Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

TERRY’S TIDBITS by Terry Gray

WEYCO FOLLOW –UP

In the January 31 Review I told you a little tale about Weyco and that company’s total disregard for personal freedoms.  To recap; Weyco requires that its employees take tests to determine if they are smokers and if they test positive, they fire them.  Employees are not allowed to smoke, period.  See:  NO WORK FOR ADDICTS.

I have some problems with this, as all Americans should. 

First I find it to be a sticky situation between the freedom for a business owner to run his business without interference and the right of employees to lead their own personal lives outside of work.  I guess in this small way I side with the employer.

For years now we have heard so much propaganda from anti-smoking groups that even they can’t keep up with their own utterances.  They stumble over themselves and rival groups, not unlike the hierarchy one finds in street gangs.  These thugs are no better and they have more money than street gangs.

One of the first things that a smoking ban supporter will tell you is that the health of employees must be protected.  When their stance is countered with the idea that employees who don’t like tobacco smoke can go work elsewhere, they say that employees have a right to work and they shouldn’t have to decide between their jobs and tobacco smoke.

Weyco has fired employees, not for smoking but for refusing to take a test to see if they have nicotine in their systems.  Where are the anti-smoking gurus in defending smokers’ rights to work?  To them it is fine to fire employees for being smokers but it isn’t fine for employees to leave their jobs by their own choosing when tobacco smoke bothers them.

We also have to consider another issue that anti-smoking groups will tell you, in keeping with their propagandist attitudes, is that secondary smoke gets in you and on you.  Secondary smoke poisons you from afar, like a mortar round from an unseen enemy.  It surprise attacks from draperies, car seats, and clothing, showing no mercy for life as we know it.  Given this “fact” can the fine folks at Weyco avow that anyone testing positive to nicotine is indeed a smoker?  According to the antis, there is no escape from secondary smoke and in fact the cotinine test has been used to determine what level of exposure non-smoking workers are subjected to when they work around smokers.  This “dangerous” level of exposure to non-smokers has been the centerpiece of smoking ban campaigns and has been just the tool needed to sway local and state governments to legislate smoking bans.

What if Lucy works at Flipco, a company with a policy against hiring or retaining smokers?  What if her husband smokes furiously at home?  What if Lucy works a second job at Frank’s Bar and breathes the secondary smoke that we are warned about?  Lucy is subjected to secondary smoke in most of her off-work activities and now her services are no longer needed at Flipco because Lucy fails a cotinine test.

This scenario isn’t far fetched, as any patriot will tell you.  But more importantly, it sets a precedent that will allow discrimination in the work place toward anyone who just doesn’t quite fit in.

UNBRIDLED TAXES

From Healthcare to roads, from computers to cigarettes, taxpayers all over the country are being blamed for and made to pay for the folly of our leaders.  “Unbridled Spirit” as a state slogan in Kentucky is going to be the “defining factor” in identifying our state. 

Who is bridled and who is unbridled?  Instead of a cost of $500,000 for a slogan change and all that it entails, we could have stood up to the feds and the anti-smoking groups and called ourselves, “Where the World Comes for Smokes” and made a bundle on selling cigarettes to freedom loving adults everywhere.  As our leaders spend with unbridled passion our citizens foot the bill for Blackberry loving Senators and Representatives who can’t even do their jobs and enact a budget.

Yes, I said blackberry loving.  We made the state fruit the blackberry.  I wonder how much that cost us.  But we are also picking up the $50,000 tab for our people in Frankfort to carry around Blackberry PDA’s, those little handheld computers.  For elected state officials that only work a few months a year, $50,000 is entirely too much money.  However, the $50,000 cost of the computers is just the crack in the dam.  Taxpayers now pay $600,000 a year so those same elected officials can have those Blackberries hooked up to the internet.  We are told this is saving us money.  HOW?

Kentucky isn’t alone in this total rip-off of taxpayers.  Connecticut Governor Rell is proposing several tax hikes, saying, “These are much needed improvements and we will have to pay for them.”  Who will have to pay for them?  Here is what she is proposing

:

·        A penny a gallon on gas with incremental raises to a total of 6 cents.

·        A $1 a trip surcharge on rail tickets between New Haven and New York.

·        A 6% tax on nursing home care.

·        A 74 cent per pack tax on cigarettes.

·        A 90% tax increase on cigars and smokeless tobacco.

·        A 15% tax increase on alcohol.

"Those are my tax increases. I won't run away from them. I had a $1.2 billion budget hole to close and I closed it with a lot of spending cuts and these few taxes," Rell whined.  Well gov, how did Connecticut get in such sad shape?  Did taxpayers err somehow?  Was there a need for Blackberries that caused the government to miss-plan what it could afford to spend? 

Taxes have gone up in Connecticut $900 million in the past 3 years. If these increases do get passed, it will bring that tax boost to 1.2 billion.

Indiana awards Donald Trump a casino contract.  A few days later Trump files bankruptcy.  Indiana whines.  Hey Hoosiers, The Donald knows how to make money.  I’m sure his bankruptcy is just a business maneuver.  You on the other hand know how to waste money.  You live on the backs of your taxpayers from whom you demand tribute and you can’t even spend this manna from heaven responsibly.  Shut up and let Donald do his thing.  

Hey, these are just 3 of our 50 of our glorious state governments.  We are only talking about 16.6% of our state governments.  Toss in the incompetence of the Federal government and all the little local tyrants and where does that leave us?  It leaves us holding the feedbag for government and stooping to their every whim.

666?

          The mark of the beast is coming.  Remember how Jews in Europe were tattooed with identification numbers and were later rounded up and slaughtered?  The U.S. House just passed a bill requiring national identification cards, which include drivers’ licenses.  If you don’t have a national I.D. you can be denied plane, train, and bus tickets, your state driving privileges, and even employment.

          No big deal you say?  Think again.  This is just the beginning of marking us for control purposes.  It is practically impossible to get a job, bank account, and other necessary things today without a social security number, even though a social security card cannot be used for identification.  This closes that gap.  In the beginning this new identification requirement will only make things inconvenient.  They can’t make it too hard at first because we sheeple will revolt.  So not having an I.D. will just mean that we stand in another line for those not complying until we eventually break down and COMPLY.  But after a period of time to get us used to this backward step for freedom, our jails will start housing those of us who tell the feds to shove it.  We’ll be branded as enemies of the state, or crazies and whisked off to some pseudo Soviet-like dungeon to live out the remainder of our days.

          Oh, you are just overreacting and being dramatic.  Of course I am, for right now.  But down the road somebody will say, “I remember reading about how this oppressive legislation would ruin our freedom as we know it.  Who was that guy?”

          The reason that valid state I.D’s are not longer considered “safe identification” is because 4 of the 911 hijackers had state I.D’s.  How did they get them?  Any breathing moron can get a state I.D.  How about making it a little tougher to get a state I.D. and stop penalizing 300 million Americans because 4 Arab terrorists fell through your lame security measures.

          Northup voted for the bill.  This is a republican measure and just an extension of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security.  This is meant to control us, regardless of who flew the damn planes into the towers.  The Democrats opposed it.  The true freedom loving Americans, the Libertarians, didn’t get a vote.  Let Annie know how you feel about this travesty.  Here’s an email form for her:  http://northup.house.gov/Contact.asp.

Here’s the link for the full story.  Of course clicking on it will automatically enter your name in Homeland Security’s database of possible terrorists or subversives.  Every time I access “subversive” sites or write emails to “fearless leaders” I feel all Thomas Painey.   http://news.com.com/House%20approves%20electronic%20ID%20cards/2100-1028_3-5571898.html?part=rss&tag=5568415&subj=news.1028.5

CHIEF WHITE ON WARPATH

Chief White fired 4 officers this week for beating a suspect a year and a half ago.  An attorney for two of the cops said that we have no idea how much these cops were subject of verbal abuse by the suspect and subsequently browbeat by investigators.  I ache deeply for these poor grown men.

These cops and many more cops still working the streets are armed thugs.  I’m sick to death of hearing about how tough their jobs are.  What I mostly hear is that they are shackled by the rules that guarantee our freedom.  Then I say that they aren’t shackled enough.

As far as I’m concerned this should have been done long ago.  But if White thinks this will appease the public for awhile he is sadly mistaken.  This just opens a door to the decent citizens of this and other communities stepping forward and saying enough.  White could help the situation in Louisville enormously by resigning and leaving the state.  He’s done enough damage in Louisville.

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest /  White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN