How big a hypocrite is Lt. Governor Bill Bolling? Check this out, from an email I received entitled "Bolling Announces The Lieutenant Governor's Challenge: Your Heart Is In Your Hands Program."
The Lieutenant Governor's Challenge is an initiative sponsored by the National Lieutenant Governor's Association and modeled after a Delaware campaign that was designed to reduce the danger of heart disease through education on risk factors, increased physical fitness and improved nutrition.The Challenge is an incentive based exercise and nutrition program where Virginians set personal physical activity and diet goals to promote healthier living and increase their own heart health.
The risk of heart and cardiovascular disease can be significantly reduced through simple, attainable lifestyle changes. By setting aside 30 minutes or more each day for walking, gardening, playing tennis or a host of other things, Virginians can take significant steps toward losing weight and lowering their risk of heart disease.
Sounds good, right? Except for two problems: 1) there's no mention of smoking here; and 2) as the Virginia Democratic Party points out, "Bolling Tries to Have it Both Ways on Smoking Ban" (he "says he's opposed to the smoking ban, but on Thursday he'll be delivering the keynote address at the American Lung Association Asthma Walk Kickoff."). Here's what the American Heart Association has to say about smoking and heart disease:
Cigarette smoking is the most important preventable cause of premature death in the United States. It accounts for nearly 440,000 of the more than 2.4 million annual deaths. Cigarette smokers have a higher risk of developing several chronic disorders. These include fatty buildups in arteries...Many studies detail the evidence that cigarette smoking is a major cause of coronary heart disease, which leads to heart attack.
Of course, Bolling has received nearly $100,000 from tobacco companies/farmers over the years, so it's not exactly a big surprise that he doesn't mention smoking as a leading cause of heart disease. It's also not a surprise that as a right-wing Republican, he's not in favor of protecting the public from second-hand smoke. On his website, he writes approvingly that House of Delegates Republicans "are reluctant to impose a statewide ban on public smoking, feeling that decisions of this nature should be left to the discretion of private business owners." Yeah, well then spare us the phony concern over heart disease with this "Lieutenant Governor's Challenge."
Come to think of it, the biggest "Lieutenant Governor's Challenge" comes in 2009, when we can CHANGE our Lieutenant Governor from Bill Bolling to someone who isn't a "big two-hearted hypocrite" on public health issues!
P.S. Yes, the title of this diary is a play on the great Ernest Hemingway short story, "The Big Two-Hearted River." I strongly recommend it; much better reading than Bill Bolling's lame email.