Say Anything Blog

On cigars:

Eric Newman punches the numbers on his calculator and gapes at the results one more time.

It’s no mathematical error: The federal government has proposed raising taxes on premium cigars, the kind Newman’s family has been rolling for decades in Ybor City, by as much as 20,000 percent.

As part of an increase in tobacco taxes designed to pay for children’s health insurance, the nickel-per-cigar tax that has ruled the industry could rise to as much as $10 per cigar.

“I’m not sure in the history of man, since our forefathers founded the country in 1776, that there’s ever been a tax increase of 20,000 percent,” said Newman, who runs the Tampa business founded by grandfather Julius Caesar Newman. “They had the Boston Tea Party for less than this.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this country once fight a revolution that was sparked by excessive taxes on creature comforts?  Tea maybe?

What’s telling is that the Democrats look to foist this tax on us by using the tried and true, sympathy evoking argument they almost always use: It’s for the children.

But there’s a larger issue at play here.  This SCHIP program is how the Democrats are going to sneak socialized medicine in on Americans without Americans ever actually choosing to go that route.  Already the Dems have defined “poor” families, for the purposes of this program, as those that make $82,000/year or less.  This is how liberals herd people onto the victimhood plantation.  They tell them that they’re poor and can’t afford health care on their own, then they vote other people’s money out of the nation’s treasury to pay for these people’s entitlements and make them dependent on the government and finally they use that dependence to control them.

Just like how Democrats get votes from farmers by turning them into victims and then pandering to them with subsidies.  Same with minority groups like blacks too.  “You can’t get ahead unless we give you affirmative action and all sorts of special treatment, so vote for us!” It isn’t about empowerment, or making people better so that they can stand on their own two feet, it’s about subjugation.

And trust me, that’s what socialized medicine will be (in addition to terribly expensive, inefficient and ineffective).  Subjugation.  Once we’re all hooked on government health care, and once private health care providers are so marginalized by an inability to compete with the government (which has no need to turn a profit) that only the rich can afford them, our dependence on politicians for health care will be used to change how we live.

The anti-smoking folks will be demanding that smokers pay more in taxes.  The anti-fat people will be demanding that regulations against unhealthy foods be passed for the sake of saving tax dollars.  And all this while you wait six months for knee surgery like they do in Canada and Great Britain.