[HOSTED.AP.ORG] The cartons of Marlboros, cans of Skoal and packs of Swisher Sweets are hard to miss stacked near the entrance of Vincent's Country Store, but maybe not for much longer: All tobacco products could become contraband if local health officials get their way.
This sleepy central Massachusetts town of 7,700 has become an improbable battleground in America's tobacco wars. On Wednesday, the Board of Health will hear public comment on a proposed regulation that could make Westminster the first municipality in the United States to ban sales of all tobacco products within town lines.
"To my knowledge, it would be the first in the nation to enact a total ban," said Thomas Carr, director of national policy at the American Lung Association. "We commend the town for doing it."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
So then the turn around and legalize smoking pot?
#3
According to my pulmonologist, the problem with cigarettes is the combustion products, not the nicotine. So there is no real reason to ban the e-cigs, except to assert power.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/10/2014 9:23 Comments ||
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#4
Try enforcing the bans on heroin and meth first.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/10/2014 11:19 Comments ||
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#5
In other words, the gas stations just outside the town's borders are going to be doing gangbuster business. Has the town government considered the cost of hiring extra police to sit outside the parking lots, waiting to follow home those who bought cigarettes there to see if they are township residents engaging in the smuggling of contraband? Here in Cincinnati people go just across the river to Kentucky to buy alcohol and such, but they're easy enough to pick out by the state license plate; in Massachusetts the police won't have that simple cue, and there are lots of things to buy at gas stations other than cigarettes.
#6
tw, I don't think they are banning the possession of tobacco (yet). They are just banning the sale of tobacco in town. This would have some effect in a large city like New York, where it is difficult to get out of town. In a small town, people will just drive the two miles to get tobacco.
The reason cops track out of state liquor purchases is that the state loses revenue.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/10/2014 12:06 Comments ||
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#7
What about the fact that adults do not need the government too tell them everything they can ingest into their body.
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2014 15:59 Comments ||
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#3
Common Core math preview.
or maybe the 27/6 only works in some of the 57 states.
Or maybe she is just an idiot applying to all the villages that may have an opening....
Best election assessment I've seen. This is only the first third or so. [FRONTPAGEMAG] There are really two Democratic parties.
One is the old corrupt party of thieves and crooks. Its politicians, black and white, are the products of political machines. They believe in absolutely nothing. They can go from being Dixiecrats to crying racism, from running on family values to pushing gay marriage and the War on Women.
They will say absolutely anything to get elected.
Cunning, but not bright, they are able campaigners. Reformers underestimate them at their own peril because they are determined to win at all costs.
The other Democratic Party is progressive. Its members are radical leftists working within the system. They are natural technocrats and their agendas are full of big projects. They function as community organizers, radicalizing and transforming neighborhoods, cities, states and even the country.
They want to win, but it's a subset of their bigger agenda. Their goal is to transform the country. If they can do that by winning elections, they'll win them. But if they can't, they'll still follow their agenda.
Sometimes the two Democratic parties blend together really well. Bill Clinton ...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of is... combined the good ol' boy corruption and radical leftist politics of both parties into one package. The secret to his success was that he understood that most Democrats, voters or politicians, didn't care about his politics, they wanted more practical things. He made sure that his leftist radicalism played second fiddle to their corruption.
Bill Clinton convinced old Dems that he was their man first. Obama stopped pretending to be anything but a hard core progressive.
The 2014 election was a collision course between the two Democratic parties. The aides and staffers spilling dirt into the pages of the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , the Washington Post and Politico reveal that the crackup had been coming for some time now. Now the two Democratic parties are coming apart.
Reid is blaming Obama. The White House is blaming Reid. This isn't just a showdown between two arrogant men. It's a battle between two ideas of what the Democratic Party should be.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
So, let's not do anything to inhibit the circular firing squad.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/10/2014 7:50 Comments ||
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#2
ed in Texas, inhibit???? Hell, we should be making sure they don't run out of ammo!!
#3
Let them thin their own herd. Should they go down losing power, we can effect real justice, which will consist of millions of former government employees and welfare recipients forced to choose between hard manual labor with anxiety about being fired at a much lower income than they have now, or starving.
Not soon enough.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/10/2014 8:49 Comments ||
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#4
Sounds kinda like the difference between the RINOs and the Tea Party.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/10/2014 11:25 Comments ||
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[WEEKLYSTANDARD] President B.O. and Vice President Biden might not see eye-to-eye on immigration strategy. A hint of an apparent disagreement was on display during Obama's lunch with congressional leaders on Friday at the White House.
"The meeting was tense at times, according to a senior House Republican aide. The aide was not authorized to describe the back-and-forth publicly by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity," the News Agency that Dare Not be Named reports.
"Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid ... the charismatic senator-for-life from Nevada, currently majority leader ... , about to lose his grip on the upper chamber, barely said a word. The aide said at one point as House Speaker John It is not pronounced 'Boner!' Boehner ... the occasionally weepy leader of House Republicans... was making an argument on immigration, Obama responded that his patience was running out and Vice President Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body... interrupted to ask how long Republicans needed. Obama angrily cut Biden off, the aide said."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2014 00:00 ||
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Democratic congressional aides said the president wasn’t cutting off Mr. Biden, who was making a rhetorical point that Republicans refused to commit to bringing an immigration bill to the floor by a specific time.
Of course. When you have to lie, you done wrong.
When you think I believe your lie, it tells me what you think of me.
[WASHINGTONTIMES] President B.O. said Sunday that he plans to proceed with an executive order to ease immigration laws before the end of the year, despite dire warnings from Republican leaders that it will damage his relationship with the new GOP-run Congress.
Mr. Obama said that he's waited a year for the Republican-run House to act on the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Democrat-run Senate, and he can't wait any longer to address the country's immigration problems.
"I'd prefer and still prefer to see it done through Congress. But every day that I wait, we're misallocating resources, we're deporting people that shouldn't be deported, we're not deporting folks that are dangerous and need to be deported," Mr. Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Sign all you wish, sir. Just remember that the Republicans shall soon control the $ to buy your ink.
#3
O has thrown down the gauntlet. He needs to be smacked down by the pubs or the pubs are finished.
The voters have made it clear that they do not want business as usual. O is flying in the face of the voters. The question is: will Congress follow the wishes of the people or not?
Stop O's little executive action end run and he is finished. He can play golf for the next two years and that will be fine.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/10/2014 12:12 Comments ||
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#4
Ditto AP. The 'folks' are finished with their little experiment in socialism.
[NEWREPUBLIC] Not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Georgia Congressman John Barrow earned his place in history when he lost his reelection campaign to Republican Rick Allen by almost 10 points--a peculiar place he undoubtedly didn't want. Barrow, a five-term Democratic incumbent with a conservative voting record that earned him endorsements from both the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce, was the last white Democrat in Congress from the Deep South.
This fact has occasioned some eloquent obituaries for that most endangered of political species, which is on the verge of extinction. Not only will there be no white Southern Democrats left in the House come January, but it's a good bet there won't be any white Southern Democrats in the Senate either (Mary Landrieu is likely to lose in the Louisiana run-off next month). Throw in the election of South Carolina's Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate and, as The New Yorker's Nicholas Thompson pointed out on Twitter, "there are now more black Republicans than white Democrats from the Deep South."
Much as this is a problem for white southern Democrats, it's a crisis for black ones. That's because blacks in the South--who, notwithstanding the very compelling counter-example of Tim Scott, are almost invariably Democrats--have for decades relied on coalitions with white Democrats to increase their political power. Lacking white politicians with whom they can build coalitions, black politicians are increasingly rendered powerless. The situation for southern black Democrats has only grown more dire after Tuesday's midterms. Here's the problem: Blacks have come to make up the most important voting bloc within the Dem world. They make up 13 percent or thereabouts of the nation's population. You can't go around calling everybody in sight a racist and then expect them to vote with you. If I'm a racist no matter what I do, I'll do as I damned well please, which won't be supporting black candidates simply because they're black. I think we all heard Michelle Antoinette telling blacks to vote the color, not the candidate. She's not the only one, though I'll admit she put it more bluntly than most.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2014 00:00 ||
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#5
Barrow, a five-term Democratic incumbent with a conservative voting record that earned him endorsements from both the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce, was the last white Democrat in Congress from the Deep South.
I'll wager he didn't get any support from the DNC either.
#7
E&W Coast dems have really not caught on to black voters in the south. They actually hold pretty close to their religious beliefs, which contradict the current LGBT trends. They [southern blacks] don't cotton to the illegal immigration either.
#8
blacks have been taken for granted for so long they're being thrown under the bus for the illegals vote
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2014 11:22 Comments ||
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#9
I hope that blacks are beginning to realize that they are being used by the dem party like cheap tricks.
A rise in consciousness will cause blacks to ask of people like O, Sharpton, Jackson, et al, "Who elected YOU as leader of this outfit?"
Dems keep thumping the race card, with little results. I will vote for the man or the woman as an individual with the values that IMHO best represent this country as a whole. I do not see Dems or Pubs living up to this.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/10/2014 12:19 Comments ||
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#10
For a Democrat, he was pretty conservative. He had to be, in order to get the sliver of the white vote (to accompany the 90% of the black vote*) necessary to win elections. Among GOP legislators, Barrow was more conservative than Lisa Murkowski and John Hoeven. That's about it.
* Vital for Democrats in Southern elections because Southern states have the most blacks as a % of the population.
#4
I haven't paid a lot of attention to the net neutrality issue but remember reading some very negative things years ago.
By nature I am very skeptical of gov't. intervention/regulation of anything. One of my main concerns is the hand-off of net regulation to the UN via the FCC.
What is the 'burgerian view on NN and the FCC position?
#7
Well, crap. That cements it as a partisan issue.
Net neutrality should not be a partisan issue! The only people who are against it are the ISPs and large organizations who can cut good deals with them.
Net neutrality means that Comcast can't charge Netflix more for their movie packets, thereby favoring their own offerings.
Classifying the ISPs as common carriers recognizes that they hold a de facto monopoly in most areas and should not be able to use that advantage to the detriment of the consumers.
It means that they cannot do deep packet inspection and charge more for certain types of traffic.
I would like to hear substantive, non-ideological reasons why you guys think that net neutrality is a bad idea.
#10
"I would like to hear substantive, non-ideological reasons why you guys think that net neutrality is a bad idea."
Challenge accepted: Because attempts to nullify the law of supply and demand never work.
Posted by: regular joe ||
11/10/2014 15:16 Comments ||
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#11
KBK, a simple law would suffice for what you say, I understand they are in the process of creating beaurocracy to enforce. That means ongoing meddling.
I suspect there will be a lot of questions and hassling for conservative leaning websites come 2016 if this goes through.
Business that have a web server (at the moment private property) will have to allow federal goons access to that property in order to go with the flow.
Hardware and Software
ISP's will not be free to innovate, hardware or software, without government approval.
Obamacare Web Site
Controlled by the bastard that cant even get his crap right.
#14
I predict an 'email stamp' for just .0001 cents but you must have one or email will not be sent.
Nah, Airandee. Sending will be free. Recipients will pay .0001 cents. Whether they open it or not, if it hits their in-box they pay. .0003 cents for political e-mail.
#15
Besides the tax they will just cut out what they want too like China, pakistain and turkey
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2014 20:03 Comments ||
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#16
Here are Obama's bullets. Do you guys disagree?
1. No blocking. If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business.
2. No throttling. Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences.
3. Increased transparency. The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment. So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld, and if necessary to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet.
4. No paid prioritization. Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.
=====
I haven't been able to run a mail server at my house for years - I have to run it on a remote server, because my ISP views me as just a consumer, and blocks it. That's an example of non-net neutrality.
Laws that regulate monopolies do work.
Let the ISPs charge by the packet and force them to open their systems to all comers, just as the common carrier regulations forced AT&T to open their lines to smaller competitors and ISPs. That's how the internet got going in the first place.
#17
But internet is not a monopoly. I have had two services for a number of years, and recently dropped one for poor performance. And there are at least two more that I could contract to provide my service were I so inclined.
#18
KBK: Part of the problem is, I'm not sure those are even Obama's bullets, nor that Obama really agrees with them if they are, or even if he did, that he would not abuse the power to enforce them.
#22
Right now the common carrier rules apply to servers hardware and the network hardware. Net Neutrality proposes to apply the same rules for content or for a product offered by the ISPs. Making the software and content subject to regulation is a violation of the first amendment; it is prior restraint written in bold black letters.
Net Neutrality also concerns the "last mile", whether ISPs can dictate what goes on in their own networks.
Right now, ISPs do throttle network traffic because they oversell their services. Net neutrality will dictate how ISPs deal with their customers, and will likely raise internet access for everyone.
"We applaud both the White House and the FCC's efforts to keep the Internet open and free,” Netflix said in a statement. “Strong net neutrality rules will ensure Internet service providers don't abuse their gatekeeper power by imposing tolls to reach their customers or establishing paid fast lanes. Consumers should decide winners and losers on the Internet, not broadband companies."
Netflix has been urging the FCC to pursue “stronger” network neutrality rules following recent paid interconnection deals with Comcast, Verizon Communications, AT&T and Time Warner Cable (Bright House Networks is also benefiting from the TWC/Netflix peering deal).
“We feel the actions called for by the White House are inconsistent with decades of legal precedent as well as Congressional intent," said Cicconi [AT&T] in a statement. "Moreover, if the government were going to make such a momentous decision as regulating the entire Internet like a public utility, that decision is more properly made by the Congress and not by unelected regulators without any public record to support the change in regulation. If the FCC puts such rules in place, we would expect to participate in a legal challenge to such action.”
#25
Pay for what you get and get what you pay for. You want guaranteed high bandwidth - pay for it. You need lowest costs - get a discount for throttleability.
If this law would DO that, I'd be fine with it. But I don't trust the b@st@rds.
"If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor"
"If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous. And there's no place for it," Obama told reporters.
need I go on?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2014 20:59 Comments ||
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The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee sent a letter to the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) on Monday, demanding answers about the origins of the nearly $1 million taxpayer-funded project to track “misinformation” on Twitter.
The Truthy project, being conducted by researchers at Indiana University, is under investigation for targeting political commentary on Twitter. The project monitors “suspicious memes,” “false and misleading ideas,” and “hate speech,” with a goal of one day being able to automatically detect false rumors on the social media platform.
The web service has been used to track tweets using hashtags such as #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter), and was successful in getting accounts associated with conservatives suspended, according to a 2012 book co-authored by the project’s lead researcher, Filippo Menczer, a professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University.
Menczer has also said that Truthy monitored tweets using #p2 (Progressive 2.0), but did not discuss any examples of getting liberal accounts suspended in his book.
“The Committee and taxpayers deserve to know how NSF decided to award a large grant for a project that proposed to develop standards for online political speech and to apply those standards through development of a website that targeted conservative political comments,” wrote Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) in a letter to NSF Director France Cordova.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2014 21:15 Comments ||
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This is not about content, it's precisely not about content! If Washington tries to make it about content, it's not net neutrality (and that legislation must be blocked).
#29
If Obama likes it - it's all about content, crony payoffs and campaign $, partisan censorship and ideologue tests
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2014 22:04 Comments ||
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#30
It is about content. I worked on a telemedicine project to deliver medical services to our troops in Bosnia years ago. At that point we could send (big-big-big) x-ray images through the internet back to doctors in the states, but could not send timely messages to enable robot surgery, because of the teleconference bandwidth needs of the leadership. Net-neutrality is what we had then and have now.
There are reasons when some traffic is more important than other traffic (e.g. medicine, utility system management, air traffic control), but netflix vs time-warner isn't one of those.
I am not saying that this is a great argument for prioritizing traffic on the public internet, I am saying please think about this problem carefully before forcing critical services onto small localized private networks.
#31
Last mile should be a utility - same as in Texas. Pay one company as a regulated utility to deliver the power and maintain the last ile and distribution infrastructure. Heavily regulated, etc.
Pay another for the actual electricity - or in this case the bandwidth and connectivity.
In a newly surfaced video, one of Obamacare’s architects admits a “lack of transparency” helped the Obama administration and congressional Democrats pass the Affordable Care Act. The conservative group American Commitment posted Jonathan Gruber’s remarks, reportedly from an Oct. 17, 2013, event, on YouTube.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” says the MIT economist who helped write Obamacare. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
UPDATE: Shortly after people began drawing attention to the deleted video, a new video of the event was uploaded and embedded on the conference page. U Penn has still not commented publicly on why the original video was deleted.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2014 21:04 Comments ||
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[Daily Caller] President Champ's Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch said that voter ID laws are meant to reverse Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s accomplishments and promised that DOJ lawsuits against "Deep South" states with voter ID laws will continue.
Lynch was nominated two days after President Champ's post-midterm election White House meeting with Al Sharpton, who previously revealed that he was working with the White House on choosing Holder's replacement. Lynch was a U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn and prosecutor on the Abner Louima assault case against New York police officers. Lynch met with Sharpton and the wife of a man allegedly brutalized by police officers, in her Brooklyn office on August 21. Related: Did Al Sharpton just pick the next Attorney General ? Mystery on Lynch quickly solved.
#1
President Champ’s Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch said that voter ID laws are meant to reverse Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s accomplishments
If limiting voting to one vote per living eligible resident means it will "undo" Dr. King's work, I'm OK with this. Maybe we aren't as "far along" as Al would have us believe.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[HOSTED.AP.ORG] The cartons of Marlboros, cans of Skoal and packs of Swisher Sweets are hard to miss stacked near the entrance of Vincent's Country Store, but maybe not for much longer: All tobacco products could become contraband if local health officials get their way.
[FRONTPAGEMAG] There are really two Democratic parties.
Harry Reid
Joe 
[WASHINGTONTIMES] 
[NEWREPUBLIC] Not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Georgia Congressman John Barrow earned his place in history when he lost his reelection campaign to Republican Rick Allen by almost 10 points--a peculiar place he undoubtedly didn't want. Barrow, a five-term Democratic incumbent with a conservative voting record that earned him endorsements from both the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce, was the last white Democrat in Congress from the Deep South.
