Vote Tuesday!!!!

Why?

1) The City Council makes descions that effect us all, like smoking bans, and zoneing rules that can cause the demise of beloved venues like BLD.

2) School Boards can either make a possitive impact on the future of our communities, or they can steal all ou ttax money, and make local children so bitter and jaded that all the smart ones immediately move somehwere else as soon as they become adults.

3) Do you want to smoke in bars or not???

Need info???
I'll be handing out voter guides to anyone who wants one, just call me
614-301-3605

Bling!

As I remember, the people, not the city council, enacted the ban by voting for it. But then, again who cares about the will of the people...

So at what point in a "Democracy" do things get "settled" and thus no longer subject to a vote?

The City Council was basically forced to put it on the ballot in November after their hasty June decision was questioned and petitioned against by the people.

Today in the paper it said Tavares "bristled" at it being called a "smoking ban". Well, she would prefer more PC terminology to hide behind but "smoking ban" is really the proper term for it.

The past election also brings to mind these two other questionable issues:

Issue 1
W's 2004 "election"

The "majority" spoke on those issues supposedly, too.

.......I just hope we haven't all forgotten about the election fiasco this past November.

The only reason the smoking ban came to a popular vote is because smokers petitioned to put it on the ballot. City council passed the bill, and if it weren't for the people pettitioning, there would have been no public vote at all.

Theroretically never. Anyone ever hear of a little thing called abortion?? When is that debate gonna end?

Exactly.

Considering we voted on it in November, and it's actually been in affect for about three months, there's now way anyone can argue with any degree of certainty if the ban has had a negative or positive impact on bar business. This thing should have been allowed to go for a year, and then been reviewed. Unfortunately, drug addicts aren't so accomodating.

Hell, why don't we put all "laws" up for a "vote" everyday? That way, depending on my mood, I can get to decide on a daily basis whether, for example, I want to even the playing field with smokers, and make justifiable homocide include anyone who exhales smoke within five feet of a non-smoker. A little quid pro quo, I say. Really, I'd just be defending myself from an airborne bio-terror agent as I see it.

I do hope Issue 2 passes though, it will give me a good excuse to stop going to bars (again). How 'bout studying the economic impact of that...

These people do not agree and they are the ones who are directly effected.

http://www.barpac.org/members.htm

There are many familiar bar names on that list. Oldfield's for one, Bourbon Street, The Blues Station, Whiskey Dick's, etc..

Even though you may or may not play in these places, if there were no problems, I cannot imagine why any of these places would have their bars listed here.

Musicians are effected by the trickle down effect. Hard times, no frills (live music). The jukebox will suffice in time if this continues.

3 or 4 band bill places, in perhaps a few cases, hard times (at this particular time) could be considered questionable.

Bands who can carry the entire night for the 3-4 hour gigs that are just expected......consistent problems with draws.

Toledo waited a year and are happy to now see the turnaround, however there were many places that could not make it through the year without having to shut their doors.

I am sure you will have non-smoking bars to go to play your music if this passes if they see that their business indeed has benefited from being smoke-free.

There is always the option too of requesting that your shows be smoke-free shows if the amendment passes.
Smoke-free show requests have been honored before, so why not investigate that particular option for your group if you need to?

what say we set our sights a little higher and not compare ourselves to Toledo.

Tell them to open their books to the public. Get 3rd party auditors to review their books from February 1st to May 1st of 2005 in comparison to previous years from the same time period.

Second, prove there is a direct correlation between the smoking ban and any supposed loss of business.

ok, that's it.

you have besmirched the honor of the city of my youth.

i demand satisfaction.

you and me. pistols at dawn.

yes, go tim go. lldrumgirl, the minority can whine all they want, but the majority has spoken. and they will again. deal with the laws or get the fuck out of dodge.

oh, and no bar is gonna honor a request from a band of no smoking shows, not from some little local band. sorry, we're not all well known jazz moozishuns like yourself...

Are they paying you?


This issue 2 thing only turns a bad law into an incredible clusterfuck.

...except for the gay-marriage thing, right?

what right to i have to question that? just like my lack of right to question fuck-nut dumbass in the big white haus o' terror. i have no right to question it because th majority spoke. the majority might not be right, but oh fucking well. this country is a cesspool anymore anyways. fuckitall.

Well. anecdotally, there is the issue of the bar owner of a place near Liberty township who saw his business drop noticably. He dropped in one night on the nearest pub in Liberty Township (where there is no smoking law) and found several (I believe the number was nine, but I'm not certain) of his regulars. Every one of them told him that they were there because of the smoking legislation.

In some cases the law is clearly affecting businesses. I think it's a bit duplicitious to enact a law that affects unrelated bar owners/business people, but yet the cigarette companies can still make the damned things. I realize Columbus voters can't do anything about RJR, but why hurt the local small businessman?

Non-related note...Councilman Habash ran a commercial recently accusing 'special interests' of stirring all this up. Talk about a lousy use of a political catch-all phrase. I don't consider a guy trying to stay in business a 'special interest'.

Now, if we learned that RJR et al were financing BarPac, that'd be different.

It's hilarious how it's always "the other guy" who's the sinister "special interest".

Then it shouldn't really be any problem for BarPAC to back up the statements on its website, should it?

Special Interests are this year's Attorneys.

I heard special interests were all terrorists. anti-american bastards.

Well, there's the case I cited above, as well as several articles in the Dispatch I've seen in the last few months...you know, the 'heartstrings/feature/single-mom-as-a-waitress' type of thing.

I remember the article about that bar I mentioned above spceifically because it's about 1/2 mile from where I live, and I know one of the bartenders there. This was the place that decided not to enforce the ban and pay the fines as long as he could, because he felt that up to a point, it'd be more cost-effective than losing a large percentage of his customer base.

That's what you call anecdotal evidence. I want to see the "hundreds of people who lost their jobs." I want to see the "35% drop in business." I want to see my "increased tax burden."

Cookie, you have a point. But it's really beyond the means/scope of a local political organization/advocacy group to conduct such a complex economical analysis/study. Different bars, with different clientele, with different thresholds of tolerance (varying elasticities, etc...)

In light of that, I don't think relying on anecdotal evidence and/or a priori arguments is out of bounds.

Which is not to say the the BarPAC people are providing competent arguments.

If I may refer you to my original post...