Posted on 11/10/2007 8:15:04 PM PST by Bowtie52
Less than a month ago, Congress planned to ram through a tobacco tax that would have all but killed the cigar industry. The outrageousness of the tax they intended to levee on tobacco products was intended to be crippling. Cigarettes as well, were to sustain a .50 to $1.50 per pack increase. Ostensibly, this tax was to fund a health care package for children. The link between socialized health care for kids and tobacco smokers has not yet been made clear, not so for the intentions of Congress.
Recently, rumor has it that Mike Huckabee who has billed himself as the great hope of the Christians or Evangelicals or Right wing nuts or whatever label the press has assigned them this week, has publicly called for a ban on smoking in all public areas. While the merits of tobacco smoking are completely arguable, the term “freedom” is not nearly so nebulas.
While the Democratic Congress has made no secret of their intent to loose the war in Iraq, support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and explode the concept or religion of global warming as an immediate threat, they have not been nearly as accountable for doing their jobs. So far, they have passed several non-binding resolutions regarding Iraq, surpassed prediction of the wildest, most obscene package of earmarks of any Congress etc. The problem is that, to date, they have yet to deliver the budget items to the President or secure the peoples business. It seems that anything beyond their pale of responsibility is plausible yet those things for which they are responsible are left to languish and take second place to party politics. Now, Congress seems to have focused their attention on smokers.
After re-reading the Constitution, there were no hidden clauses or sub-texts found that allude to Congress taking a position, one way or the other, regarding smoking. Since smokers have not united and claimed victim or minority status, the individuals who do smoke are simply individuals and as such, subject to Congressional steamrolling. Today, smokers are feeling the hot, foul and corrupt breath of Congress as it breaths down the back of their necks. Who will feel it tomorrow? There is a very unhealthy trend here. The unhealthiness of it is far more lethal than any tobacco product could ever be.
At some point the American people are going to either be content to be spoon fed by the government or reclaim their God given rights to their heritage. Certainly, the freedom to smoke should not be a contentious issue. The concept of the typical American who chooses to indulge in tobacco products, having to bow to economic pressure inflicted on them by their own government, is diametrically opposed to the concept of freedom. We should not forget the price hike of the mid 90’s where the price of cigarettes doubled. Who won the proceeds of that event? The attorneys who brought the suit! Those dollars were billed as going to some worthwhile charity at that time as well. Congress is supposed to be responsible TO THE PEOPLE, not the other way around! A choice needs to be made. With the technological advances being made today in personal surveillance and personal information retrieval, a line must be drawn somewhere before American’s become robotic extensions of Congressional will.
I don't know about you but that's how I've interpretted it all along.
Hey! Watch how you use the word "she!!!!" LOL
Same with socialized healthcare, tyrannical taxation and global warming laws. I'm right there with you...
And I firmly believe that's what it will take to drive these socialist beasts out of our nation in order to be free again.
Tell me how to tax it, I'll tell you how to make it legal.(old political mantra)
I wonder how long it will actually be until the average man looks up and decides that they can no longer bear the burden of tyrannical socialism?
I can picture a mob of angry smokers wheezing and hacking as they march up the steps of a government building, stoppping to rest at the top, and light up another cigarette before they go in. lol
Excellent, Phillip Morris is after decades closing the plant in North Carolina and moving operations to Richmond,VA.
They now also have a plant in Europe which the Europeans are so proud to have.
Each time a liberal opens his or her mouth about raising the tax on a cigarette the Europeans smiles. One day and hope you all live to see it, we all will get to stop making at least one item a piece before we die. We can stop making for example, guns, cigarettes, alcohol, bibles, constitutions and common law. all of which have been are under attack in the USA
Here in Michigan they stopped using that worn out line a couple of increases ago.
When our governor approved the last cigarette tax hike she at least had the honesty to say that it was to help fund the overspent, underfunded state budget.........
What a lot of folks don't think about is that if a person is unemployed, he can't pay any state income taxes......That's why they just passed the latest "Service Tax" increase aimed at businesses but ultimately paid by the consumer. Even people with no incomes still have to purchase something......
This is the Horsehead Nebula:
This issue of raising cigaratte taxes
And this is a rat with a cigar:
You write funny!
Can't stand the high taxes?
Afraid to order off of the Internet?
Then start rolling your own!!! I find everything but the machine downtown at the local Smoke Shop. Also, Rite Aid and grocery stores also sell the bags of tobacco and the filtered tubes.
I roll out a beautiful carton for a little under $8 dollars. Premiums in my state are now up to $45-$50 a carton. Can you imagine the money I have saved over the past 4 years since I now roll my own? It's mind boggling.
under $50.00
Check StuffYourOwn for prices on tobacco
$1.99 for 200 filtered tubes
Make your own cigarettes for as low as $6.99 per Carton! Smoke Quality FILTERED cigarettes that you make yourself using cigarette tubes (like a cigarette without the Cigarette tobacco), our cigarette making machines, and our "roll your own" cigarette tobacco.
-Stop Paying High Cigarette Taxes
-So Much Easier than "Roll Your Own" cigarettes!
and
"Wheezing and hacking????"
I have smoked over 30 years and I don't "wheeze and hack"
After Hurricane Wilma ripped off 90% of the roofs in our neighborhood in 2005, I passed around a box of Partagas Cubanos I had received as a "gift" a while before. Comfort smokes...we all gathered around and lit up and puffed for about an hour or so. Just looking at the debris.
It bonded us.
We spent that week helping each other clear our yards and putting tarps up or more major repairs to roofs here and there.
That was a good smoke that we all still remember.
May sound silly, but it was just one of those moments when a good smoke really helped.
Good, let them ban it. The lies and social engineering the fascists use now are unbearable and anathema to a free country. If it's so horrible just ban it and get it overwith.
LOL! Not me. I’m no aze and certainly not a smart one. ;^)
It doesn't sound silly at all.
There's a reason that people don't go around sticking pins in their eyes, but do have a smoke.
I can't wrap my mind around a group of people (anti-smoking fanatics) who want to burrow so deeply into the psyches and minutiae of others' lives.
Their demands have been conceded to far beyond reason and yet they go on shrieking.
The issue's never been about smoking, but about how people behave in a free and civil society.
The whole "smoking" issue is a microcosm of how the tyranny of the majority spreads like a cancer.
But if it makes you feel better, will this help:
I can picture a mob of angry [SheLion] smokers wheezing and hacking
and have [known] plenty of smokers. Doh!
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