The particles spewing from both ends also don’t help.

Nope. The rulings coming out of the Federal courts (more often than not from Trump appointed judges) are unambiguous and the executive branch is largely complying with them once a ruling is handed down.

They are playing a game of legal brinkmanship in order to to try and circumvent the law (the whole dismiss-and-arrest thing happening at immigration courts - which are NOT full courthouses, btw), but don’t think for one second the Judges and attorneys working on these cases aren’t fully aware of what’s going on.

*edited for less word salad. Yikes

There’s little evidence that debate changes people’s ideas.

…or organize, start/join unions, get involved with your local community and build up some real resistance that isn’t based off obscene wealth, lawfare or media brainwashing. Once you have experienced something real, it’s quite hard to understand how or why anyone would fall for the alternative.

Disagree. UAW’s high profile cases are a good example of effectively run established old-style unions getting big wins, and unionization is occurring at high rates compared to the historical mean of the past fifty years worldwide, even in the face of total hostility from government and the owner class.

Many unions are currently in a place where they need to hand over the reigns from an older generation that got way too comfortable with cost of living adjustments and cosy relationships with management to a new generation who have been directly blocked from power most of their working lives by that older generation.

Things are going to get much spicier, just watch.

Well, there’s the Defined Benefit pension, however typically these pension funds then become institutional investors who seek to own shares in… you guessed it - stocks.

At least those institutional investors are at least somewhat responsive to public pressure campaigns, as the state/local comptrollers are a politically appointed position.

When you give your money to a 401k, the fund manager gets all the voting rights on the corporate board and is generally only accountable to “A reasonable rate of return”

On-and-off smoker here (mostly off)

In my experience, nicotine is great for moderating rage and resentment. It can help in bad situations and also provides a space where one can effectively shut distractions out and enter a somewhat meditative state to work on issues. It performs this task very, very well.

It is not the same as “just taking a walk” or “standing outside”. Absent-mindedly smoking provides a different experience. I am envious of people who can go to the park and get the same kind of effect out of it, but for a raft of different reasons I can’t reach the same experience.

I know smoking damages nearly every part of your body. I know it’s addictive. I know many smokers aren’t considerate of others, and blow smoke all over people downwind, in through windows and leave cigarette butts everywhere. I know wildfires start from improperly extinguished butts. I am not one of those people, and take pains to enjoy a cigarette where I will impact as few people as possible. And when my life looks up? I quit, because I don’t need it anymore, and it serves no useful purpose.

Unfortunately, there seems to be less and less room in the world to create the kind of space where one can take a few minutes such as this. And that I think is the crux of the resistance here.

We keep asking for more out of everyone, and usually to no benefit for themselves. We keep making organizational decisions which result in people feeling stressed, angry, resentful, and then in turn quite deliberately fail to understand when people pick up a vice that is harming them… and then try to ban that behavior, or sanctimoniously tut away that they are somehow selfish for wanting a break from it all for five damned minutes.

There’s so many different instances under which this theme plays out. I doubt this law will be enforced evenly, and it seems predictably authoritarian and counterproductive like many substance control laws. We can’t stop people stuffing a bunch of plants into a pipe, or into a paper wrapping and smoking it. It’s simply too easy to do, and it provides too much utility as a temporary respite from life for people to stop.

Want to solve it? Try finding ways of making life less terrible for the critical mass of people so that they won’t feel a need to smoke. And even then some still will, maybe out of spite, addiction (medical/psych treatment could be offered?) or downright contrarianism; but maybe few enough that it won’t matter. That’s the hard, and proper, fix for this. Smoking cessation drives are quite effective, as well as reasonable limitations on where one can smoke, and I think that is a fine policy balance.

I think cigarettes, especially manufactured ones, should be available and taxed appropriately for the healthcare burden they will produce later in life. Everyone should be aware of the health considerations in no uncertain terms. I think it’s appropriate to limit smoking around areas where at-risk populations live and congregate (incl. Children), and the rest really has to be allowed to work itself out in the ad-hoc grey area loosely defined as “Community”, “Consideration”, “Conscience” and “Respect”.

The Law is too heavy handed a tool to be expected to succeed here.

Anyway, I’m sure they’ve already thought about all of this and discussed it at length. Just like taxing older diesel cars without considering the consequences to folks the rural south who were unable to afford new vehicles.