OT Brand new California high school to sit empty.

[Leon]

The reason is apparently no money. I lay odds that there were way too many "may cause cancer in California" labels on every thing.

[RonB]

years.

But what the hell is the government doing with this current campaign to put morbid photos on cigarette packs? Do our legislators have nothing to do? If people want to smoke themselves to death it is their business - theirs alone. Ditto drinking.

This BS of regulating stuff like this is taking energy away from fixing our country!!

[DGDevin]

I've had no problem in the past with the govt. making it illegal to smoke in places like airliners, theatres, restaurants and so on (I really don't miss that eye-watering stench in every public place). But this latest campaign is just pointless, anyone who hasn't heard the message by now is past saving. Anti-smoking has become a lobby and an industry in its own right, self-sustaining beyond the point of common sense. So long as smokers are prevented from exhaling toxic smoke around non-smokers I figure that's the extent of the government's legitimate interest in the issue.

[J. Clarke]

Some government employee was paid to make those labels. He clearly is excess to requirements and should be either removed from the payroll or inducted into the Army and sent to Afghanistan where he might do something useful.

[Bill]

Yep, I know someone who, over the course of recent months, lost a good job, retirement, house, and spouse over Vokda, or whatever was handy. I wouldn't call it drinking though, I would call it alcoholism--there was nothing social about the mechanism. They are about

4 weeks sober (record of 3 months)--most recent treatment cost: tens of thousands.

[Leon]

The problem with letting the idiots continue to smoke is that it costs you and I. We pay for health insurance and much more than our share because of the smokers. Let the insurance companies price accordingly, that should be enough of a persuasion to drop the habit.

[EXT]

How can you fix the country, when government and major corporations shipped all their manufacturing overseas. Everyone is fooling themselves when they talk of creating jobs. There are next to none to make, the Chinese and Indians got them all. US has to emulate England and Europe, they lost much of their manufacturing in the 1950s and 1960s --- the jobs crossed the Atlantic and went to the US, now they have crossed the Pacific and left the US. England and Europe had to change the way they did business and to concentrate on high quality manufacturing and leave the cheap crap to the Asians.

[J. Clarke]

I've got no problem with letting the insurance companies price accordingly, but pre-Obamacare I thought they did price accordingly.

[Ed Pawlowski]

"J. Clarke" wrote

Perhaps some do, but our group policy at work does not differentiate.

[Leon]

Purchased as an individual you do get penalized for bad habits but for those that are on a group plan or have insurance through their employer every one is treated the same, they all technically pitch in to carry the slacker, so to speak.

[HeyBub]

Lower taxes.

Yep, the U.S. has the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the civilized world. Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago(!) to escape the obscene Washington state taxes, it's no wonder that many companies would shift their activities to a more friendly tax jurisdiction.

You may have a point about there not being jobs to create. The Bush administration continues to take heat over the fewer jobs that were created compared to the Clinton years. But with unemployment under 5%, the jobs may have been there but there wasn't anybody available to be hired!

Now, seemingly, as you point out, we have the reverse: Plenty of available workers but no jobs.