Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

'Golden leaf' growers troubled by tobacco tax rise
ap ^ | 4/2/09 | EMERY P. DALESIO

Posted on 04/02/2009 3:47:57 PM PDT by Drango

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — For more than a century, the Sharp family of eastern North Carolina has grown tobacco, nicknamed the "golden leaf" for reasons that went beyond the cured plant's rich color.

`snip

"There's nothing else we're doing that comes even close to yielding the profits that tobacco yields."

For generations, tobacco growers were a protected class, as lawmakers across the South defended the golden leaf as stridently as politicians from Michigan and New York do automakers and Wall Street. It remains a huge business: The tobacco crop in North Carolina alone, where farmers produce nearly half the value of the entire U.S. output, was worth $686 million last year.

But lawmakers don't look out for Big Tobacco as they once did. In 2004, Congress eliminated a tobacco quota and price support system that dated to the Depression. ~snip In Raleigh, where there were spittoons North Carolina General Assembly until the mid-1980s and a smoky haze in the halls until a few years ago, House members voted this week in favor of a limited ban on public smoking. ~snip

It's a blow felt in the sandy soil fields of eastern North Carolina that are just OK for sweet potatoes, cotton, soybeans, but fantastic for tobacco. Production dropped by 27 percent to roughly 645 million pounds in 2005, the year after the quota system came to an end, but has slowly recovered in the past few years, boosted by exports and new marketing tactics.

~snip

Growers are also looking to sell their crop overseas, and a group called the U.S. Tobacco Cooperative that buys tobacco from 3,500 growers in five Southeast states has a unit that exports American leaf to China.

~snip

(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events; US: North Carolina
KEYWORDS: nannystate; pufflist; sintaxes; smokers; taxincrease; tobacco
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 161 next last
To: pissant

Unintentional hillarity has broken out.

Be sure to git some.


61 posted on 04/02/2009 5:11:19 PM PDT by cripplecreek (The poor bastards have us surrounded.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: Drango
But here on FR, smoking is celebrated

It is the FReedom to do so, not the smoking. Don't be so dense.
62 posted on 04/02/2009 5:12:06 PM PDT by ZX12R
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: cripplecreek

HAHAHAHAHA!!

(me too)


63 posted on 04/02/2009 5:12:22 PM PDT by autumnraine (Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose- Kris Kristoferrson VIVA LA REVOLUTION!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Drango

No hyper ventilating.

I just want people to be aware of the evil and danger that exists right here on FR, and the futility of trying to engage in a rational discussion.


64 posted on 04/02/2009 5:12:57 PM PDT by Balding_Eagle (If Liberals would pay their taxes, there would be no deficit..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: cripplecreek

The tobacco nazis are blooming like spring daffodils, it seems.


65 posted on 04/02/2009 5:19:14 PM PDT by pissant (THE Conservative party: www.falconparty.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: Drango

Well Bunky, I sure hope you don’t have any “vices”, like cheeseburgers, because just as sure as Hell, some nanny state type will come along and make sure you understand that YOU are contributing to the deaths of thousands by your eating habits. You are setting a bad example, you are killing animals just to eat them, you are not due individual decisions because you are WRONG!!!!!

See how that works?

Hey, here’s something to ponder....

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND.


66 posted on 04/02/2009 5:19:15 PM PDT by alarm rider ("We laugh at honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst" C.S. Lewis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MaxMax

I would grow mine too, but can’t figure out how to cure it in my little cabin.


67 posted on 04/02/2009 5:23:12 PM PDT by jacquej
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: jacquej
From what I've studied on the internet, it seems different regions have different
needs for the curing process to be correctly done. There are many ways including fire roasted
in a gas oven
with a small tin of water.
68 posted on 04/02/2009 5:36:37 PM PDT by MaxMax (RINO=RAT!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 67 | View Replies]

To: Drango

No, but it’s not government’s place to tell people what to do. It’s common sense that smoking is bad for you, but educate people, don’t try to force them unless they are hurting someone else’s life/property. Parents need to keep track of what their children do, but I can agree that Children, who don’t know any better tobacco should be restricted for, but not for adults, which can decide for themselves!


69 posted on 04/02/2009 5:38:40 PM PDT by JSDude1 (Obama yo 'mama', Uncle Sam yo 'baby daddy'!; (The new cry of the Obama generation)!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: DJ MacWoW
People credit Nixon's so-called "southern strategy" for turning lifelong Democrats into Republicans in the south, but it wasn't so simplistic. I watched it happen as a kid. Democrats turned into busybody health nazis, beginning in the 60's, and started to encroach upon the livelihoods of many, including my own family. NC had it's own little Democrat goosestepper, Nick Galifianakis. Guess who defeated him for his first term in office? Jesse Helms.

Tobacco was a huge business in NC, and still is; nothing like it once was, though. My paternal ancestors came to the colonies, to Maryland, in the 1600's to grow tobacco. They left Maryland to lease a plantation in modern-day Annandale, VA known as Ravensworth, to grow tobacco. They then came to NC before the Revolutionary War, that several of them fought in, to grow tobacco.

They grew tobacco on the land granted to my fifth great grandfather as a result of his service in the Revolution. They grew tobacco through the War Between The States, had several crops destroyed. Through Reconstruction, through the Depression, and into the 70's, they grew it. Got out during that decade though; the handwriting was on the wall. Still generated income from the allotment system, until that was dismantled.

It's a cash crop, profitable like no other that can be grown here. Like many things humans ingest, it can cause problems when used excessively. But, it produces an astounding amount of tax revenue, even before this ludicrous "for the children" extortion, so these greedy, fat pigs jostling at the trough just can't bring themselves to make it illegal.

Fools, the lot of them.

The Federal Government receives, by far and away, the most profit from tobacco, moreso than anyone else. Not the eeeevil tobacco companies and not the growers.

The hypocrisy is as astounding as the former profitability that now goes to Washington, DC.

70 posted on 04/02/2009 5:40:54 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry; Drango
DC is full of hypocrisy and our Constitution has been shredded for a very long time. DC is just now tearing up the tiny pieces that are left with the help of people like Drango.

Thank you for sharing about your family. Do you do genealogy? I've been fascinated by the things that I've found. :-)

71 posted on 04/02/2009 5:59:39 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: DJ MacWoW

I’ve schooled you once on the Constitution, do you need more education?


72 posted on 04/02/2009 6:06:47 PM PDT by Drango (A liberal's compassion is limited only by the size of someone else's wallet.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 71 | View Replies]

To: DJ MacWoW

I’ve spent some time on genealogy, yes. You’d be surprised what you can learn from Revolutionary War pension applications.


73 posted on 04/02/2009 6:06:47 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 71 | View Replies]

To: Drango

Tobacco was the cash crop that the nation was built on.

Do it again.


74 posted on 04/02/2009 6:08:28 PM PDT by TASMANIANRED (TAZ:Untamed, Unpredictable, Uninhibited.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Drango
I’ve schooled you once on the Constitution, do you need more education?

You're "schooling" us alright. Not sure what Constitution you're reading, though. Yours apparently involves life, safety and the pursuit of a padded cell.

75 posted on 04/02/2009 6:09:18 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 72 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry

If you have a Constitutional argument that tobacco should not be regulated/taxed...I’m listening. Please educate me.


76 posted on 04/02/2009 6:13:21 PM PDT by Drango (A liberal's compassion is limited only by the size of someone else's wallet.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: Drango
You are incapable of "schooling" anyone on the Constitution. Government isn't your nanny. Well it may be yours but the Founding Fathers didn't mean it to be.

"If taxes are laid upon us without our having a legal representation where they are laid, we are reduced from the character of free subjects to the state of tributary slaves." Samuel Adams

Bored people try to control others lives.

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live.. We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.

This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it's train wretchedness and oppression." Thomas Jefferson

77 posted on 04/02/2009 6:14:28 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 72 | View Replies]

To: DJ MacWoW

So that’s a NO? You don’t have a constitutional argument?


78 posted on 04/02/2009 6:16:50 PM PDT by Drango (A liberal's compassion is limited only by the size of someone else's wallet.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]

To: RegulatorCountry

I have found 3 RW vets in my family so far but haven’t gotten their records from DAR or SAR. And one that came over on the Fortune in 1621 because of religious persecution. In finding these men, I have also learned more about history. It’s been fascinating.


79 posted on 04/02/2009 6:16:56 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 73 | View Replies]

To: Drango

You don’t have one.


80 posted on 04/02/2009 6:17:24 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 78 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 161 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson