lose their freedoms because of it as if it were a physical structure. But the basement of that structure, it seemed to start with anti-smoking as I experienced it.
If I come up with an idea or explanation more detailed or explicit than I have tried thus far, I will let you know. I could tell you an interesting story just based on the subway and bus signs, “the writing on the wall” is quite literal here, if one realizes what it is saying and how it is cleverly juxtaposed next to one another, the message it spells out and how it leads to manufactured belief in what are illogical and incongruent falsehoods, 99% of the time with a health/fascist/eugenist inspired agenda running as common theme.
For example, it would be hard to explain any other way how “Fighting Aids” becomes “Fighting racism”, meanwhile abortions should be applauded and encouraged because “What you don’t know about stem cell research can hurt you”, all next to “Smoke-free San Francisco” bad mouthing “the outdoor smokers” as the “big health threat”. It’s like applauding abortion for the sake of harvesting cells and getting more money for AIDS research while not encouraging less sexual activity, which of course leads to abortions and communicable disesases, is offset by the “real health threat” of “those outdoor smokers”. It’s like the focus runs outside of logic – more abortions, more AIDS, but less outdoor smokers makes it “logical”.
And the latest sign this weekend is to log onto a website and someone wealthy will donate $10 to ban offshore oil drilling everytime you click. So maybe that is the plutocracy, billionaires funding anti-oil, something the state depends on, funding at their own expense but only by making sure they have clearly inspired a population dependent on automobile transportation to agree with it at the same time, so when the economy is shut down, those same people will be complacent in their welfare state.
I have no idea why people outside of California would think that San Francisco and California are so “cool” and mythical, when in fact it’s the land from where anti-smoking has arisen and there are nowadays much harsher bans and punitive laws being plotted and hatched, even as I speak.
“Gleichschaltung, meaning “coordination”, “making the same”, “bringing into line”, is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce.
The historian Richard J. Evans offered the term “forcible-coordination” in his most recent work on Nazi Germany.
One goal of this policy was to eliminate individualism by forcing everyone to adhere to a specific doctrine and way of thinking and to control as many aspects of life as possible using an invasive police force.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
http://www.history-ontheweb.co.uk/concepts/concept72_gleichschaltung.htm
“California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement.”
“Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune.
They were all in league with some of America’s most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton.”
http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-11-09/opinion/17517477_1_eugenics-ethnic-cleansing-master-race
Is it happening again?
Rose
“Gleichschaltung, meaning “coordination”, “making the same”, “bringing into line”, is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce.
The historian Richard J. Evans offered the term “forcible-coordination” in his most recent work on Nazi Germany.
One goal of this policy was to eliminate individualism by forcing everyone to adhere to a specific doctrine and way of thinking and to control as many aspects of life as possible using an invasive police force.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
http://www.history-ontheweb.co.uk/concepts/concept72_gleichschaltung.htm
“California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement.”
“Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune.
They were all in league with some of America’s most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton.”
http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-11-09/opinion/17517477_1_eugenics-ethnic-cleansing-master-race
Is it happening again?
Rose
It looks to me like plutocracy. It reminds me of those super-rich Romans – like Crassus (who suppressed the Spartacus revolt) -.
And isn’t it interesting that San Francisco is pulling in lots of pharma companies. They’re drug companies. And so in a profound sense SF is continuing its druggy history. It’s drug central. It’s designer drug central. It’s corporate drug central. And it’s pushing its new drugs all around the world, using the world medical establishment, and the WHO.
It may also explain the loopy irrationality of it all. All of them are on drugs. Not tobacco or alcohol or cannabis. But all sorts of other weird stuff. Mostly completely untested (unlike alcohol and tobacco and cannabis). And they can’t think straight. They are, paradoxically, exactly the crazed drug addicts they accuse everyone else of being.
In the past, the old drugs came through illegal black markets. The new drugs come from the legitimate drug companies. But it still all comes from San Francisco, just like it did in the 1960s.
Ha ha ha!
Frank
It looks to me like plutocracy. It reminds me of those super-rich Romans – like Crassus (who suppressed the Spartacus revolt) -.
And isn’t it interesting that San Francisco is pulling in lots of pharma companies. They’re drug companies. And so in a profound sense SF is continuing its druggy history. It’s drug central. It’s designer drug central. It’s corporate drug central. And it’s pushing its new drugs all around the world, using the world medical establishment, and the WHO.
It may also explain the loopy irrationality of it all. All of them are on drugs. Not tobacco or alcohol or cannabis. But all sorts of other weird stuff. Mostly completely untested (unlike alcohol and tobacco and cannabis). And they can’t think straight. They are, paradoxically, exactly the crazed drug addicts they accuse everyone else of being.
In the past, the old drugs came through illegal black markets. The new drugs come from the legitimate drug companies. But it still all comes from San Francisco, just like it did in the 1960s.
Ha ha ha!
Frank
Berkeley to Ban Smoking Outdoors Throughout Business District
“According to an article on the KCBS radio station site and another article on the local CBS television station site, the city of Berkeley has approved an ordinance that extends its outdoor smoking ban to include essentially the entire business district of the city.
Previously, the ordinance prohibited smoking within 25 feet of the entrance to any building open to the public and on sidewalks along 16 major streets. Now, the ordinance bans smoking outdoors in all commercial zones and essentially means that smoking will not be allowed at all in the business sections of the city.”
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/03/berkeley-to-ban-smoking-outdoors.html
BAYER BUYS BERKELEY from Z Magazine, January 1992
“In all the local media reports of the need for haste by the City of Berkeley to finalize its negotiations with Miles Cutter Laboratories for a 30 year development agreement, very little has been said about the parent organization, the giant German pharmaceutical company, Bayer AG. Bayer (the phonetic spelling of the German pronunciation is Buy-er) reported worldwide sales of $23.3 billion in 1989.”
http://www.berkeleycitizen.org/bayer.html
I always thought that California must be a lovely place, until I began to hear strange stories about it.
Rose
Berkeley to Ban Smoking Outdoors Throughout Business District
“According to an article on the KCBS radio station site and another article on the local CBS television station site, the city of Berkeley has approved an ordinance that extends its outdoor smoking ban to include essentially the entire business district of the city.
Previously, the ordinance prohibited smoking within 25 feet of the entrance to any building open to the public and on sidewalks along 16 major streets. Now, the ordinance bans smoking outdoors in all commercial zones and essentially means that smoking will not be allowed at all in the business sections of the city.”
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/03/berkeley-to-ban-smoking-outdoors.html
BAYER BUYS BERKELEY from Z Magazine, January 1992
“In all the local media reports of the need for haste by the City of Berkeley to finalize its negotiations with Miles Cutter Laboratories for a 30 year development agreement, very little has been said about the parent organization, the giant German pharmaceutical company, Bayer AG. Bayer (the phonetic spelling of the German pronunciation is Buy-er) reported worldwide sales of $23.3 billion in 1989.”
http://www.berkeleycitizen.org/bayer.html
I always thought that California must be a lovely place, until I began to hear strange stories about it.
Rose
Based on what I see, in real life, daily, around me, I truly believe that yes, it is happening again and yes, SF is sitting at the core of it.
California is nicely tucked away in a remote corner at least three to five large mountain ranges between the California coastline and the rest of the US (Rockies, Sierras, Central Valley ranges, coastal ranges), a very good place to hide one’s communist/fascist infiltration, because who would know, it’s geographically protected – ocean on one side, ranges of mountains on the other. Santa Cruz is particularly remote, but so is SF. And what happens, to the outside world, can be presented as something entirely contrary to what it actually is, as something “good”, packaged and sold to the rest of the world – because who would know for sure what goes on in a location that is physically sequestered and protected on all sides by mountain and ocean. The media can be controlled.
SF was also where they signed the UN treaty after WWII, the same UN which gave birth to the WHO and the international tobacco treaty, the international global warming based treaties and soon international gun banning treaties, which has lead to the global state of things currently, which are very top down, a command economy and political system. There are historical roots in that city.
So yes, I would say it is happening again, it’s in plain view, but not apparent to the majority living here who are in large numbers dosed up daily on designer drugs, especially anti-depressants. They even compare their anti-depressants on the buses and subways, with glassy eyes glazed over in a daily morning stupor, telling of how switching from one to the other has made them feel better and encouraging others on anti-depressants to talk to their doctors about trying out the latest newest drugs too. Many are on anti-depressants because they used them to conform to anti-smoking, former smokers who have all developed a form of fake-smoker’s-cough should they glimpse a wisp of smoke rising from 3 blocks away and are true believers in the anti-smoking cause, why they will ban smoking even inside one’s private home.
That, plus the propaganda, it seems to have done its job at keeping people in line with the agenda. The subway and bus signs are just pure propaganda put out by government and quangos that play off one another and keep a subliminal message of it all being normal alive in their minds, which are oblivious to any logical thought of a contrary nature that might actually cause them to wake up and notice they’ve been lied to and co-opted into conformity with the powers-that-be’s ideals, which are eugenic in the long term. The conformists and anti-smokers, in their minds, truly believe they can do no harm and are doing “good”. It’s the devil’s promise to them, that all is “good”, the devil meaning lies, non-truths, which substantiate their world.
That is just my belief, but I base it on actual observation of the facts I witness daily. And it’s gotten and is getting more extreme and bizarre. I feel frightened to think what will happen when some of what I see currently, in SF, is called “a great success” by the social engineers, then pushed onto unsuspecting populations across the US and thousands of miles away across the seas. They may not even see it coming, but it should be felt physically to those who will be affected by each piece of pre-tested evil social and political structure when it hits their shores, out of the blue, everyone blind to the source from where it has been first tested and honed to a fine art.
Based on what I see, in real life, daily, around me, I truly believe that yes, it is happening again and yes, SF is sitting at the core of it.
California is nicely tucked away in a remote corner at least three to five large mountain ranges between the California coastline and the rest of the US (Rockies, Sierras, Central Valley ranges, coastal ranges), a very good place to hide one’s communist/fascist infiltration, because who would know, it’s geographically protected – ocean on one side, ranges of mountains on the other. Santa Cruz is particularly remote, but so is SF. And what happens, to the outside world, can be presented as something entirely contrary to what it actually is, as something “good”, packaged and sold to the rest of the world – because who would know for sure what goes on in a location that is physically sequestered and protected on all sides by mountain and ocean. The media can be controlled.
SF was also where they signed the UN treaty after WWII, the same UN which gave birth to the WHO and the international tobacco treaty, the international global warming based treaties and soon international gun banning treaties, which has lead to the global state of things currently, which are very top down, a command economy and political system. There are historical roots in that city.
So yes, I would say it is happening again, it’s in plain view, but not apparent to the majority living here who are in large numbers dosed up daily on designer drugs, especially anti-depressants. They even compare their anti-depressants on the buses and subways, with glassy eyes glazed over in a daily morning stupor, telling of how switching from one to the other has made them feel better and encouraging others on anti-depressants to talk to their doctors about trying out the latest newest drugs too. Many are on anti-depressants because they used them to conform to anti-smoking, former smokers who have all developed a form of fake-smoker’s-cough should they glimpse a wisp of smoke rising from 3 blocks away and are true believers in the anti-smoking cause, why they will ban smoking even inside one’s private home.
That, plus the propaganda, it seems to have done its job at keeping people in line with the agenda. The subway and bus signs are just pure propaganda put out by government and quangos that play off one another and keep a subliminal message of it all being normal alive in their minds, which are oblivious to any logical thought of a contrary nature that might actually cause them to wake up and notice they’ve been lied to and co-opted into conformity with the powers-that-be’s ideals, which are eugenic in the long term. The conformists and anti-smokers, in their minds, truly believe they can do no harm and are doing “good”. It’s the devil’s promise to them, that all is “good”, the devil meaning lies, non-truths, which substantiate their world.
That is just my belief, but I base it on actual observation of the facts I witness daily. And it’s gotten and is getting more extreme and bizarre. I feel frightened to think what will happen when some of what I see currently, in SF, is called “a great success” by the social engineers, then pushed onto unsuspecting populations across the US and thousands of miles away across the seas. They may not even see it coming, but it should be felt physically to those who will be affected by each piece of pre-tested evil social and political structure when it hits their shores, out of the blue, everyone blind to the source from where it has been first tested and honed to a fine art.
People are very “doped up” in SF and I see them daily, hear them talking about it, lauding one anti-depressant over the other and many of them ex-smokers. They have simply substituted the use and words like wellbutrin, chantrix, paxil or countless others, the way 30 years ago they’d have spoken about and used the words Marlboro, Winston or Lucky Strikes. The one has substituted for the others, but their eyes are truly glassy, “doped up” and should someone spot a smoker, even at a distance, quite a rile has to be made over it, by someone in the crowd, so that feeling of anti-smoking comaraderie becomes manifested and “all is well”, “normal”, the way it’s been packaged and presented, in the propaganda, which is inescapable. I am just relaying some facts, very common daily real life situations, as I have observed them.
People are very “doped up” in SF and I see them daily, hear them talking about it, lauding one anti-depressant over the other and many of them ex-smokers. They have simply substituted the use and words like wellbutrin, chantrix, paxil or countless others, the way 30 years ago they’d have spoken about and used the words Marlboro, Winston or Lucky Strikes. The one has substituted for the others, but their eyes are truly glassy, “doped up” and should someone spot a smoker, even at a distance, quite a rile has to be made over it, by someone in the crowd, so that feeling of anti-smoking comaraderie becomes manifested and “all is well”, “normal”, the way it’s been packaged and presented, in the propaganda, which is inescapable. I am just relaying some facts, very common daily real life situations, as I have observed them.
People are very “doped up” in SF
I’m not in the least bit surprised.
Frank
People are very “doped up” in SF
I’m not in the least bit surprised.
Frank