Stand Up, Stand Tall and Stand Pat
May 13th 2011 Posted at Tobacco Politics
1 Comment 
Just to catch up a bit, there are two important U.S. House of Representative bills that are cooling their heels in committees at the moment.
All you political experts know that the committee is where bills go to die. Although, make no mistake, they can be resurrected like Lazarus at some future day and time.
Remember Fred’s Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules!
One of the bills is just outrageous, job killing in a time the nation is trying to dig out of a recession, and at a time when gasoline prices are whatever the desert chieftains and Big Oil say it is.
This bill put together by the career politician U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-TN, should die an inglorious death. You will recall that last year Mr. Cohen sponsored a bill that would hike pipe tobacco excise taxes to ‘‘$24.78’’ per pound. He called it a ‘Tobacco Tax Parity Act,” or HR 4439.
It would have been better to label it the Unfair Tax And Job Annihilating Act.
The bill was co-sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and since its introduction in last year’s Congress, the Cohen disaster has not seen the light of day out of the House Committee on Ways and Means. Here is hoping Mr. Cohen’s idea of tax parity is dead on arrival.
The other bill you need to watch is HR 1639, which is the Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act of 2011, introduced by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla. April 15, 2011.
That bill is now in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In general it says the FDA will not have authority to set regulations for large and premium cigars.
The unique thing about the cigar bill, which recognizes that if you bust up the mom and pop cigar stores you are going to lose an awful lot of jobs, is that it is sponsored by nine Republicans and one Democrat. Of the 10 co-sponsors of the bill, only one Republican from the Deep South backed the bill, and that was Kentucky’s Rep. Harold Rogers.
Presumably, the other Southern Republicans are not worried about jobs.
Four co-sponsors are from Florida, one from Oklahoma and one from Texas.
The lone Dem is Rep. Kathy Castor, from Florida’s 11th Congressional District. It is a large political district that includes most of Tampa and portions of Hillsborough County, Manatee County and Pinellas County.
Any of you folks in those counties should take the time to thank Castor for her courage. It ain’t easy to swim against the anti riptide.
The only trouble I see down the road from the Posey bill is that it mentions only “premium cigars.” We need similar legislative action for pipe tobacco and the hundreds of U.S. pipe tobacco manufacturers who are also small businesses that stand to lose not only their livelihoods, but that of their many, many workers.
You can find out a great deal more about congress and what your elected politicians are up to by going to the Library of Congress’s “Thomas” web site. You can find it at Thomas at Library of Congress.
And please don’t forget that a big, big national election is coming up in 2012. Support those who support you and vote out those who oppose your way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It’s time to stand up, stand tall and stand pat as my old Army drill instructor used to say.
Cohen and the Piracy Act
March 31st 2010 Posted at Commentary, General News
1 Comment
Here is the thing about U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Memphis who wants to increase by more than 700 percent the price you pay for pipe tobacco: He regularly gets few bills passed and this year the majority of your tax money he squirreled away in “earmarks” went for projects outside his home district.
This is according to OpenSecrets.org. You can check it out for yourselves. In fact, if I am reading the numbers correctly, of the more than $18 million he spent of your money, most of it went to New York and Washington.
Uh, does this sound odd to you: A Memphis Congressman spending your hard earned tax dollars in New York and Washington?
It does to me.
In fact, I don’t want this guy spending one dime of my tax contributions. He gets lobby money by the ton, because he votes the way the lobbyists want him to vote.
And now, he wants to park a big price hike for pipe tobacco in your back pocket, not his.
He is up for re-election, but the guy likely to give him the most trouble is an African American Democrat. Cohen’s 9th District is largely African American.
The pol who wants to take his job is former Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton, not exactly a clean guy.
Last October, The Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, the largest in the Midsouth, claimed the former mayor had profited in a large-scale real estate scheme.
The newspaper said that newly discovered documents at City Hall “show the mayor and some business associates not only had big dreams for urban renewal, they used the mayor’s office to pursue their dream of personal profit.
“Herenton has said his involvement amounted to a private real estate transaction that had nothing to do with his duties a mayor.
“Yet, an investigation by The Commercial Appeal has found paperwork used to negotiate and close the deal that paid Herenton $91,000 was maintained at City Hall, in filing cabinets and on computers.”
Herenton and Cohen are in a fight to represent the Ninth Congressional District, a low-income area that surrounds Memphis and is more than 60 percent black. The district was redrawn and renumbered in 1973, increasing the percentage of minority voters, and for three decades it elected the state’s only black members of Congress since Reconstruction, Harold E. Ford Sr. and his son Harold E. Ford Jr.
And now if you look at the proceeds Cohen has picked up from lobby groups, it is easy to see whom he is in bed with:
He has raised more than $618,000 this year to pump up his war chest to over $1 million.
His largest contributors are
FedEx Corp at $14,600, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at $10,000 and a slew of other unions such as the Allied Pilots Association ($5,000), the American Federation of State, City and County Municipal Employees ($5,000), the Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union ($5,000), National Beer Wholesalers Association ($5,000), Operating Engineers Union ($5,000), Plumbers/Pipefitters Union ($5,000), Service Employees International Union ($5,000), UNITE HERE ($5,000), United Auto Workers ($5,000) and the United Transportation Union ($5,000).
You make up your own mind why these unions contribute so much to Cohen, especially since he is an anti-smoking candidate.
Cohen, of course, is not alone. He is just the one who sponsored HR 4439, the so-called tobacco parity tax. The bill is in the House Committee on Ways and Means, where it has been since Jan. 13, 2010.
The best hope for pipe smokers is Cohen’s own track record. It isn’t good when it comes to getting bills passed in the House of Representatives.
Usually, he goes after the low-hanging fruit, nothing substantial and not a great deal for his constituents. He’s a lightweight in the House, but he drew a lot of attention with his proposed tobacco piracy act.
You can guess why. Tobacco legislation today is the low-hanging fruit. Cohen is in a real fight to save his seat, which as a career pol he desperately wants to do.
Otherwise, Cohen will have to go back to work as a lawyer in Memphis, which is full of good attorneys.