[Schatze]

Davis' budget also includes a plan to sell bonds to be paid off with future collections from the 1998 settlement with tobacco companies.

As they seem to be doing everything they can to put the tobacco companies out of business, I wonder where they think they're going to get "future collections." Evidently, these people weren't required to take a course in logic when they were in college.

[chance33_98]

Saw a blurb about cigarette sales being down 50% in NY - so much for the money they were going to raise by taxing them.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[A. Morgan]

Why stop at three dollars? Why not six, or sixty dollars?

[VRW Conspirator]

Now, Wesson wants to scrap the car tax plan and raise smokers' tax by $2.13 cents above the existing 87 cent-a-pack tax. That translates to a total $3 a pack in cigarette taxes.

Assembly budget chairman John Campbell, R-Irvine, ought to tell them that it will take $4.17 (or more) to balance the budget. But he should vote against it, of course. The objective is to let the nuts and fruits see what flakes they have for representatives...heh-heh

[Argus]

"This tax is a voluntary tax. If you don't smoke, you don't pay the tax," said Wesson, D-Culver City.

Paging any Republican legislator who will use the same logic to put confiscatory taxes on the activities liberals prefer. How about an abortion tax - say $10,000 per abortion? If you don't kill your baby, you don't pay the tax.

[Uncle Hal]

Well at least so far the Republicans are holding tight and the democrats are the ones making the concessions. I hope they keep holding out.

[Springman]

Bump for later.

[monkeyshine]

We're screwed.

In other news, the Judge in the settlement talks between California and several power companies has closed the settlement talks and sent the case to the FERC judge for a hearing. California signed long term contracts for energy at rates up to $285 per megawatt hour last year. The rate on the spot market today is $30. As you can see, the state's leaders are total idiots who have no idea what they are doing, how business works, or how things will change or be effected by their actions in the future.

[F.J. Mitchell]

"This tax is a voluntary tax. If you don't smoke you don't pay the tax." Smirks Wesson. Sounds like the CEO of the snake oil division of Wesson. By his reasoning, all taxes are voluntary. If you don't eat you don't pay food tax-if you don't work, you don't pay income tax-If you never accumulate property, you never pay property tax-If we impeach all the politicians and never elect another one, we don't pay any taxes at all.

[finnman69]

What would that make a pack in CA? It's up to $7.50 here in NYC.

[Gritty]

gaping budget deficits and revenues that continue to sag.

I know this is a silly thing to suggest, but why doesn't California try cutting expenses? Are they trying to tell us there's nowhere in that larded, bloated budget where they can't save a few wasted billion, much less eliminate scores of useless programs and legions of deadwood employees?

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Glad I don't smoke. The way things are going, people are going to have tobacco gardens in their yards and make their own cigarettes.

[Bubba_Leroy]

So what happens if people stop smoking (or more likely, start buying tobacco on street corners from drug dealers who realize that they can make more money selling cigarettes)?

[Duke Nukum]

I don't understand why its just a $3 tax. Why not a $300,000,000 tax? Its voluntary.

A $300,000,000 tax would benefit the state in other ways too. Entrepreneurism would be expanded by the need for a black market. That will spark cigarette wars and all that implied violence will allow the state to hire more police and enact more gun laws that wont be enforced, so the unions will be happy.

Eventually, California would have to close up its border with the U.S. (it couldn't close its border with Mexico, that wouldn't be P.C.) to try to control the illegal traffic in cigarettes, and, they'll be able to justify everything they do by claiming huge, huge losses in revenue caused by the illegal tobacco trade.

Its got to be a politician's wet dream.

[ibbryn]

Just for the record, these same dolts are also proposing a five cents per cartridge tax on ammo. This will be used to pay for all the costs of gun violence. A RKBA group counter proposal is a 25 cents a cartridge tax credit, since guns save more lives than they take.

When Los Angeles started requiring fingerprints in order to buy ammo I just switched to ordering over the net. Buy in bulk from another state and you get better prices anyway.

If they are really depending on cig taxes to make up a hole in the budget, could we bankrupt the state if no one paid the tax? If everyone bought on line, from Indians or from friends who trucked in cartons from another state?

[A. Morgan]

The sky is the limit. Why stop with tobacco? How about a $3.00 tax on hamburgers? or, fries? Why, before long we'll be worse off than those people in Russia!

Let's face it, the goal of the Democraps is to tax America back to the stone age, where they will have ALL our money and pass laws giving it all away appeasing this group or that one... they will decide, cuz we're just too stupid to know how to spend our own money !

[SheLion]

[SheLion]

Online cigarette sales light up

[zoyd]

Where's the nearest Indian reservation? From Orange County?

Looks like I'll be making some 'smoke trips' and denying CA the taxes it already gets from me. They'll go from getting lots of my cig-tax dollars, to getting NONE.

[Great Dane]

Logic has never been a politician's forte.