Carol Schwartz, Superhero

I should apologize to my colleagues for gushing all day over what a cool, principled, admirable person DC City Councilmember Carol Schwartz is. But I won't. Never before in my life have I seen (and met!) a politician who successfully stood up against such demagoguery, such pandering, such sensational, disingenuous testimony with only the potent principle of human liberty. Mrs. Schwartz showed her savvy political sense as well, veritably chopping the legs out from a well-funded effort to socially engineer small business out of existence. If any of my readers live in DC, please, please send Councilwoman Schwartz an email and let her know how much you admire her stand against the "public health" nanny staters.

As Gene notes, we aren't out of the woods yet, but it appears that even in the District of Columbia, there may be a shred of dignity left for human freedom. There are many quarrels to be had with the social engineering that would take place through the tax credits, but, as I put it to my friends here at work, if I have to choose between social engineering through tax cuts and a frontal assault on free association and private behavior, gimme the tax credits.

Click "Continue Reading..." below to read a longer version of my testimony from the hearing yesterday. Too bad Mr. Fenty left far too early to defend his own legislation...

UPDATE: Jacob Grier flatters the boss and pulls for a holiday bonus. And Will Wilkinson uses his "flowery" prose style to describe his experience at the Council hearing.

Testimony of Justin T. Logan
Smokefree Workplaces Act of 2003
12/3/2003

I thank the members of the Council for allowing me to testify before them. My name is Justin Logan, and I am a resident of Montgomery County. I am here today to talk briefly about what smoking bans do, and whom they affect.

The proponents of the Smokefree Workplaces Act state plainly that no one is harmed by a ban on smoking. They cite long-term, macroeconomic data that indicates the hospitality and entertainment sector is not harmed by bans. Quite frankly, I don’t find much to quarrel with as regards that data. What it doesn’t do, however, is prove the claim that no person is harmed by smoking bans.

Smoking bans affect small, family-owned businesses more than large, corporate-run chains. While Applebee’s and Ruby Tuesday’s are still surviving in Montgomery County, locally owned restaurants such as the Corner Pub are going under. Small, family businesses without a pool of emergency capital live on the margins. Patti Howlin, proprietor of the Corner Pub for 33 years, was quoted in the Montgomery Gazette:

"Is it affecting me? I'm dying!" she said. "I'm minus $7,000 a week. I can't take a paycheck and I can't pay my daughter. I've been here 33 years, and I've never been in such dire straits. I've never been this desperate.”

"I think we'll be closed by January," she said. "In three days, I've lost my entire payroll. I've been in tears all this morning."

What do anti-smoking advocates say when confronted with such destruction? Doug Tipperman, a Montgomery County activist, replied thus:

"When I hear anecdotal claims, it drives me nuts, because that's what it is, anecdotal. Don't look at the anecdotal stuff. You really have to look at the science."

Mr. Tipperman’s remarks are unconscionable, but they adequately represent the tunnel vision of anti-smoking activists. They use long-term macroeconomic data to attempt to prove that no one is harmed. That can’t be done, since there are people who depend on short-term, microeconomic conditions for their survival. Though the claim about the sector as a whole seems to be true, it doesn’t prove that no one is harmed. If they’d taken the time to look into the effects of their Montgomery County ban, they would have noticed. Instead, they ran down to DC to share the benefits of their actions.

I am holding a photograph of my friend, Derrick Wiggins. I met Derrick when I was a waiter and he was a bartender. Derrick’s a stand-up guy, and a good bartender. I popped in to see my friend the other day, to see how things were going. When I mentioned the smoking ban, he shook his head. Business, he told me, was down somewhere between 30 and 50 percent, and his earnings were right down with them. I went back to see Derrick this past weekend, and I found out that he had lost his job. He said that the smoking ban, and the resulting drop in earnings were largely to blame.

Derrick had worked very hard to save up enough money to make a down payment on a house. He wanted to live the American dream, moving up the socioeconomic ladder through hard work and an honest living. Now, Derrick is unemployed, and is using his savings to live off while he tries to find a job. While it’s true to say that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, each anecdote is a human life, each of which is infinitely more valuable than the goal of any political special interest group.

Derrick is now the face of smoking bans. There are, and will be, many more Derricks out there. I ask you, please, when you close your eyes and try to envision what the smoking ban would be like, think of Derrick, and all of the Derricks that a ban would bring to Washington.

I have pity on Derrick, and you may, too. But passing a ban in DC to help Derrick regain some of his lost business is just the wrong way to go. Though the Montgomery County Council’s actions harmed him, they benefited the workers of Washington. I ask any of you, go to Chadwick’s in Friendship Heights around 11 or 12, any night of the week. It’s absolutely packed. It’s generating earnings, wages, and tax revenue for the District. I believe Councilwoman Schwartz had it just right when she said that “[w]e're not an island onto ourselves. I want [Montgomery County smokers] to come here.”

The only people that the DC Council is supposed to represent are the citizens of the District. The smokefree people move from municipality to municipality, and don’t have local interests at heart. By allowing owners, workers, and consumers to choose, the Council will benefit its constituents enormously. If someone wants desperately to work in foodservice, and has some extreme aversion to smoke, Smokefree DC has, on its website, a list of over 260 establishments to which one could apply. Surely some of them are hiring, and workers there can be assured, not even a wisp of smoke will cross their paths.

The smokefree people also assert that waiters and bartenders are behind this measure. Mike Ferens notwithstanding, that simply isn’t true. I had never heard of the “Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 25,” but I thought I ought to at least see who they were. And who are they? Where do their members work?

I have here a list of the 29 restaurants at which they have employees. Twenty-nine. 29 out of the thousands of restaurants in DC. This is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst. I don’t mean to be overly political, but one wonders whether the anti-smoking people might soon start calling cigarettes weapons of mass destruction.

The final point I’d like to make is simple. DC just recently was re-crowned the murder capital of the country, as well as ranking third in total violent crime. Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels are now roaming the city, because the police can’t effectively protect the District’s citizens. It’s entirely irresponsible to spend money to regulate small business out of existence when there is real crime, and there are real victims. The District’s budget needs to be used to protect innocent people from rape and murder, not to provide nannies for rich college kids in Adams Morgan.

Comments

[Gene]

Justin: absolutely kick ass testimony.

[elle mccarthy]

Way to go Justin! That's fabulous work.

[Justin]

Thanks to you both. This was authentically the most encouraging political process I've ever observed, and I was privileged to have been able to actually participate.

Also, I might add that Gene's and Julian's panel elicited positively effusive praise from the Honorable Councilwoman. And rightly so.

[Jerry Martin]

Great job, Justin! We're fighting the same battle out here in Wyoming. Carol Schwartz's work and your remarks help to give us really good ammo with which to fight the anti-smoking nazis! I am building a reference file on this subject, so I can fight back on a moment's notice. This sort of stuff really helps! Keep up the good work. And anybody out there that has a lead on really good stuff like this, especially as affects the business recipients of such a ban, please let me know.

[Celeste Jones]

My 16yr. old daughter thinks I should talk to you as we saw how you were being hammstringed, but we know you will rise above those tricks.

I have a case with OHR right now and I don't think something is right. I am African American Indian and I am having my civil rights stomped on constantly and we are getting very depressed on top of my already disabilities dealing with the Community Partnership.

I am being told in so many words that because I don't have a full blown physical disability that I don't have any rights under ADA even though I do receive disability. We have been left without a worker to help us locate housing that is physiologicaly better for my sweet and educated family.

Celeste Jones
202-425-7827