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| St. Rep. Karen Yarbrough |
Illinois State Representative Karen Yarbrough (D-Maywood) and Adolf Hitler are two kindred spirits --- anti-smoking fanatics who think it great public policy to employ the iron fist of the state to deny individuals the free choice to use tobacco.
You see, Liberal Obama-enthusiast, Yarbrough thought she was a great social innovator in promulgating the draconian statewide ban on smoking in 2008. But actually she was just lifting a page from the Nazi Fuhrer's playbook.
Adolf Hitler was a health nut who was a vegetarian and a teetotaler.
And Adolf Hitler was the world's first great anti-smoking crusader.
Ms. Yarbrough's Smoke-free Illinois Act prohibits smoking in virtually all public places and workplaces, including offices, theaters, museums, libraries, educational institutions, schools, commercial establishments, enclosed shopping centers and retail stores, restaurants, bars, private clubs and gaming facilities.
But she was simply plagiarising the original work of the famed Austrian-born mass murderer.
According to Robert N. Proctor in the British Medical Journal (No. 7070, Volume 313):
"The first modern, nationwide tobacco ban was imposed in Germany by the Nazi Party in every university, post office, military hospital and Nazi Party office, under the auspices of Dr. Karl Astel's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, created in 1941 under direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself.
Major anti-tobacco campaigns were widely promulgated by the Nazis until the demise of the regime in 1945.
German anti-tobacco policies accelerated towards the end of the 1930s,and by the early war years tobacco use had begun to decline.
The Luftwaffe banned smoking in 1938 and the post office did likewise.
Smoking was barred in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals,and rest homes.
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| Nazi Anti-Smoking Poster |
The NSDAP (National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty.(15)
The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Hermann Goering's decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches, and on brief off duty periods.(16)
Sixty of Germany's largest cities banned smoking on street cars in 1941.(17) Smoking was banned in air raid shelters-though some shelters reserved separate rooms for smokers.(18)
During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to pregnant women (and to all women below the age of 25) while restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers.(19)
From July 1943 it was illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public.(20) Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944, the initiative coming from Hitler himself,who was worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke.(21)
Nazi policies were heralded as marking"the beginning of the end" of tobacco use in Germany.(14)
Now Ms. Yarbrough is fighting tooth and nail to keep smoking out of Illinois casinos, despite evidence that her smoking ban is killing business there.
Der Fuhrer would be proud.
The outright hypocrisy of the "ban smoking now" crowd really frustrates me. If everyone really did quit smoking like they say they want, then they'd lose all that precious revenue they get from taxing cigarettes to hell and back.
ReplyDeleteWhat they really want is for people to have a 3-pack a day habit, so they can tax them to kingdom come. They just won't say that out loud.
But the reality is that every time they increase cigarette taxes -- as Quinn just did again -- their revenue declines. People start getting cigarettes from other states or quit, so they're killing the goose that lays the golden egg. What will they do then to pay for all those unfunded state employees and teachers pension plans?
ReplyDeleteI know - people go somewhere else or quit. They were getting them off the Internet, until IL started taxing that too.
ReplyDeleteIf they lowered the cig tax, they'd get a ton more revenue from it. They just won't see that lower taxes is a better choice, for everything.
Washington Post just reported yesterday that feds busted a big cigarette smuggling ring -- smuggling cigs from low-tax Virginia to high tax states. The Mafia was into cigarette smuggling in the 60s, until they discovered a better profit margin with heroin. Just watch, now they'll be going back into the lucrative cigarette smuggling market. Just like prohibition of the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteWell, when I meet a "Socialist" I always ask them if they are a Prefixed Socialist or a non-Prefixed Socialist.
ReplyDeleteWhen they just can't figure that out despite a very good indoctrination at a very good college, I have to clarify for them:
Are you an "Inter" National Socialist or just a plain old National Socialist. "Inter" is the prefix, duh, get it?
Those are the two varieties a socialist can choose from. One kills millions because of Race, the other kills even more millions because of Class.
In addition to being a Vegan, Anti-Smoking nutjob, Hitler was also quite notably the 1st GREEN politician. He decreed chimney scrubbers for factories, among ,many other industrial type "cleaning-up" decrees.
He decree Green-Belts in all urban planning.
He had Dr Porsche design the 1st GreenMobile,
the VW Bug, pretty much to his (Der Fuhrer's)
specifications.
He decreed that "Valerians Celticus" aka the
Speick plant was a protected species and not to be harvested or consumed.
Ol'Adi was way ahead of his times.
If he just hadn't had that "Jewish" Problem,
he would now occupy a high place in the Progressive Canon of historical figures to admire.
BTW - am way 2 old to have a clue about the "Comment As" pull-down, so I remain Anonymously yours
Thanks for that contribution, I wasn't aware of Hitler's environmentalism. Of course he had a lot easier job of enacting his green program with his fiat powers and efficient Gestapo -- no need to fool around with cap and trade credits and such nonsense.
ReplyDelete