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.
The pinch is getting greater in many areas. You mentioned health care and that will be one. Small businesses have been feeling more and more of it for years. Gas prices play into that as well as into the price of consumable products. Illegal aliens also force small businesses into a Hobson's choice; hire illegals or cease to be competitive. For the employed worker they watch their wages fall or their jobs disappear altogether.
Being told to wear your seatbelt like a child and slapped around and insulted for smoking is just an irritant to most. When you find your choices in employment and health care reduced and degraded so far that you simply submit your family to what the government graciously offers or go without people are going to get very prickly. Add to it all greater identification requirements and more widespread data sharing, greater restrictions on self-defense, less effective LE and victim-hostile courts and the feeling of helplessness will become unbearable.
Anarchy has always been the natural response to tyranny. The question is whether it becomes organized and focused or devolves into a general lawless attitude where the populace just preys on itself and remains in a balance of tension as a vast underground vs the equally corrupt overworld of authority.
I will be visiting friends in NM soon where I can stock up on my favorite brand for about 1/2 to 2/3s the price I pay here thereby depriving CO of at least six months of confiscatory taxes.
Statement: “Vanity, We’ve all decided; You’re not allowed to Smoke!”<p.
Response: However, you are allowed to get drunk with drugs or alcohol, abort babies, commit infanticide, commit adultery, produce and market pornography,sodomize little boys, accept bribes, etc. etc.
That's already happening, smokers being the original class of "prey" that the other classes have smugly attacked with government encouragement.
The next group is that defined by the government as "obese," though it appears that alchohol users are in the bull pen.
It's all going swimmingly for the Nanny Staters so far.
I predict the underground wins, at the cost of a government that's given up any pretense to representing a "free" society.
Amazing how fast it all happened once the ball got rolling.
I think smokers are actually one of the latest groups to suffer the lash. But certainly not the last. The increase of laws and regulations restricting liberty has gone hand-in-hand with increased taxation and data collection reducing prosperity. Control is the ultimate goal. Control the economy through confiscation, redistribution and earnings suppression. Control the people through laws, regulations and balkanization.
Yes, I've been an arm waver from the beginning, saw it coming a mile away.
Control is the strategy, balkanization is the tactic.
Whatever you say, Jungle Queen. Okay if I call her "is"? Some don't even know what "is" means anyway! LOL
When the fat tax comes, and those overweight anti-smoking Nazi's become the target of the taxes, we'll see how they enjoy the tyranny then......
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