June 29. 2009 by Dick.

Dear Governor Crist:

I know you have built your career opposing tax increases, so I particularly want to thank you for raising the taxes on cigarettes to help balance the Florida budget and pay off the looming deficit. Goodness knows we can use all the help we can get. You had good company. Every Republican in the state Senate voted for it, their statewide political aspirations and “no new taxes” pledges notwithstanding.

On Wednesday, the cigarette tax here in Florida will quadruple, rising a dollar to $1.34 per pack. That pack of smokes will now cost at least $5.

“I view it more as a health issue than a tax issue,” Governor Crist (R-FL) said in the Orlando Sentinel. “Ronald Reagan used to say if you want to kill something, tax it. It wouldn’t be bad if we killed smoking. It would save a lot of lives.”

As of July 1, Florida’s new cigarette tax is $1.34 per pack. Florida’s cigarette tax has remained unchanged for decades. The increase means this state leaps from fourth-lowest in the nation to bumping out Pennsylvania for twentieth spot. The legislature expects that extra $1 tax to generate more than $900 million a year.

Five bucks a day, up in smoke.

Governor, your keen action has had the beneficial side effect you wanted. My next door neighbor, Henryk, has bought his last carton of cigarettes. “I’m too cheap to pay $50 a carton,” Henk said. “I just won’t pay it.”

Now, really, Henk isn’t nearly as cheap as I am. I quit in 1976 when the nation celebrated the bicentennial and cigarettes jumped to fifty cent a pack. That wasn’t for the (w)rapper. That wasn’t for the excise tax. That was the price. Imagine paying FIVE DOLLARS for a carton of the little cigars I preferred. I’m not sorry I quit. Even starting with the now infinitesimal price I paid a third of a century ago, I figure I have saved more than $30,000 dollars or the price of a couple of small cars.

Henk says he’s done with tobacco.

He’s going back to pot.

It’s cheaper.

Posted in News, Society, Random Access | 2 Comments »

June 28. 2009 by Dick.

The House passed the Obama energy and climate bill this week.

“There’s a growing awareness that we need to move on energy,” David Axelrod said on NBC’s Meet the Press today. “We’ve been waiting for decades. And this bill will create millions of clean-energy jobs. It will deal with … our dependence on foreign oil, and we have to deal with that. And it deals this deadly pollution and global warming that we have to move on.” He also admitted that “We have not broken the back of the recession” despite the January rush to pass the $787 billion emergency stimulus package.

The bill includes crap and trade as well as extensive taxes on energy use. Investor Warren Buffett called the bill “a huge tax, and there’s no sense calling it anything else … it’s a fairly regressive tax.”

There is every reason to expect the Senate to pass the Obama energy and climate bill this fall.

I predict that gas prices will exceed $6/gallon
immediately after the midterm (2010) elections.

I predict that the prime rate will exceed 12%
immediately after the 2012 elections.

Posted in What? Are They Nuts?, Society, Politics, Random Access | No Comments »

June 22. 2009 by Dick.

I am, while you read this, driving up the East Coast burning 90% dead dinosaurs and throwing away the other 10% of my fuel dollars on a government scam.

Ethanol is the automotive equivalent of email spam for erection extenders.

You’ve seen the ads.

ED Med proud to offer the world best quality
of erection pills, at huge savings over the brand equivalents.

Ci ialis (only $3 per pill)
Ci ialis Softabs (only $3.33 per pill)
Vaigra (only $1.56 per pill)
Vaigra Softabs (only $1.89 per pill)
Le vitra (only $2.78)

Join our current 5 millions happy users today.

I’ve become increasingly frustrated and it has nothing to do with Mr. ED. We in this part of the blogosphere are doing good things: we’re asking the right questions and we’re honing the good answers.

We’ve known since 2006 that the taxpayer-funded subsidy for ethanol came to $1.45 per gallon. We’ve known for even longer that ethanol cuts mileage at a time the same government that underwrites this non-fuel mandates higher economy and greater ethanol usage. We’ve also known that ethanol laced fuels corrode automotive, marine, and lawnmower fuel systems. And we have certainly announced it.

No one hears us. The Beltway Bandits of the world don’t (won’t? can’t?) listen and 306,711,705 people here in these United States have never even heard of No Puffin (in a wild flight of fancy, I assumed that one thousand peeps have). “ED Med” claims 5,000 times that many satisfied users.

And you, gentle reader, have. You may even agree some of the time.

Unfortunately, that audience of one is insufficient to effect change.

People seem to buy from spam. Otherwise, spammers wouldn’t do what they do.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Posted in Marketing, Society, Science (real), Random Access | 4 Comments »