You do a LOT of good, Joe. Even your rants are good. 
Posted on 10/17/2002 8:44:09 AM PDT by MindBender26
This Friday's John Stossel "Give Me a Break" on 20/20 is about that famous $200 billion tobacco settlement. Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute once called it "the foulest, rankest scandal." Now that the money is in play, I see what Horowitz meant.
President Clinton called the deal, "a milestone in the long struggle to protect our children." (The politicians always stress protecting "the children.") Washington State's Attorney General, Christine Gregoire said, "These lawsuits by these Attorneys General were on behalf of those 3,000 children who were addicted every day." But once the checks arrived, most of the promises regarding children went up in smoke. In North Carolina, politicians gave $200,000 to a place that holds horse riding competitions. A county golf course in New York got almost a million dollars; $200,000 for golf carts. And the lawyers got plenty. Dickie Scruggs, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott's brother-in-law, is said to be getting more than $800 million. Maryland attorney Peter Angelos, who was already rich enough to own the Baltimore Orioles, is getting another $150 million.
And guess who else got some money? Tobacco producers - Because there may be less demand for their crops because of the settlement. "Why shouldn't I get some of the money?" North Carolina tobacco farmer Bobby Bissett told us.
North Carolina has now spent more than $42 million of its part of the settlement with the tobacco industry. They gave money to a tobacco auction house, and a museum of tobacco farming. The states say these kinds of investments will help create jobs and stimulate the economy.
What's going on here?
Politicians and the lawyers cut a deal promising they'll help stop kids from smoking. But who was really helped? Rich lawyers and the tobacco industry.
Give me a break!
Since we are talking about MO, I was hoping you would come along! :)
Especially about higher taxes will get more people to quit - yet in the next breath they claim that smokers are so addicted that they can not just quit without the help of the government and the pharacuetical companies.
And to thebig spenders - I had such high hopes for the firts female Governor of Delaware - even though she is a Democrat in all her years in the State Senate she was a majorly fiscally conservative person.
Here we are just through the 1st quarter of the fiscal year andalready there is a 95million projected shortfall.
When we faced on last spring her idea was a 35cent a pack tax increase so state employees could get a raise. Suddenly she got her smoking ban and then there was enough money---gee how convenient.
Now she's calling for a 50cent a pack increase to help cover the shortfall. I think she's got another thing coming to her come January.
Smokers are ticked and have woken up in Delaware - no way is it going to be easy to increase that tax and not any others.
Well, you figure: if 25-30% of the people in the state smoke, why oh why is it fair to put the budget burden on the backs of the smokers? It's not fair! All the people in each state need to help carry the load. Not just one small group of people who choose to smoke a legal product.
You do a LOT of good, Joe. Even your rants are good.
Exactly - and when you figure a lot more people drink alcohol than smoke tobacco and then look at the discrepency between the 2 - it's even worse - in Delaware alone it is nearly 5 tto 1 (tobacco revenue 50 million; alcohol taxes 11 million)
And of course many smokers are also drinkers so are hit even more.
Amen, NC was very up front about using the money to help tobacco farmers, who were only growing a legal crop.
Part of the problem for tobacco farms is that tobacco provided the greatest revenue per acre of any legal crop. Many farmers had sold off acreage, allowing their farms to shrink to the size of their tobacco allotments.
Now, if they give up their allotment, there is no legal crop that will provide them with the same revenue.
I hadn't even considered the anti smoking money from outside political forces.
Guess I'll have to get out the calculator and figure out the new, "combined" tax revenue.
But, that's why I buy bulk tobacco and roll my own.
I do also. But the 20% will be on bulk tobacco too.
Yes, the war on the smoker runs deep. It's all about money and politics. 
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