Category Archives: Society

Tax to Save

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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.

Predictions

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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.

Spam Scam

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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?

Guzzling? No. Gobbling.

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Congress poked its head up out of the gopher hole with a $4,500 incentive to trade in your gas guzzlers for new, fuel-efficient rides. The House passed the bill yesterday on a 298-119 vote.

President Barack Obama has supported the plan as a way to help struggling automakers and improve the fuel efficiency of the cars and trucks on the road.

Huh. That incentive might have helped struggling automakers even more six or 12 months ago.

Now that the Administration has run two of three American car makers out of business, it is too bad the only place left to trade is either Government Motors or Overseas, Inc.

Imagine that.

Remember you and you and you voted for these turkeys. A few of us voted against ’em but that makes me no less doomed.

we’ve really stepped in it this time

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“There is nothing, no matter how stupid it sounds, that I am rejecting,” Charles Rangel (D-NY) said. Rep. Rangel chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.

President Obama called home from gay Paris to remind the Congress critters he wants a health care bill on his desk before the August recess.

Barney Rubble said the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions would begin forging the legislation on Tuesday, June 16. Senate Democrats have an ambitious schedule to get this turkey passed before the voters notice.

The House is ready. Their bill outlined on Tuesday will “allow” people to enroll in a government-run health insurance plan similar to Medicare.

  • The law will require every American to have health insurance.
  • The law will create a government-run insurance company that would, in President Obama’s words, “keep insurance companies honest.”
  • The law will provide government subsidies to help people buy insurance.
  • The law will require employers to provide health benefits to employees.
  • The law will not address how Congress would actually pay for these health-care initiatives.

The administration wants a plan that requires every American to have health insurance. And if you cannot afford health insurance, you can buy it from Government Motors^H^H^H Government Shield. And if you do not buy health insurance, you will need an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. At taxpayer expense.

Health care is free in jail.

Yesterday was Donald Duck Day.

George Poleczech likes to remind us, “You Democrats have really stepped in it this time.”

Every government rations health care by making you wait. Every one of them. Wait long enough and every illness cures itself, ya know. Every one of them. As we rush headlong into the arms of government health care, even Canada is finally moving away from it.

Sorry, George. It looks more like we Americans have really stepped in it this time.