Tobacco Piracy Tax Act

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.

Tags: Congress, H.R.4439, Memphis, Pipes and Tobacco Magazine, Steve Cohen, TN, Tobacco, Willie Herenton