Category Archives: Soapbox

Bill To Increase Cigar Tax 20,000%

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Stunned? You’re not the only one:

“I thought there was a typo. I thought they meant 10 cents per cigar, not $10 per cigar. I was stunned like everyone else,” Sharp said.

Currently the tobacco tax is 4.8 cents per cigar and 39 cents per pack of cigarettes (1.95 cents each). The latest bill will raise those to $1/pack for cigs and $10/cigar. The increase of 150% on cigarettes is ridiculous but the cigar tax is off the scale.

The average aficionado smokes about three cigars a week at about $3 to $5 apiece, according to the cigar association.

The tax would mean that relaxing past time would go to $13 to $15 for the exact same cigars! Of course the true tragedy is that (as always) the poorest cigar smokers will be the hardest hit. For those that can’t afford the sweet nectar of a hand rolled smoke, machine made cigars typically run between 50 cents and a dollar apiece. So a poor man’s cigar relaxation costs about as much as everyday acceleration found in a Coke. Imagine paying $11 for a 16oz bottle of Coke.

With the tax the country’s cheapest cigars will instantly cost as much as the nicest your local humidor has to offer (which will then cost $20 instead of $10). In essence, taking cigar smoking away from the poor and allowing only on the rich to enjoy it. I thought the Democrats were supposed to give things to the poor.

And what about the tobacco worker’s (we always seem concerned about the tobacco farmers in this country) jobs? Hav-A-Tampa alone employs 900 workers in the Tampa area and doesn’t make a bad smoke. I coincidentally enjoyed their wares just last night (research for this article of course). I believe Eric Newman, who runs the Tampa business founded by his grandfather Julius Caesar Newman and employs many people in his small cigar factory said it pretty well:

“Why don’t we just go out of business?” Newman said. “Here, you can run our company, Mr. Government.”

Now what could possess such a flagrant taxation bill? Well the poor, sick, dying children – or so they would have you believe. This tobacco tax has been dubbed to help the children, but that’s a bit of slick marketing. This bill defines children as anyone 25 years of age and under.

Let me say that again: ANYONE 25 years of age and under. So if you are a 25 year old male that makes $82,000/year with a house wife of 23 and two small children, guess which of you are eligible for this coverage? All four of you. This bill is not helping “children”, or the “poor”, or the “uninsurable”. This is an end-run to get Universal Government Health Care covering the bottom fourth of the human age range. A few more bills like this and we will have Hillary-Care without the panic inducing name.

Thankfully, for tax payers and cigar smokers Bush has said he will veto the bill. But what happens after ’08 is anyone’s guess.

Ineffective Congress Criticizes Political Progress

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Word has been leaking out that the surge in Iraq is working better than anyone – except perhaps General Petraeus – expected. The military progress has been so good that mainstream media is no longer able to keep a lid on it. But now that the first few days of shock have worn off, the Dems and the media elite have a new mantra: military progress is great, but we need political progress. (though back when elections were held and constitutions formed, the same pundits pointed to a lack of military progress)

Historical rhetoric aside, I find it pretty ironic that this Congress thinks it can school other politicians on progress. Let’s take a look at what our congress has accomplished:

  • “1st 100 Hours” Promises were broken within a week (congress was going take less time off and work more)
  • Of the “Six for ’06” bills touted by House Democrats, only one has become law. And that one, which raises the minimum wage, passed not on its own, but only because it was tacked onto the Iraq funding bill.
  • The Dems have refused to follow their personally dubbed “voter mandate” to end the war in Iraq.
  • Majority Leader Reid is working hard to remove all mentions of earmarks from the ethic rules revision (earmarks ie personal pork was a linchpin of the “culture of corruption”)
  • Achieved an all time record for lowest approval rating ever. (14% for the official poll, though Zogby now has them at 13%)

So compared to the greatest democracy on the planet, I’d say the Iraqi government is really getting into the swing of things with delays and silly political drama. A secret of democracy, though, is that it tends to distract all the “leaders” of the country with politics, which leaves them much less time for indiscriminately killing the citizenry.

But perhaps the Democratic congress referring to the area where they have made a lot of headway: starting investigations!

According to White House spokesperson Scott Stanzel, the Democrats have launched over 300 investigations, had over 350 requests for documents and interviews and they have had over 600 oversight hearings in just about 100 days.

ASIDE: Unfortunately for the Democrats, none of these investigations have found ANYTHING. Which can lead to only one of two conclusions. 1) The Bush Administration is one of the most well run and ethical administrations ever and the Democrats should stop wasting their time investigating them. 2) The Bush administration though vile and corrupt is quite effective at hiding any and all evidence of their crimes from the inept investigations of congress. Therefore the Democrats should stop wasting their time investigating them. Either way you end up in the same place. The Dems should really get back to the business of protecting social security from privatization and making sure illegal immigrants don’t have to pay out-of-state tuition.

No More Public Schools In Pittsburgh

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The Pittsburgh Public Schools will drop “public” from its name and adopt a new, standardized way of referring to its schools as part of a campaign to brighten and strengthen the district’s image.

For example, Schenley High School will be called Pittsburgh Schenley…

By dropping “public” from its name, Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools.

This is a great way to address the negative image associated with public schools: re-brand everything. Fixing the problem itself is much more in involved. And once the public realizes that Pittsburgh Schenley is just as bad as Schenley High School, you simply re-brand again to Schenley School of Pittsburgh. I personally think that’s an even more inspiring -positive image- name.

Al Qaeda Recruitment Techniques Horrific

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Michael Yon has an eye-opening piece on his site MichaelYon-Online.com. It displays just how barbaric the enemy has become. The scary part is that NO ONE is picking this up in the media. How is it that we are fighting the most vicious enemy we have ever faced – and yet we here little if anything on these acts?

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family. [emphasis added]

Michael Yon in addition to bringing us this little publicized tale, also offers a bit of striking commentary on Al Qaeda. He puts it so well, we had to reprint it here:

Like many things in Iraq, the question of whether or not the murderers were al Qaeda is flawed from beginning. Al Qaeda is not a union, it doesn’t issue passports. What is al Qaeda but the collection of people who claim to be al Qaeda? Those responsible for murdering and burying those bodies in al Ahamir (or al Hamira) had the markers of al Qaeda, the same al Qaeda that had boastfully installed itself as the shadow government of Baqubah. The al Qaeda who committed atrocities in Afghanistan, New York . . . the list is long. As for al Ahamir, the massacre “walks like a duck.” It happened in duck headquarters. The people here say the duck did it. The duck laughs.

First Born #1 In Smarts

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The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.’s than their siblings, researchers are reporting today, in a large study that could settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between I.Q. and birth order.

This is, of course, old hat to some like myself. It’s about time researchers caught up with what us first born have know for years: we rock! Intellectually of course.

What I didn’t realize was that I apparently my 3% of superfluous brain matter by not attending a “elite private liberal-arts college [instead of] a less exclusive public one”. And all the while I thought I was smart for getting an equivalent education for $100,000 less. (Do student loans make you sharper?)

Unfortunately for “late borns” the trend seems to continue – downward. “Eldest children scored an average of 103.2, about 3 percent higher than second children (100.3) and 4 percent higher than thirdborns (99.0).” But not to fear younglings: while first born children win more Nobel Prizes, “younger siblings often live more adventurous lives” than there older counterparts.

Parents are apparently mostly to blame. While most parents are pushing their eldest to cure cancer, younger siblings must resort to base jumping to get needed attention. Still many researchers are very, very excited about this study. Frank J. Sulloway, had this to say:

“I consider these two papers the most important publications to come out in this field in 70 years; it’s a dream come true.”

Sulloway, a psychologist at the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley has obviously not had sex in many years.