The bill has the support of 13 other Senate Democrats. You got to wonder, “What are they thinking, if they can think.” This nation needs a complete overhaul of its political system. Not just a fix. It needs new everything, in my humblest of opinions.

But, I am off track. This epistle has nothing to do with the innards of politics today, but everything with specifics.

My apologies for not seeing this sooner. I am making no excuses, but I read newspapers everyday in print and online. If this made it in our local newspaper, I missed it. Likewise, I missed it online as well and I read several online newspapers daily as well.

What I am saying is that once again, it appears the mainstream media, which once was the mighty newsprint industry, failed to report a significant issue.

Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, who really brings home the bacon for his state—just look up his pork report—has now set his sights on funding the federal disabilities act for disabled children, which Congress approved more than three decades ago. It just never got around to funding the thing.

Note: I have created another “page” where you can read the entire act. Or, you can go to Thomas for the whole enchilada.

Now, before you haul me off to the disabled children’s agents for quartering, I want every disabled child in the nation to be helped. I can carry you to some of the most pitiful places on earth in Appalachia and show you disabled children who never get a solitary dime from anyone. So, don’t talk to me about helping. This big-time happy yak of helping the disabled needs to start at home. I have seen the bleakest of the bleak in Appalachia, and it is a disgrace to this nation the life some of those people live.

My newspaper reporting, in fact, for several years fell on deaf ears. I am hard-nosed when it comes to this, so if you want to argue with me about helping the poor and disabled you best bring your lunch and some experience.

I digress. Congress did its usual two-step with the help for disabled children bill several decades back: It passed a bill and then passed payment on to the next generation.

And now Harkin has gotten the idea that he can completely fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and stop you from smoking your pipe or cigar at the same time. That’s a “win-win,” one of the worst word descriptions I have ever read, as some would say in Washington.

I have read the bill and how it heaps tax increases upon all smokers, and yes, pipe smokers you are included this time. No dodging this one for you.

Harkin’s bill, officially alive as SB 1403, would destroy the tobacco industry as we know it. Oh, maybe he hadn’t thought of that, because tobacco taxes from his bill are how the senator plans to fund the IDEA.

Here is what happens under his proposal:

(1)  Excise tax on SMALL CIGARS- goes from $50.33 to $100.50.

(2) CIGARETTE taxes take a double whammy of heading up from $50.33 to $100.50, and from $105.69 to $211.04.

(3) Harkin’s Tax Parity for Pipe Tobacco and Roll-Your-Own Tobacco would send pipe tobacco from $2.8311 per pound to $49.55 per pound. Mind you, we are talking merely the tax on a pound of pipe tobacco, not the retail price. Manufacturers and retailers are on their own as to how they get their money.

If Harkin assumes that he will fund the IDEA through this scheme, he has been smoking something other than tobacco.

These kinds of taxes will demolish the tobacco industry, taking down his revenue stream with it and will put thousands of people out of work at a time when the nation is desperate for jobs.

If I were running for office, my only political placard would be, “It’s Jobs, Stupid.”

Not only does Harkin’s act of incredible stupidity destroy an American industry, it also takes out the hundreds of thousands of people who are part of the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement, or known by its initials as CAFTA-DR.

Friends, CAFTA isn’t small potatoes. The region includes Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. It is a very large trading partner with the U.S., regardless of what you think of free trade agreements.

You cigar smokers will recognize those names right off. The big kahuna left off of any trade agreement, of course, is Cuba and one of these days the U.S. will come to its senses and realize that the cold war is over, Fidel is really a sick old man, his brother Raoul is a numb nuts and we should be trading with the nation that is so broke, its best car on the lot is a 1956 Chevy.

And, by the way, Cuba isn’t hundreds and thousands of miles away. It’s a boat ride from Miami. Get real. You mean to tell me, a nation the size of a spaghetti noodle remains some sort of a threat to the U.S.?

And while you have read this far, you might as well peruse this: The CAFTA-DR region was the 15th largest U.S. export market in the world in 2010, and the third largest in Latin America behind Mexico and Brazil. The United States exported $24.2 billion in goods to the five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic in 2010, an increase of 21 percent over 2009. That is money in the pockets of American business enterprise.

For the five-year period that CAFTA-DR has been in force (2006-2010), U.S. exports grew by 43 percent, which compares very favorably to the 25 percent growth experienced during the five years (2001-2005) before CAFTA-DR.

U.S. exports to all the CAFTA-DR countries have experienced significant growth during the first five years of the agreement, led by Guatemala and Nicaragua (both up 57 percent), followed Costa Rica (44 percent), Honduras (42 percent), Dominican Republic (39 percent) and El Salvador (32 percent).

I think you are getting the picture. We are about to shoot off our toes and feet with Harkin’s hair brain IDEA. A majority of the U.S. cigar market depends upon the names you just read. We are about to put thousands of those people out of work because U.S. taxes have been hoked up by some halfwit politician (a career pol who has been in the U.S. Senate since 1984, and was in the U.S. Congress before that beginning in 1974).

And, yes, this comes at a really critical time in American history. The jobless rate is running over 9 percent. Today, something like 53 million children in America live in poverty, more than ever before, because both parents are out of work.

If this sort of numb skull political bill, which is a bone to the educational lobby, and the Americans with Disability Lobby, who have actually said that Harkin’s bill will “fully fund” the IDEA with no consequences, and at no cost to the American taxpayer, gets by then coming around the bend is an economic monster that will make the Great Recession look like the Great Recess.

No consequences? No cost to the American taxpayer? Now, dear reader, you can see that your tax dollars for public education in the past decades have failed. It produced idiots whose deductive reasoning powers are in the minus wattage.

Dropping this load of tax increases on the already staggering tobacco industry will simply finish it off, wiping out thousands of jobs, closing thousands of retail outlets, shuttering thousands of manufacturers, creating a huge joblessness in the CAFTA nations, and affecting a choking impact on America’s trade deficit and the GDP (that’s gross domestic product for those of you anti-tobacco zealots who have a hard time understanding economics 101).

So, if you are a smoker of any sort, and you want to continue to be a smoker, you need to read this, and then get busy contacting your congressmen and women. You need to tell them that Harkin is a hair ball, and that if you think the past few years have been bad, wait until you shut down the tobacco industry, and force it to go on the black market, where the federal government receives zippa in taxes.

That’s because, for those who are not too street wise, black market sales never happen on anyone’s books. Strictly cash and carry. No records or nice sales slips and tax forms. Your state treasuries will love this result.

I am truly amazed at the depth of stupidity in Congress. I am also astounded that the mainstream media has lost its chones to face up to its responsibilities as the last bastion of hope for the little guy, for mom and pop and apple pie.

I am proud that I was a newspaper reporter under the old breed: they would kick your ass and challenge you to a fist fight outside the bar. They wrote both sides of the news with all the facts, because frankly their reporters were afraid for their asses if they had the facts wrong. You got it right or got gone. You got it first or you were the first out the door.

You were tough or some old man twice your age would break your head with a glue pot. And if a reporter could get through that gauntlet, his editor knew his reporter would be fearless when he had to tackle the real crooks out there in zulu land at the county courthouses, the city councils and the school boards, where people were attaching their sticky fingers to taxpayer’s hard earned dollars.

Those days are gone. You, dear reader, are the loser. And so is our nation.

You can either vote Harkin and his kind out of office (that would be any Senator who has been in the U.S. Senate more than two terms, which is 12 years, and any Congressman who has had six terms, which is also 12 years.

Or, you can watch your favorite pastimes disappear, along with your rights, one by one. And, you are picking up the tab.

In 2011, rank and file Congressmen and women in the U.S. House and Senate receive a current salary of $174,000 per year, plus office expenses for bloated staffs, plus health insurance, some for life. And, you are also picking up an enormous tab for Congressional pensions, also lifetime for many of the career pols.

Are you getting the picture that the fox is in the hen house and the American taxpayer is getting plucked?

Tobacco was once America’s largest and most important cash crop. Today, it is a cash cow for politicians.

And, folks, that cow is running on dry.

Yes sir, what we need in this country is more gambling and more casinos. That’s like a $5 cigar. It’s good for the country, doncha see.

You can believe there is already an outcry from those who view gambling as an evil influence. It will lead to a road of perdition.

States are saying that gambling casinos on the Internet and in bricks and mortar palaces should be allowed and they should be able to receive revenue from those who like to gamble away their money.

And, why not? It is legitimate in many states, so the argument goes. Besides, states and towns need the revenue to keep services up and running and the bureaucracy fat and happy.

Sound familiar? It should. It has the ring of hypocrisy just like lifting the budget ceiling debacle that darn near sank the nation. Instead of facing the hard realities of lean times, states would rather depend on you, the taxpayer and those in the gambling community to pull their mule out of the ditch.

Uh, see, tobacco taxes have been used up already. Pols have rifled those pocketbooks and gone to that money well once too often. Levying more taxes on tobacco and tobacco will be another failed industry, just like manufacturing in this nation. Gone, gone, gone.

Now, states are saying that they should be allowed to rake in taxes from Online gaming and to build their own casinos to bring in the hordes, most of whom can ill afford to lose the rent, house and car payments.

Do you find it odd that states and municipalities seem to have a single track mind when it comes to revenue streams: more taxes, or figuring out another way to relieve you of your hard-earned cash?

I find this totally objectionable, not because I am against a friendly game of poker, but because elected officials who stuff their pockets full of largess from the public till can think in one direction and that is find the public horse and ride it until it drops.

Instead of creating real, lasting jobs, we get another dog and pony show about raking off revenues from gambling. Something about that approach just seems absolutely rotten to me.

But, hey, I’m accustomed to these things now. I have been made a pariah in my country because I enjoy my pipe tobacco. I can no longer smoke my pipe in restaurants, public buildings, some streets and parks and soon, I expect tobacco will be outlawed permanently while the mainstream press goes along with this idiocy.

And then one day, the pols will come after another segment of society, say fattening foods. Oh, that’s right; the feds are already working on that one.

You are being told now what foods you can and can’t eat, but, hey, it is all right for large chemical companies to produce synthetic seeds so mega farms can grow unsafe and FDA-approved foods for your shopping pleasure.

So, pull up a chair at the table all you gamblers. You are about to see your federal, state and local governments at work. . . on you.

Selah

Congress sets the place on fire and then takes off on vacation to fiddle around in la la land. Lame, lame, lame.

Don’t know about you, but I think the whole bunch in Washington needs to be tossed and we start all over again.

Of course, I know that isn’t going to happen, but I still have hope.

Here’s my point: Congress pushed the U.S. to the very brink of economic disaster and then high tailed it for home. Then, S&P downgraded America’s credit rating at a time when the economy is swirling in the tank. This is the same group, recall that approved all those exotic mortgage swaps that went toxic and south a couple of years ago, taking the U.S. economy with it.

All this time, the Food and Drug Administration has been quietly, but surely, administering its death blow to the tobacco industry, which provides jobs and, must I say it, taxes, to the economy. Oh, yeah, that makes sense: let’s kill off an industry, although jobs are dropping like flies in delta heat and the economy is on its knees in the desert, looking for a watering hole.

Why, those tobacco taxes are now being counted on to bail some communities out of poor money management, poor investments, and crooks running city hall.

I’m just saying, it again seems to me that the FDA and other wonky agencies have been heavy handed with an industry that at least pays its way, unlike some I can mention, such as Big Oil, Big Pharma, and a slew of others.

Yeah, I know the routine: cigarettes kill 400k smokers a year. That’s from the CDC. I am still looking for the direct connection of tobacco to all that crap the antis hoke up.

Give me the science and the details so that I can read it for myself and come to a conclusion. I am not about to take the FDA’s word, the word of the CDC, or the anti-zealots, who are in this to advance their own agendas. That is as bizarro as believing Congress has your best interests in mind.

Uh, if you look at the number of automobile accidents, the number of gunshot accidents, the number of alcohol-induced accidents, the number of drug-induced accidents leading to death and mayhem, you might wonder why those social realities aren’t labeled with gruesome warning photos, or those death tolls bandied about freely by the CDC such as is done with tobacco?

OK. I digress. I am just tired of the federal government picking on an industry that, like all others on this planet, has its own set of environmental problems. But, ahem, tobacco does pay more than its fair share to make amends and to help bear the burden of health costs that it may or may not cause.

That’s like paying the daily double before the horses leave the gate. But, nonetheless, tobacco in its ever decreasing state in the U.S. continues to bear increased prices, taxes and handing it all over to people who should not be left in a room alone with anything sharper than a rubber ball.

You can do anything with numbers, make ‘em look like a gold mine when what you have is a dry hole.

 I am fed up with the FDA’s number crunchers, who like S&P need to learn how to add and subtract properly.

Oh, you didn’t hear? Standard and Poor’s downgraded the U.S. debt on bad math. Its bad math.

When sharp-penciled folks in the U.S. Treasury Department pointed out that S&P based its downgrade on a $2 trillion dollar mistake, S&P said, “oops. Well our bad. No matter, your debt stinks and we recommend that it be downgraded anyway. Ha, ha, ha.”

Sound familiar?

I love this country. It’s the only place in the world where you can elect politicians to steal you blind, run you over a cliff and have those who are supposed to help you cheer you on over the side.

By the way, I got some swamp land down in Louisiana that I need to sell.

Selah

But, I am back, recovered from the family wars, I think.

In my absence, we have had some interesting changes. I am posting a WSJ graphic from Dr. Dan Locklair, Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music at Wake Forest University.

The pdf is Dr. Locklair’s thoughts he expressed in a letter to the editor he wrote to the Wall Street Journal back in June. The good professor is a longtime pipesmoker and observer of the pipe scene. He is also good friends with Craig Tarler, master of the universe, tobacco manufacturer on Mount Zeus, and a special friend.

The Locklair letter deals with the outrageous artwork requirement the Food and Drug Administration has slapped upon cigarette manufacturers. You’ve no doubt seen some of that horrible graphic material. It is not only highly offensive and absurd, but represents a cave-in of the FDA to the anti-smoking zealots.

And with that in mind, it is newsworthy to note that The U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering the question of just how far the FDA can go in placing those graphic warnings on cigarette labels. It is also looking into how far the FDA can extend its reach in regulating how tobacco companies advertise and market their products.

It is about time a court somewhere took up the issue of what the FDA is doing under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

And here is a novel idea in the appeals story: Noel Francisco, attorney for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., explained to athe three-judge federal panel that the FSPTCA actually forbids cigarette manufacturers from making statements that are “true and those that are not misleading.”

Check out the Associated Press story on this important court action.

Although there is little hope the Appeals Court will rule in favor of the cigarette makers, there is some slim chance, which is better than none.

In 2010 a U.S. District Judge in Bowling Green, Ky., upheld most of the FDA’s marketing restrictions.

Uh, you’d think that with the economy in the tank, unemployment at 9.2 percent, Congress fiddling while the debt ceiling burns as the nation nears default on its debts and devaluation of its credit worthiness, somebody might figure out higher cigarette taxes and lost revenues and jobs in the tobacco business is not good for the nation just now.

But, go figure. I’ve given up, and holler calf rope.

The New York Times had the news story this morning. If you haven’t seen the upcoming package photos, go here. If this doesn’t shock you, then nothing will.

The images are the product of the anti-tobacco campaign against smokers of all stripes. I know the argument that this is just for packages of cigarettes. Believe me, pipe tobacco tins and packages, cigar boxes and labels, won’t be long in receiving the same treatment. Bet on it.

Smokers of anything will soon be so ostracized that you’ll be lucky to smoke in the confines of your home, or in my case the outside deck. I am waiting on Real Estate laws to change that say if you have smoked inside your home, you will have to pay some sort of fine.

These images are outrageously bad and come to you via the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and similar well-funded anti-smoking outfits.

We pipe and cigar smokers are in the deepest of doodoo. If you fail to see the wisdom of that, just think about how long it took FDA to come up with these images, get federal law written and changed and signed into reality. About a year, tops.

But, not to worry. Your tax dollars are at work. They just aren’t going after some other products with the same zeal. For instance, how do you like eating genetically-engineered tomatoes? Hey, I’m not an organic nut job. I love tomatoes, especially Grainger County (Tennessee)  Tomatoes and Vidalia, Georgia onions slathered with mayonnaise between two pieces of bread.

But, the point is, your drinking water isn’t safe, either. It is laced with enough chemicals to dissolve a train engine.  Your foods from the grocery store aren’t safe. That fruit you are eating from Costa Rica was probably sprayed with DDT or some other chemical outlawed in the U.S.

Hey, don’t fret. The FDA is watching over you!

If you are not buying and hoarding pipe tobacco and cigars, then you are not paying attention. If you don’t have a humidor or a cellar full of Ball glass jars filled with tobacco, you will be left at the loading dock when the last bales  of tobacco are shipped out to be burned in large piles

This is serious business.

I talked to Joyce White, whose tobacco ancestry goes back to Royal Cigar in Atlanta, the other day. She told me not only are the rules inside the U.S. becoming so stringent that it is hard to make a living selling pipe tobacco, but also rules governing foreign tobacco manufacturers are biting down hard.

Yes, boys and girls, a new day is upon us. The large media types are not on our side. Big Media has forgotten how to publish both sides of an issue. It is up to you to find out for yourselves. PSI tries to help.

But that’s like pushing a boulder uphill with a string.

The handle is coming off of the pump.