Rep. John Bust called out his fellow House member Hugh Holliman during yesterday’s debate of Holliman’s anti-smoking bill, which went down by a 55-61 vote:
“I listened to your speech very intently and I noted you used the word lethal, that smoke was lethal,” said Blust, a Greensboro Republican. “If it’s so lethal and deadly, why don’t we just go ahead and ban this lethal and deadly tobacco smoke?”
Thank you, Rep. Blust, for saying what needed to be said the day after the American Lung Association issued its report stating that more than half of Guilford County’s population was at risk of dropping dead on a bad air day.
Which brings me to today’s N&R story on the N.C. Housing Coaltion report stating that substandard housing for children has an economic $100 million annually.
I’m not questioning the existence of substandard housing, but I have to question exactly how the housing coalition arrived at that figure, which doesn’t even “count the cost of lost school days, missed work, dimmed futures, and the dull despair of watching your child struggle to breathe because you can’t afford decent housing.”
By the way, that’s a pull quote straight from the story, not a quote from a housing coalition official, so N&R reporter Jason Hardin is talking directly to you. Either he forgot to include quote marks around someone else’s words or he decided to do a little subtle editorializing. In any event, it would be nice if just a couple of facts were included to help qualify that $100 million figure.
Funny how organizations and their willing accomplices in the media just throw these facts and figures out there and expect us to believe it.
