Tobacco Piracy Tax Act
March 6th 2010 Posted at Breaking News, Commentary, General News
3 Comments 
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress- Mark Twain
I just finished reading the latest issue of Pipes & Tobacco Magazine, one of my favorite publications. This edition had only a mention of the so-called “Tobacco Tax Parity Act,” or House Resolution (HR) 4439, introduced by career politician Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis, TN.
First, I would like to correct the nomenclature of the bill. Instead of a “tax parity”, it is more a “tax piracy act.”
Political office abusers, such as Cohen, are simply trying to fund other budget-busting projects by levying taxes on what is perceived by the general public as a health hazard.
Never mind that alcohol, automobiles (Toyota comes to mind immediately), guns (before you send me a nasty email, I love guns, hunted all my life and was a sometimes good duck hunter), the atmosphere in certain cities can be and are hazardous to one’s health. You don’t see the kind of reaction that tobacco receives, which is a constant taxing of those who use the products they enjoy.
This is simply a pirating of our basic civil rights, our right to choose, our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and is a mean-spirited method of plugging holes in public budgets that have been overdrawn for years by financial free-spenders in Congress and local public bodies.
Cohen is just the latest iteration of this political phenomenon. He is in a tough re-election race in his home-district in Memphis, which is primarily a black population, and is willing to cut any sort of deal with any group to keep his job.
Slam-dunking tobacco is good politics and good for contributions from a variety of anti-tobacco sources. Cohen is going up against Willie Herenton, another career politician, who is the first African American elected Mayor of Memphis. Herenton was the superintendent of Memphis City Schools for 12 years.
He resigned from his position as superintendent amidst public accusations of an affair he was having with one of his employees.
These days, some career pols experience troubles with their former peccadilloes. Can anyone say John Edwards, or Mark Sanford?
The Tobacco Piracy Tax Act comes at a time when every politician worth old campaign promises is saying that the Great Recession is over and we can all get back to work.
I just read a news story the other day that said many of those middle class jobs we once had are gone forever. Don’t count on their return, or even a job if you happen to be breaking 60 and have just lost a job. The message I read is, “Goodbye, good luck, and don’t let the door hit you in the derriere.”
So, at a time when many, many people are having a hard time keeping the home budget on two feet, Cohen and his ilk want to tax pipe tobacco to an outrageous extent, some 775 percent to be precise, from $2.83 to almost $25 per pound to make it on par with roll your own cigarette taxes. The RYO boys pulled a fast one, repackaged their tobacco in tins to pass it off as pipe tobacco in order to skirt the exchorbitant federal tax on RYO. This put pipe tobacco in the sights of such gunslingers as Cohen who will curry favor with any group as long as he can get campaign contributions and stir up an issue for votes.
This Cohen piracy tax proposal will put many tobacco manufacturers out of business, lop off many jobs, cause the unemployment rolls to go up, increase unemployment benefits and add to the jobless rate that is currently right at 10 percent across the nation.
Yeah, this makes sense.
And, while we are at it, why not follow Cohen and his kind on how they vote for the upcoming health care issue, if it ever comes to a vote. If he is so all-fired concerned about our health, then he won’t mind our keeping track of his voting record on health care.
Contact your Congressman about the Tobacco Piracy Tax Act, and let them know where you stand, that you are tired of tobacco products being taxed out of existence to fund some idiotic and costly project that benefits the few.
And if you can get his or her attention, pry them loose from lobbyists money-raising bashes for re-election efforts, get them to take time away from travel junkets to foreign lands at taxpayer expense, ask them to think about doing the job they were sent to Washington to do. We call it the people’s business.
Part of that job is not to tax people who can ill afford to be taxed over a staple such as tobacco, once a prominent cash crop for hard-working farmers, who used their tobacco allotments to ensure their children had shoes for school.
Tell them that we love our tobacco and we intend to continue using tobacco in the form we choose, despite the underhanded and crooked means that Congress is trying to smash the tobacco market with the help of faulty science and screaming meme anti-smoking wackos.
Friends, it is time to stop the Tobacco Piracy Tax Act.
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.