Let's all take a moment of silence for Snookie's skin tone.

As you may or may not know, there’s a lot going down in Washington right now in regards to our health and bodies. Not only is there major debate about Obama’s health care plan, but Capitol Hill has been buzzin’ about Botox. Namely, the idea to put a tax (nicknamed “Bo-tax”) on it and other cosmetic surgeries.

That has since been vetoed (probably after all 4 casts of The Real Housewives/Joan Rivers threatened a sit-in at the White House) in favor of a new idea: adding a 10% tax to indoor tanning.

The main idea behind the new plan is for the government to make it more difficult for you to feed your potentially cancerous addictions (much like cigarettes) by doing what the government does best: taxing.

Needless to say, orange people nationwide are up in (leathery) arms!

But while this is less than ideal for those people who make a living off of baking pasty clients (especially in this economy), I’m totally in support of it. Tanning is super dangerous! And even more, the world can do with a few less Snookies walking around.

Now if only the government could somehow tax the Jersey Shore poof or eradicate the Bump-it; I’m sure those are changes we can all get behind.

Who, we wonder, is objecting to revising such a dysfunctional system as Health Care?

-People that have full health care they are happy with.
-People are being paid to object?
-Health care plants?

Who else could object with any possible good reason? If there is one thing the government should run, it is health care. Lives are at stake. As far as we are concerned, gov can get out of everything else and simplify, as the constitutional creators so desired.

We took our own poll, and so far we are not happy with the new ‘change’. It effects us in

-hire tax on cigarettes, seems to be the pet thing to tax and it directly effects low income, and it is the cig companies who, after all, got us addicted, and who paid gov to make amends, and we saw none of that money, we just are still addicted and paying through the nose. How about a tea party in Boston Harbor?

-Tax up/prices ups on regular goods. We are again paying for it. Can’t we class action sue all the finance/stock/creeps that wrecked the market?

-Losing our homes, jobs
-Adopted fear of keeping up

Land of the free? Life, liberty and the pursuit of?

Some of our townships raised the water/sewer rate by 33 per cent? Owning is like renting now, too many bills that you can’t get away from. Who wants to own a house with that?

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Folks, it’s way worse than lying and anyone – I repeat – ANYONE who doesn’t know Obama is a liar has the intelligence of a rock.  Our Eastern Allies, particularly Poland, have been victimized by Obama lies.  Someone said in a blog  (sorry, I wish I could remember who you were) said that everything Obama says has an expiration date.  That is a kind way of saying that his truth applies to the moment only.  He chooses to “remake” an outright lie into a semi-truth or spin the politi-speak into something that isn’t exactly clear or accurate.  (And who invented the word disingenuous? – A lie is a lie…. period!)

So, what is our global position now under Obama’s reign? Rich Lowery has said it much better than I.  Read his remarks at http://bit.ly/1pin24.

Mr. Obama not only lies to our international friends, he is systematically breaking his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. He already signed a cigarette tax increase in February, and this tax could be as much as $3,800 a year for a family and is therefore a more tangible breach of his promise than most of his fairy tales.  His Cap and Trade program (which has been renamed to a more palatable “Clean Energy Act” will tax energy and manufacturing corporations who will pass those costs down to the rest of us (so it’s an indirect tax).  His massive healthcare overhaul will increase costs (though that’s not technically called a “tax” either - it’s really a matter of semantics) on everyone because they are requiring EVERYONE to purchase insurance or pay a stiff penalty.  The healthcare overhaul, again will cost you in either premiums or penalties – take your pick!

So, with the cost of health insurance (or subsequent penalty for not purchasing insurance and the increased premium cost if you happen to be over weight), the cost of Cap and Tax, the cigarette tax, the proposed soft drink tax and on and on, you can see that your standard of living is going south very quickly.  So, where’s the prosperity he promised for everyone!  This redistribution of wealth…. doesn’t seem like that’s a possibility because all his programs are creating big hits on the wallets of the majority of Americans.

So, not only is Obama losing allies on the international front, he’s losing his own allies right here at home…. some in his own party who are questioning all this flip-flopping on campaign promises… and many of those who supported his campaign are now having voters remorse.  (I wonder if the tingle up Chris Matthews leg is still as strong. )

I figured I may as well prepare you now for the Democrat campaign of 2010.  I don’t know what they will name it.  All I know is that it will be themed on two things, tax cuts and responsibility.  The responsibility portion will come from Obama and the Pelosi/Reid congress saddling us with across the board tax increases, an enhanced estate (death) tax, cuts in credits and deductions, and additional tax fees for the “super rich”.  They will label it what America is crying for most right now; debt reduction.  Nevermind that they are the ones who gave us this deficit through bailouts of companies too big to fail followed by $1 trillion in wasted stimulus spending.

So where, you ask, do tax cuts enter into this?  It comes from a different way of thinking.  I tend to think of things in black and white plain english.  If you are paying more taxes this year than you were last year, taxes have gone up.  This administration does not think that way.  They think in relative terms.  Taxes don’t go up and down relative to where they are now, they go up and down relative to where they ought to be.  Right now, taxes are already down.  By letting Bush’s tax cuts expire, they aren’t raising taxes, they are just putting them back where they belong.

I’m not joking.  Everything I have just said is straight from Nancy Pelosi herself. She describes the tax increase that will come from doing nothing in 2010 not as a tax hike, but as “eliminating a decrease that was already there”.  Get it?  They aren’t raising taxes, they are just stopping taxes from being not raised.  And with $1 trillion in stimulus spending, $1 trillion healthcare fiasco, and cap and trade, they will need to end all the tax decreases they can.  Why stop with the Bush tax cuts?  Isn’t it about time to let the Reagan tax cuts expire and go back to Jimmy Carter’s 70% marginal rates? Would 70% be zero on their relative number line?  Can we assume anything above 70% would be a tax increase?

It’s really too bad we didn’t know this caveat in their thinking back when Obama promised no tax increases on those making less than $250,000.  Who knew at the time that he didn’t consider ending tax decreases to be the same thing as tax increases.  Has anyone done the research?  If you make more than $171,550 this year, that puts you in the 33% bracket. That is one of the two top brackets that will not be getting a renewal of the Bush tax cuts according to Obama.  But don’t worry.  If you make between $171,550 and $250,000, you aren’t getting a tax hike of 3%.  You will just no longer be having a tax cut of 3%.

So where do the tax cuts come in, you ask again?  Simple, if pre-Bush is normal than leaving tax rates for the lower brackets at Bush’s levels will become Obama’s tax cut.  Still with me?  Yes, that’s right, Bush didn’t just cut taxes for the rich.  When Bush cut taxes, it was across the board.  Bush cut every tax bracket, including the lowest from 15% to 10%.  Then he increased the child tax credit and child care credits for working families.  Then he eliminated the marriage penalty, provided AMT relief, and reduced and planned to phase out the death tax.  Think that sounds good?  Well get ready because Obama is going to renew many of these tax cuts resulting in the Obama Tax Cuts of 2010.  And you better believe Democrats are going to run on it in 2010.

But here is where it gets technical.  Obama may bet on the general ignorance of the American voters and raise taxes across the board while still claiming to be handing out tax cuts.  Here’s how it will work.  When Bush cut the tax rates, he also adjusted the margins.  What does that mean?  Bush adjusted what level of income you have to reach in order to hit the next marginal tax rate.  Look at the following chart:

Clinton Vs Bush Tax Rates and Margins

Under Clinton’s tax rates and margins, if you reached $43,050 you began paying 28% on each additional dollar.  Under Bush’s tax margins you didn’t start paying 28% until you reached $131,450.  As an example, if Obama leaves the Bush tax rates intact except for the top two brackets, but does not renew the actual dollar points where you find yourself in the next marginal tax bracket, it could result in a 5% tax increase for anyone making between $0 and $16,050 or 10% for everyone making between $43,050 and $65,100 and so on.  But it’s still a tax cut as long as it keeps your taxes below Clinton’s rates.

I’m sure those who are still even reading this immensely technical and probably boring blog might be skeptical or thinking that I am just being an alarmist again.  But don’t forget, the administration has already declared that penalties for not buying health insurance, embedded Cap and Trade taxes, sin taxes such as the Soda tax or Cigarette tax, and a variety of other programs that increase government revenue by taking money from the middle class are not actually tax increases.  And as we learned from Stephanopolous’ interview with Obama, trying to say otherwise is nothing more than a sign of desperation.

“I love to smoke… I love to smoke… I LOVE to fucking smoke! I smoke seven THOUSAND packs a day, and I am never going to quit!” – Denis Leary

As you can probably guess, I smoke. And the above statement sums up my feelings pretty succinctly.

OK, that’s not true. I twice made an effort to quit. The first time, I was asked nicely to please have a cigarette. I’m guessing I was pretty unbearable. The second time is a blog entry all by itself. But aside from those two blips, I have been smoking for a long, long time. It’s my only vice. Or rather, it’s the only vice I intend to discuss here. Heh. And the deepest, truest reason I carry on with a decades-old habit is simple. I love to smoke!

And you know what? I resent like hell that everytime our government has a new pet project or an old bill they can’t pay, somehow I get to cover the tab! What’s that about? I’m reasonably healthy, I’m not on government insurance, and I don’t plan to sue anyone when my lungs turn black and shrivel. I’m tired of hearing how I am responsible for raising America’s health care bills! The latest plan being bandied about actually proposes to charge me more than others for health care. And the TAXES! Good grief, I single-handedly funded NASA last year with my habit.

NOW they want to start taxing junk food. I don’t each much junk food, to be honest. It’s not a health-nut thing (obviously… see previous paragraphs), it’s just not to my taste. But it strikes me as pretty unbalanced to tax certain foods and not others. Even though I don’t agree with the cigarette taxes, at least those taxes are put directly on the people who have the health risk of smoking. We’re going to tax these other things because SOME of the people who eat them are obese. How is that fair? Not everyone who eats a Twinkie is fat.

So… (fair warning – NOTHING that follows is politically correct)… Here’s my proposal.

I want to see a BMI tax!

That’s right. A fatass tax. And I do not mean a tax on soda, or Twinkies, or Whoppers, or any product out there that is also enjoyed by people who aren’t a walking zip code. I’m talking about a tax based directly on how many extra chins you have blobbering down the front of what used to be your neck. I want to see people charged for every last nasty glob of cellulite. I want a love-handle surtax and a fine for dunlap disease. (As in: “Your belly dunlapped over the waistband of your britches.”) If taxing cigarettes only punishes smokers, it is not fair to tax anyone who drinks a Coke, whether they happen to be normal sized or …ahem… BIG.

You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re the folks that take all the motorized carts (meant for the handicapped) at the grocery store because they’re TOO FAT TO WALK DOWN THE AISLES. Here’s a tip for ya: If your ass is too large to walk through the grocery store under your own power, you probably don’t need groceries! Or consider that if you got off your ginormous ass and DID go walkabout, you might return to normal size. Being a human land mass isn’t a handicap, and you shouldn’t be tooling around on a device meant for people who have an actual disability.

And please… I do not want to hear the tired old screed of “gland problem”. I’ll grant you that some people who struggle with their weight have a medical problem. But for most of them, it’s a FORK problem! Don’t push past me with your scooter-cart filled with Pepsi and potato chips and then tell me you can’t help it. “But, my whole family is big!”, some say. Well, look how you people eat! When a four-hundred pound slab of meat is doing the family cooking, don’t try to tell me you’re living on veggies and tofu. “Deep-fried” and “sugar-coated” are NOT food groups.

Or my other favorite: “It costs more to eat healthy.” Please. I buy groceries, OK? It’s cheaper to buy a head of lettuce and a bag of carrots than a box of snack cakes and a six-pack of soda. And a gallon of water is the cheapest beverage on the shelves. You can eat junk food if you understand the concept of moderation. Processed foods might be cheaper and less nutritious, but portion control can solve most calorie problems. (Translation: Have a SERVING of fries, not the whole damn bag!)

Frankly, I find it disgusting. And horribly unfair. These people are a heart attack looking for a place to happen, and yet when I light up a smoke in front of some of them I get “Don’t you know how BAD that is for you?” Yeah, Jabba… like the extra three people you’re dragging around with you in your big & tall pants is a health craze. Pffft.

So keep raising the cigarette taxes. After all, part of the rationale is that it’ll eventually get people to quit, right? (Then what will they do? Tax all the smokers until we quit or die, then where will all that money come from? Hey, NASA – there goes your funding!) But if you’re going to tax MY bad health traits, I say we spead it around. Bring on the BMI tax! Let’s tax the fatties with a sliding scale based on poundage. Then Michael Moore could fund the new health care system all by himself!

A $3.00 tax per pack on cigarettes?!

Here’s a reason not to move to Connecticut if you’re a smoker. Starting in less than 3 hours (yes, effective October 1, 2009), the cigarette tax will increase by one dollar from $2.00 to $3.00 per pack.  That being said, a carton of cigarettes will cost smokers $10.00 more.  This will give Connecticut the second highest cigarette tax in the nation.

Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union, takes the cake on extreme high cigarette taxes. The tax on each pack of cigarettes is $3.46. Seriously. Considering how hard it is to stop smoking, even those who DON’T smoke consider this tax unfair.

BY DAVID GROSS • RURAL HEALTH UPDATE EDITOR

Melissa Jewell recently envisioned her two-year-old son’s future and knew she had a decision to make. She could continue smoking – as had been the case for the past dozen years (with the exception of her pregnancy) – or she could kick the habit for good.

“You think about your health, and I knew it would be better for me and him if I didn’t smoke,” said Jewell, a pharmacy technician at the University of Kentucky’s June Buchanan Medical Clinic in Knott County. “I want to stay around as long as I can for my little boy.”

Jewell is among the Commonwealth’s growing number of ex-smokers. In fact, for the first time in a decade, Kentucky no longer leads the nation in the prevalence of adult smoking.

According to recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Kentucky’s rate of adult smoking dropped to 25.2 percent last year from 28.3 percent in 2007. Kentucky now trails both West Virginia and Indiana.

Kentucky had led the nation in adult smoking every year since 1999, when it placed second to Nevada. The state’s adult smoking rate is down from a high of 32.6 percent in 2002.

“It’s very exciting,” Irene Centers, manager of the state Department for Public Health’s tobacco program, told The (Louisville) Courier-Journal. “I do hope we continue to see a downward trend.”

Officials say Kentucky’s smoking decline is largely attributable to two developments: significant tobacco tax increases and the growing number of communities that have banned smoking in public buildings.

During this year’s legislative session, the General Assembly increased Kentucky’s cigarette tax to 60 cents per pack. This action came just four years after the state’s lowest-in-the-nation tax of three cents per pack was raised to 30 cents. Kentucky now ranks 40th in the nation in per-pack tax rates (Rhode Island is highest at $3.46, while South Carolina is lowest at seven cents).

Kentucky’s latest per-pack increase also coincided with a jump in the federal tobacco excise tax.

The added expense was a partial consideration in Tammy Hall’s recent decision to stop smoking. Hall, a patient relations assistant at the UK June Buchanan Medical Clinic, said she was paying $4.50 per pack each day – or more than $1,600 a year.

“If you want to smoke bad enough, you’re going to,” she said. “But I thought, ‘Why should I be paying this much now and have higher medical bills later?’”

Of additional consideration are bans on indoor smoking. The Kentucky Center for Smoke-Free Policy, based at UK, suggests such laws have a significant impact on smoking rates, as they lead to fewer youths becoming established smokers, more smokers quitting and fewer cigarettes being consumed by those who do smoke.

Since 2004, at least 23 Kentucky cities or counties have enacted smoke-free laws or adopted smoke-free regulations.

Smoke-Free Policy representatives said these laws help create a shift in the cultural acceptance of smoking. This can be quite significant in a tobacco-growing state like Kentucky, where tobacco has been part of the heritage for generations.

Also, Congress recently passed – and President Obama signed – what has been called “historic anti-smoking legislation.” Among other things, the new regulation gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate the content, marketing and sale of tobacco products; strengthens warning labels; and bans the use of flavors in tobacco products.

“We really do feel, by being able to regulate tobacco and tobacco products, we can reduce the burden of disease,” particularly by preventing teen smoking, said Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the FDA’s commissioner.

Cigarettes just went up another 15¢, officially bringing your average price for a pack of smokes in NYC up to $80,000,000,000.00.

Yeah, well f*** you too, New York.

As some of you might know, Karl Rove was the senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.

Before Karl became known as “The Architect” of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.

Or, you can send him a Tweet @karlrove.

Here is his article from August 5th, 2009:

Americans are now seeing the damage that polls and focus groups can inflict on White House decision-making. President Barack Obama is no longer shaping the public dialogue on health-care reform. Instead, he is losing control of his agenda and resorting to rhetorical tricks and evasions.

Every administration has to take into account public opinion. Without doing so, Abraham Lincoln said, little can be achieved. But too much polling doesn’t raise presidential vision. It narrows and pulls it down. Substituting a weekly dose of opinion surveys for thoughtful consideration is causing White House aides to find new scapegoats whenever administration policy initiatives get into trouble.

We see this on health-care reform, which the president’s pollsters told him—six months into the debate—he must instead call “health insurance reform,” a phrase he repeated five times in his prime-time news conference and at least 20 times in five days of appearances since.

The problem is many Americans remember Mr. Obama started his health-care push by focusing on covering the uninsured and reducing costs, not knocking insurance companies upside the head.

Public support for his plans shrank when Americans saw the trillion-dollar-plus price tag, recoiled from the intrusive expansion of government into patient-doctor decisions, and came to understand the plan was financed in part by huge cuts in Medicare and large tax increases.

So, after running into heavy opposition among Congressional Democrats and growing public hostility to his plan, Mr. Obama has now recast the debate as an attack on insurance companies, with the president serving as savager-in-chief. This would be more credible if he hadn’t surrounded himself with insurance CEOs and lobbyists when he kicked off his effort in March.

The corrosive effect of basing policy decisions on polls also could be seen in White House handling of the refusals on Sunday of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers to rule out middle-class tax increases. They got disciplined Monday by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who said they’d “allowed themselves to get into a little bit of hypothetical back and forth.”

This dispute pits the economic team against the campaign team. The economic team awakens each day worried about reconciling two irreconcilable realities: The administration’s budget calls for huge, sustained new government spending, which threatens giant budget deficits. Being liberals, the economic team is inclined to raise taxes, not cut spending.

The campaign team is intent upon protecting a pledge driven by its 2008 campaign polls: Mr. Obama promised never to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year to avoid being labeled a tax-and-spend liberal.

Even so, Mr. Obama has already broken his no-new-taxes pledge. On Feb. 4, Mr. Obama signed a $33 billion cigarette tax increase, which fell disproportionately on lower- and middle-income individuals. And the “cap and trade” energy bill, approved by the House on June 26, is a tax on anyone who owns a light switch, uses a car key, or has bought anything manufactured, shipped or sold in the U.S.

The House version of Mr. Obama’s health-care—excuse me, “health-insurance”—reform already has four taxes that will largely be paid by people making less than $250,000 a year. There’s $8.2 billion in taxes for using health savings accounts and other tax-free medical savings vehicles to purchase over-the-counter drugs. There’s an 8% tax on employers who don’t offer insurance: The Congressional Budget Office says workers in those businesses would pay the $163 billion cost via lost wages.

There’s a 2.5% “Tax on Individuals Without Acceptable Health Care Coverage” in the House bill that applies to people who either don’t have insurance or whose policies the government deems inadequate. Finally, there’s a $2 billion “Comparative Effectiveness Research Tax” on all private and “public option” insurance policies.

If some version of ObamaCare is passed, the president will break his tax pledge several more times while adding trillions to the deficit, dismantling the best elements of our health-care system and slashing Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.

There are no polling data or focus groups on earth that can help Mr. Obama out of this jam. He has set in motion events he appears unable to control and commitments he cannot keep. Great communicators succeed when the ideas they are communicating are sound. Tax-and-spend liberalism doesn’t work, no matter how pretty its package.

Every Wednesday night senior Obama aides gather for two hours to review the latest polling and focus-group data to develop that packaging. These White House sessions haven’t elevated the quality of Team Obama’s discourse. They have made it incoherent.

“If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street, / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat, / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet. ” – George Harrison, “Taxman”, The Beatles’  Revolver, 1966

“I’d like to teach the world to sing / In perfect harmony

I’d like to buy the world a Coke / But the tax is too high for me.”

-adapted from “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, from the Coca-Cola “Hilltop” TV ad, 1971

In the context of the current debate over health care and how to pay for it, something sneaky is going on. First, a number of media outlets reported that obesity-related conditions account for a significant percentage of health care expenditures, with figures such as $147 billion and 9% of overall health spending thrown about. Then today, two major media outlets – CBS News and the LA Times - both “coincidentally” published blog entries on paying for health care by taxing items that cause obesity – sugary sodas and fattening foods, respectively. If you think it’s a coincidence that this drum is only being beaten after the attempt to soak the rich to pay for ObamaCare backfired, think again. The focus is now being turned from one group it’s OK to hate – the rich – to the only other one – the fat. (Disclosure: Sanity Injection is personally about 17 pounds overweight.)

To be sure, the media isn’t the prime mover behind this conspiracy, just a happy helper. The “data” is coming from think tanks and government agencies that are part of the ObamaCare advocacy team. The logic works like this: Evil junk food makes people fat, and fat people cost everybody money. So we should tax junk food, which will raise money to pay for fat people’s health care while also encouraging people to eat healthier and thus lose weight.

Anybody see a flaw here? How about this: Fat people aren’t fat just because they eat sugary or fatty foods. They’re fat because of their overall lifestyle, which includes diet and (lack of) exercise. Some have other medical conditions that contribute to obesity. So let’s say the tax works and everybody stops eating  junk food. No major revenue stream is generated, but fat people are still fat and we still have to pay for them. Alternatively, the tax doesn’t work and people still eat unhealthy foods, so a bunch of money is raised. How much do you want to bet that money gets raided by the government to pay for other things besides health care? Meanwhile the fat people have less of their income they can save to help pay for their own care.

Those are economic arguments, but how about the philosophical arguments? Is everyone who drinks a Coke contributing to obesity? Arguably not, if you’re eating healthy and getting exercise. Yet you’ll still have to pay the punitive tax. More fundamentally, what right does the government have to tax you in order to get you to live your life the way *they* want you to? If we believe that the obese should bear the responsbility for their extra health care expenses, then charge them higher premiums, or offer them lesser coverage due to their pre-existing condition. That’s the free market solution. Instead, the Democrats’ health care bill would force insurers to not only cover pre-existing conditions but at the same premium paid by healthy people!  And so the serpent of Leftism continues to gnaw on its own tail, planning an economy that is in inherent contradiction with itself and telling us all that it will work.

If this all sounds familiar, it should: we’ve been through the same nonsense with cigarette taxes. In fact, you could replace the words “fat people” and “obesity” with “smokers” and “smoking” above without any further alterations necessary. The result is a regressive tax that hits the poor hardest – precisely what the Left always says they don’t want.

Frankly, I am sick and tired of the search for scapegoats to blame America’s health care problems on and punish them with targeted taxes. With apologies to Martin Niemoller:

“When they came for the smokers, I did not speak out, because I was not a smoker.

When they came for the rich, I did not speak out, because I was not rich.

When they came for the fatties, I did not speak out, because I was not a fatty.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.”

“I would like to thank Rodney and Clay for finding me at the soup kitchen, getting’ me that bowl of soup, and buying me this mp3 recorder.” –Mr. Jeff.

Son of a biatch what the frig is with the new cigarettes?  The gosh dang things keep dropping ashes everywhere.  Take a puff and the ashes fall.  What the frig chemical is in there that makes them drop off like the flea of a camel’s ass?  What other chemicals are in my smokes?  Why do they burn out when I do not suck?

Jan. 1 required all cigarettes to be fire safety cigarettes or FSG’s. ”These cigarettes, often referred to as low-ignition, cause the cigarette to extinguish on its own if not consistently inhaled-as if that is healthy. “Cigarettes are made from the same blend of tobacco, thus the only difference to the consumer is they need to puff it more often” http://www.mysuburbanlife.com/westmont/homepage/x254745765, Can you spell b u l l s h i t?

Nick Vujicic was born with no arms or legs. “I decided to be thankful for what I do have, not get angry about what I don’t. “I looked at myself in the mirror and said: ‘You know what the world is right that I have no arms or legs, but they’ll never take away the beauty of my eyes.’ I wanted to concentrate on something good that I had.’

‘When kids run up to me and ask ‘what happened?’ I just lean over and whisper ‘cigarettes’, he laughed.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1196755/The-astonishing-story-man-born-arms-legs–world-famous-swimmer-surfer-footballer.html?ITO=1490 

‘I tell people to keep on getting up when they fall and to always love themselves,’ he said. If I can encourage just one person then my job in this life is done.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1196755/The-astonishing-story-man-born-arms-legs–world-famous-swimmer-surfer-footballer.html?ITO=1490

I pray we were all so humble. 

In the meantime I am wiping the ashes of government controlling just another of my sins.

Much in the news of late, it is well worth mentioning the following. Our observations following the initial hike in alcopops tax, is that kids now get drunk faster, because they find it cheaper to buy whole bottles of raw spirits. Virtually none are seen drinking alcopops. Those that can’t afford spirits are forced to drink cheap cask wines. We obviously don’t have the same research resources or insights as our esteemed politicians, but if the intention was to make more kids pass out in public places, to the extent that their friends have to carry them, the increased tax worked a treat.

 The tax on cigarettes will increase the use of chopchop, and possibly marihuana as well. The 60c per packet extra will cause almost no-one to stop smoking, but several of our number will probably be forced to employ more creative fundraising to get their daily fix. If government is really serious, just outlaw tobacco; oh but then theres that bipartisan addiction to the tax revenues,isn’t there? Oh and of course all the crime you would create!!!!

 Theres also another story here. The law applies equally,depending on who applies the law; Two teenagers aged about 15 at the time attended a teen party at a waterfront Point Piper address. They left, each with a 700ml bottle of alcohol,or the remains thereof. Police, seeing the girls with their very obvious alcohol, stopped the girls and took them into custody, probably for their own good. The girls were asked for their addresses. One gave her Vaucluse address while the other gave her Woolloomooloo House-O address. One was taken home to her parents. The other was handed to DOCs. Guess which one? And no,she had never previously been spoken to by police or DOCs. The story does have a happy sequel, however. The girl who was from the well to do address told her parents that her friend was still in custody (she didn’t know about DOCs being called. Her parents immediately called a friend, a very well known barrister, who was able to retrieve the by now quite distressed girl from DOCs, and have her returned to her very grateful parents. Oh, both girls lied, saying they were staying at a friends. Happens all the time.

 But these taxes don’t only affect our youth.True,many of us get pissed at the drunken antics of the kids but we were kids once too. What did you do? But these taxes affect us too. The kids, forced by economics to consume often straight unmixed alcohol, mostly get very drunk,very fast.

Earlier this week, I posted the release from Americans for Tax Reform where they called out state legislators who had previously signed the no tax pledge, only to support the cigarette tax increase.

One other Mississippian who signed it, and broke the pledge, was Gov. Barbour. Barbour had opposed the increase- and any tax increase in general- for a number of years but backed off his opposition in light of an economic downturn.

From Save the GOP: Governor Haley Barbour, 2007 signee, is officially a RINO now that he signed Mississippi’s 50 cent cigarette tax increase.

I think Barbour has been pretty principled in his stance. Think back to 2006 or 2007 when Democrats wanted to pass the increase and reduce or eliminate the grocery tax. I am all for lowering the grocery tax, but what would have happened if we had passed that?

Would we raise cigarette taxes even more to make up for the lost revenue from the economic downturn? That probably would not cover it, and increased taxes on other items would be inevitable.

But back to the pledge; I think it just shows why signing pledges to definitely do one thing or definitely not do one thing is difficult, especially with taxes. It is one thing to say you would never vote for a pro-abortion piece of legislation because that often reflects your personal values whether we are in a depression or economic boom, as opposed to taxes which often reflect the shape of the economy.

I think it’s fine to call Republicans out who support big government spending like the stimulus or Obama’s budget; but is it counterproductive with cigarette tax hikes.