"You can't smoke here."

"And yet I seem to be managing it just fine."

Public roads that cross the campus? Sorry, the road and the easement (sidewalks etc) are technically not part of the campus.
So your policy means nothing there. Until smoking becomes illegal.

I don't smoke. I hate smoking. As a matter of fact, I'm allergic to smoke and don't want it even outdoors in a path that I want to cross because I've been all but incapacitated by smoke.

Still, this is way over the line. It's wrong. As long as they are bothering someone else, let them be - not even e-cigs? Those don't emit smoke or leave an unpleasant odor.

Go away nanny!

Jen,

I disdain smoking, but luckily I'm not allergic to it. One would think that folks with a condition that is harmed by actual smoking would prefer to promote E-cigs as a replacement product to actual cigarettes.

The problem with the NannyState? it's like the Terminator:

Listen, and understand! That NannyState is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are perfectly safe.

something Kyle Reese might have said.

Knowing the second-rate thugs at Michigan State and their inferiority complex as True Leftists since the Port Huron Statement, they probably thought this would be a great way to catch "gun-toting Trump voters" who were looking to get to I-96 via Trowbridge to escape to Fowlerville, but they're going to just wind up harassing dope smoking Bernie Kids headed into the Green Door.

They don't even bother to lie about it anymore - they just come right out and tell us that this law will be selectively enforced.

Any law that is sold to the voters on the promise that it won't be enforced very much is automatically very dangerous to the liberty of the individual - because you just can't know whether what you do will be 'lawful' one day and 'unlawful' the next. What is lawful stops being a matter of what the law says, and becomes a matter of what the enforcers decide they want it to be that day, for that person. This is a tyrant's charter.

This ordinance will be quickly applied by the MSU campus police, and the East Lansing PD, as simply another pretext for stopping motorists and pedestrians in order to try and search their persons and vehicles, or to harass and intimidate individuals for any reason, or no reason. Especially out-of-towners, who may drive through East Lansing with no idea (and no way to know) that what they are doing - smoking in their car - suddenly went from being lawful on Hagadorn North of Grand River, to being unlawful on Hagadorn South of Grand River. And double-especially out-of-towners with dark skin.

It's just a terrible idea, on so many levels, and it proves just how wonderfully out-of-touch groups like the MSU Trustees are from the real world. They never, ever look at ideas like this from the viewpoint of unintended consequences. This ordinance will end up being the basis upon which a young African-American driver in East Lansing is pulled over, arrested, beaten and jailed. Or maybe worse. Do they just not think about how incredibly-stupid it is to send out armed men to selectively-enforce non-smoking rules?

llater,

llamas

There were a bunch of hysterical news stories last night about recent deaths on amusement park rides. The deaths are tragic -- don't get me wrong on that -- but I am disgusted at ruling-class and media types that are trying to exploit it for a government power grab. "We must have federal regulation of amusement park rides to KEEP YOUR KIDS SAFE!!!!!!2!!!" We all know how this ends: county fairs and small amusement parks are put out of business, rides are made tamer, and the big amusement-park entertainment companies become cartelized, with a revolving door of regulators, lobbyists, and "compliance officers". Don't let a crisis go to waste.

Never trust someone who wants to pass a draconian law and then insists that it won't be enforced strictly. New Jersey (which figures) is about to pass a law that will prohibit a driver from listening to music, having a conversation with a passenger, or keeping an eye on kids in the back seat. If you want to roll your windows up or down, you'll have to pull over first. When this is pointed out to them, they insist that "we'd never enforce the law like that! We'd only use it to arrest people who are texting while they drive." But that's not what the law says. This way tyranny lies.

Hillary wants to be Amy's mama, and Amy wants to let her.

A bill under consideration in the state Legislature calls to prohibit "any activity unrelated to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle on a public road or highway." That means no cup of coffee for those sitting in traffic, no munching on that breakfast burrito, no time to groom. (No, the law does not target coffee verbatim.)

The bill is meant to target distracted driving, which plays a role in thousands of fatal crashes in the country each year. At least 3,179 fatal crashes were attributed to distracted driving in 2014, according to the state's Division of Highway Traffic Safety website. Distracted driving played a role in nearly 800,000 crashes between 2010 and 2014.

This is government in a nutshell.

In the name of "fairness," the driver's license is so easy to get that, as Dave Barry put it:

"Many people who lack the judgment and/or physical skills needed to safely microwave a burrito are deemed qualified by the state ... to operate a motor vehicle."

Everyone gets a license - and, because most of the licensed are not physically and mentally qualified to operate a 3,500 lb chunk of motorized metal at high speed, the state now needs to micromanage their driving.

We need to do something similar to what Germany does. There, a driver's license is difficult to get and easy to lose. Make the license applicant prove he or she knows what they're getting into and appreciates the responsibility with which they're begin entrusted. That does mean fewer poor people will qualify as they cannot afford to practice or take lessons, but they're also the ones more likely to drive without a valid license or insurance, so....

In a published letter to his teenaged daughter, Barry writes:

"My point, Sophie, is that just because the state of Florida thinks you can drive a car, that doesn’t mean you actually can drive a car. As far as I can tell after three decades on the roads of Florida, there isn’t anybody that the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles doesn’t think can drive a car. I cannot imagine what you would have to do to fail the driving test here."

Having lived in North Florida for 15 years (from grade school to post-college), I concur with Barry's negative evaluation of the Florida DMV's ability to evaluate future drivers.

"So here we are, this land of pioneers and entrepreneurs -- and here's what we're becoming: A bunch of overgrown children with government and college trustees as our nanny."

Posted by commenter "Fiat_Lux" on the Augusta Chronicle Web site:
----------
"People in America think that freedom means being able to do whatever you like that isn't against the law.

Freedom actually is the unrestrained opportunity to choose and do what is right and good without fear of persecution. You can't have genuine freedom if you don't have a moral and responsible citizenry.

Without that kind of people making up the nation, without goodness and at least basic agreement about what constitutes moral behavior as the standards for a society of people, laws must be put in place and enforced to make people do what their consciences and good judgement should have led them to do on their own.

It's amazing to under 30s-40s that we once lived that way among one another pretty much everywhere in this country. And it's incredibly sad that we just let it slip away by trying to be so "nice" and not make anyone feel bad for not living up to the basic standards of decency, morality and kindliness. We just let it go.

And look what kind of people we live among now."
-----------
And THAT is why everyone thinks LAWS must regulate everything we do.

I'm sorry but since when does a business, and that is what a college is, get to pass laws about what citizens can or can not do on public property?

Can a christian bakery pass an ordinance banning public displays of affection within 500 yards of their establishment?

Does a Wal Mart in a shopping complex get to say you cant transport purchases from other stores thru the section of the communal parking lot in front of their store?

No? Then why the fuck does this BUSINESS get to have cops and get to tell people who arent their customers what they can and cant do on PUBLIC land?

Better take those "Trump" bumper stickers off.

Dave Barry wrote: "My point, Sophie, is that just because the state of Florida thinks you can drive a car, that doesn’t mean you actually can drive a car."

And given that Barry's son got hit by a car when he was on a BICYCLE (I admit he may have been younger than 16 at the time - I don't remember), it's time to remind ourselves, yet again, of a few things. From January, here's what I said:

In the meantime, as I've mentioned, the trouble with keeping the driving age at 16 (whether we're also talking about the drinking age or not) is that driving laws were written about a century ago. (Plenty of states had no driving laws at all in the pre-WWI years.) What's the problem? Namely, neither cars nor roads allowed for high speeds back then, and teens, especially, weren't given free reign to drive around for fun and waste precious gas money, as opposed to going on important errands for their parents (as in farming communities). Thus, had we had the same fast cars and smooth roads a century ago that we have today, the driving age would very likely be at least 18, if not higher, when you think about it.

In the same vein, we didn't used to have child labor laws or mandatory schooling laws, but there were obviously very good reasons for that to change. Why not change the driving age too? Take a look at the fatality rates for teens sometime, even when they're driving sober. If driving deaths are now lower than #5 on the list of causes of death for teens, I'll be very surprised. (Mind you, that's when a teen is DRIVING, not when a teen is riding with an adult driver.)

lenona at January 29, 2016 9:36 AM

OK, found it. It's from 2010. Main surprise: There's no mention of drugs or alcohol on this page. Granted, they don't make it clear who's likely to be driving either.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db37.htm

Quote:

•An average of 16,375 teenagers 12-19 years died in the United States every year from 1999 to 2006. This is less than 1 percent of all deaths that occur every year in the United States.

•The five leading causes of death among teenagers are Accidents (unintentional injuries), homicide, suicide, cancer, and heart disease. Accidents account for nearly one-half of all teenage deaths.

•As a category of accidents, motor vehicle fatality is the leading cause of death to teenagers, representing over one-third of all deaths.

•Among teenagers, non-Hispanic black males have the highest death rate (94.1 deaths per 100,000 population).

•Homicide is the leading cause of death for non-Hispanic black male teenagers. For all other groups, accident is the leading cause.

And, from 2014:

If cars and roads allowed for speeds of 1,000 m.p.h., would we allow teens to get their licenses? I would hope not.

We do have to distinguish between nanny-state rules and those which prohibit people from putting others (rather than just themselves) at risk. The latter are a legitimate function of government, though of course reasonable people can disagree about specific applications.

Id argue that with power steering and automatic transmission we teach kids driving EVEN EARLIER, so they learn the skills to control a car BEFORE they become hormonal teenagers

Car and Driver had a proposal that they tried to float in New York back in the 1970s. It would divide licenses into two categories, "city" and "highway". City licenses would be good for driving around town, and on secondary roads with a speed limit of up to 50 MPH. To get on an Interstate, you'd need a highway license. Pretty much anyone would be allowed a city license, but to get a highway license, you'd have to pass a fairly rigorous test, including demonstrating that you could drive a car on a skid pad at a certain speed without spinning out.

Was this a good idea? Not sure. I would guess that not very many people would be able to pass the highway test. One the one hand, that would be a good thing because it would probably make the highways safer. But on the other hand, it smacks of a certain kind of elitism. And anyway, the stats show that interstate highways don't actually account for a large percentage of automotive fatalities.

And speaking of preventing accidents the old-fashioned way (when you're the parent of a teen driver, that is):

http://www.news-sentinel.com/living/Parenting-column---Teen-proofed--cars-are-not-best-option-for-new-drivers

It's about the hazards of "smart cars."

Excerpts:

"...Do not buy your teenager a Chevy Malibu that’s been supposedly teen-proofed. Said automobile is not likely to — as the headline on Nickel’s article promised — 'steer young motorists away from dangerous distractions.' More likely, a teen driver will think that the automated protections built into said automobile mean he/she does not need to pay diligent attention to what is going on around him...

"...I know how teenagers think. For one thing, they are highly prone to taking things literally. A parent who buys a smart-car for a teen isn’t going to be able to explain both that the car’s technology is there to prevent an accident and that the technology is no reason not to be paying diligent attention at all times. A teen is going to hear 'We bought this car for you because it has technology that will prevent an accident.' That probably is not, by the way, what his parents said. That’s what he heard his parents say.

"So, he gets behind the wheel of his new Malibu and something bad happens. Maybe he says to his friends, 'Hey! Watch this!' And instead of being contrite, he’s indignant. It’s the car’s fault! That’s how teenagers think. Nothing is their fault.

"So when it comes to buying a car for a teenager, buy stupid. The stupider the car, the smarter the teen driver. And vice versa. Come to think of it, of every ten stories I hear about teen drivers wrecking cars, nine of them are new cars. Buy your teen a used car. At least 10 years old. Used cars are no fun to drive. That’s the point."

My little Subaru (that I bought cheap but new) has just had its 20th birthday. Can't agree with you more Lenona. No ABS, let alone any of the new stuff.