-Caveat Lector- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/578473/posts
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Spotlight on Montgomery County Culture/Society Source: Moscow Times Published: November 26, 2001 Author: Matt Bivens OLNEY, Maryland -- This column is usually advertised as written from Washington. But technically, I'm usually in the suburbs of Montgomery County, Maryland. Until this week, I thought, "Well, close enough," and simply datelined it Washington. But this was the week when Montgomery County decided anonymity wasn't good enough anymore. No, our county leaders have resolved to stand up and face -- no, seek out and demand -- international ridicule. On Tuesday, our County Council adopted new air quality standards under which, if the neighbors complain, a citizen can be fined up to $750 for ... smoking at home. As one County Council member explained to The Washington Post, "This does not say that you cannot smoke in your house. What it does say is that your smoke cannot cross property lines." Russians always used to ask me things like: Is it true Americans won't give their children a single penny after they turn 18? Is it true the police come to your home to make you stop smoking? Is it true feministki in black eyepatches and with knives clenched in their teeth have seized control of your government? I have always replied with a laugh that none of these things is even remotely true. And now, here we are. All for a "new" rule that in fact changes nothing. After all, in those rare cases where another home's cigarettes truly are an irritant -- say, in poorly ventilated apartment complexes -- tenants can already complain under general nuisance laws, which govern loud parties and other bad-neighbor problems. Montgomery County, a bedroom community for Washington professional workers, is one of the most affluent counties in the nation. Most people here, particularly those who bother to vote for or serve in county government, live in free-standing homes surrounded by a little lawn moat. Such people will never have to worry about cigarette smoke migrating to the neighbor's castle next door. Instead, this law exclusively regulates the behavior of the county's less-well-off service sector workers -- the dishwashers, the manicurists, the lawn-care men -- who live in apartments and townhouses. It's a classic case of do-gooders who are above their own medicine. Being fined for smoking at home would, at least, be of-a-piece with the national spirit these days. Every week the federal government brings in more state secrecy and expands arbitrary state police power. Attorney General John Ashcroft has decreed that law officers can now eavesdrop on conversations between lawyers and clients and has called for rounding up 5,000 immigrants who fit "a set of generic parameters" (?) -- a plan so dim and desperate sounding that local police chiefs are muttering in rebellion. Already we've got hundreds of such "generic parameter" detainees in jail. The government will neither charge them nor identify them nor even tell us how many there are. (In high school, I wrote a paper about this: It was known as Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's "Red Scare," the post-World War I detentions of thousands of suspected radicals. I thought it was ancient history.) So maybe there's a bright side to this don't-smoke-at-home nonsense. Often it's the local injustices that raise our ire. As word gets out about this one, perhaps it will remind us why Americans are suspicious of unchecked, unchallenged leadership. Not for nothing have we spent centuries of energy and passion trying to control government -- because the alternative is to have it control us instead. Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! Write to same address to be off lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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