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-dunkingtobacco 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, “Good bye, 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.

Attention all pipe tobacco merchants, manufacturers, and consumers! House Resolution (HR) 4439, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, proposes an egregious increase to the pipe tobacco tax! HR4439 proposes an increase from the current tax rate of $2.83 per pound to $24.78 per pound–the same rate as RYO tobacco! 

We cannot stand by while the Congress attempts another tobacco tax increase on the heels of the SCHIP tax! Contact your representatives NOW! and tell them NO to the NEW PIPE TOBACCO TAX! 

 Latest Major Action: 1/13/2010 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

 You will recall that the latest from the House Committee on Ways and Means is that the longtime chair of that august committee (which decides your taxes for you) is U.S. Rep. Charles Rangle of New York. He’s been around for 20 elections.

Here is what McClatchy Newspapers reporter William Douglas wrote on March 4 of Rangle’s recent ethics problem:

WASHINGTON – Rep. Charles B. Rangel’s decision to step aside as the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee not only could be the beginning of the end of his storied career, but also gives Republicans fresh ammunition to use against Democrats in November elections.

Rangel, D-N.Y., said yesterday that he was stepping aside so his ethics troubles wouldn’t hurt Democrats in the midterm elections.

“In order to avoid my colleagues having to defend me during their elections, I have this morning sent a letter to Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi asking her to grant me a leave of absence until such time as the ethics committee completes its work,” he said.

With the House ethics committee’s admonishment of Rangel for taking corporate-paid trips to the Caribbean, and with investigations open into other alleged violations, the 20-term Democrat has become a symbol of ethical lapses at a time when Democrats are running scared for re-election.”

The ethics committee publicly admonished Rangel, 79, last week for taking two corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008, though it said it had no proof he knew about the corporate funding.

This is the guy in charge of writing your tax code. You got to wonder how much of the code he is putting into his own pockets.

So, we got a call for a 775 percent increase on pipe tobacco  from a lawyer in Memphis, TN., who is not exactly what I would call a shining example a good public servant, and the head of the House of Representatives power tax writing committee maybe heading to a court at some future date, or at least some sort of congressional action, maybe even expulsion, censure, reprimand or some sort of fine. Don’t hold your breath, however. Congress, which means both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, are loathe to actually meet out some kind of punishment to one of its own.

Remember what Mark Twain said:

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. . . But I repeat myself.

I hope pipesmokers will get on board against this egregious bill hoked up by Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Memphis, who won a split decision in a ovewhelming black congressional district. Cohen has spent 98 percent of his adult life on the taxpayer doll. After graduating from Memphis University Law School, he immediately swam into the public pool, and entered politics. He has been a Shelby County Commissioner, a state legislator, and now resides in the U.S. House, sitting on a powerful committee where he can make dangerous laws, such as H.R. 4439.

I just discovered the  Southern Appeal blog, which calls the Cohen bill the “Hobbit Tax.” Take a look at the SA blog for yourself.

It is also noteworthy that the Memphis Tea Party is considering helping an opponent of its choice against Cohen in November’s election. We can only hope that Cohen is defeated by a politician with more brains and less of the sleaze factor than Cohen.

And finally, I would like for you to remember that it was Brooke Shields, the so-called actress,  who once said: Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life. She said this during an interview to become a spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign.

That should give you some idea of the brains behind the antis and the entire Cohen campaign.

I’m like the old football coach who said three things happen when you pass the football, but I’m applying it to skiing, and all of them are bad. The other day, one of the best-known skiiers in the world killed himself going down a slope filled with rocks. He was 26 years old.

Now, why on earth would you ski on a slope with rocks?

I’m told the answer is that this is something this particular bloke liked to do. Like I enjoy my pipes. Voila! or Touche!

Anyway, as I was driving about the other day here in the land of white, trying my best to keep from skidding into the ditch or to other drivers, I noticed a couple of geezers standing outside a tobacco shop, smoking. I asked my daughter about that ridiculous scene. It was 20 degrees in the shade.

She said, “Oh, Dad, you can’t smoke anywhere inside a structure in Colorado.”

Are you serious? You have to freeze your buns off to smoke outside of a smoke shop?

“As far as I know,” said my daughter, a non-smoking, rock-climbing, skiing, snow-boarding sort of gal.

Now, I ask you, is that scene an outrage or what? Unlike the good reporter that I am, I have not yet checked with the smoke shop to find out if what my daughter tells me is the straight of it, but just seeing those old guys standing outside, shivering like constipated squirrels made me feel a sense of rage.

If you can’t smoke inside a tobacco shop, then, pray tell, where do you go? Certainly not outside in freezing weather! Surely we have more humanity than that.

But, I digress. This is the land of the fit nuts. They love skiing down slopes and bashing themselves into rocks or trees. The above mentioned skiier died of blunt head trauma the news story said.

At least the old smoking geezers don’t have to worry about blunt head trauma. Unless they slip on ice, of course.

I’m sorry, but in my view, the world has lost its cotton-pickin mind.

Non illegitimus carborundum

When you have some time, check this out from Dave Bull:
I recently wrote to all of your about contributing prizes for the 8th Annual National Pipe Smoking Contest.  The response in just one day has been terrific.

The article at the link below is about an UPCA member club and its efforts to support our illustrious hobby.  Doc Garr, mentioned in the article, is the Vice-President of the United Pipe Clubs of America, and in 2008 was the #2 American in the national contest.

I thought all of you would be interested to read an article about pipesmoking that does not portray us in an unfavorable light.  Hopefully in future years there can be more events like this.  With your help there can be.

Smoking out the competition http://www.timesleader.com/news/Smoking_out_the_competition_02-21-2010.html
David Bull
ViaData LP
www.viadata.com

And, they all want to make this fat boy skinny. It ain’t going to happen. I like being on the lovable hefty side and enjoy my pipes and tobacco, which I have done for the past 40-plus years. The belly comes with me, see.

My point is this: I an beginning to recognize a trend here. Maybe I am the last one on the planet to notice, but we are in the midst of a rising Nanny State.

I plan to write more on this in the future, but here is what has gotten my attention. The other day in one of the nation’s best newspapers, the New York Times–my apologies to those of you who think otherwise and find it too liberal for your tastes; but the NYT is the best there is today, along with the Washington Post–and there was a piece about  how much salt we consume.

Now, the antisand the health freakies are saying we eat too much salt. There’s another side that says we are eating just the right amount, not to worry. The antis hate any kind of food that has salt. They would have us eat twigs and weeds, like many of the folks seem to do out here.

I hail from the South. I have seen work clothes after a day’s labor have so much salt residue that you could start a salt factory with them.

We grow up eating ham that is half salt. Sausage and biscuits with red-eye gravy, yeah, and eggs and bacon along with buttermilk. Every day, seven days a week. It’s enough to clog every artery in your body, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. You won’t find too many Nanny boys in the South.

Now the antisare after our salt intake. Imagine that? Next they’ll come after our dogs, and then the shooting will begin.

So, I asked a friend out here in this cold, cold state about their healthful living. You have to be fit to live here, and they are, I suppose, until they get run over while riding their bikes, ski into trees, or drop off one of the mountains they climb.

But, that doesn’t count. See, they like doing those things out here. Risky, yes, but they enjoy riding something they call a bicycle, running in the snow, climbing 14,000-foot mountains, skiing down the sides of steep slopes, smoking the hills like white rockets. They live here to enjoy that sort of lifestyle.

Is anyone getting my drift?

It’s okay to suffer a traumatic head injury from a fall or getting your skinny buns warped into a pretzel around your skinny bike. That’s fine. Part of the statistical side of living a life in Colorado style.

But let me want to enjoy my pipe and tobacco? Oh, no, you can’t do that. It’s bad for you. Let’s raise the excise taxes on your enjoyment, but not mine, right?

I jest, but I trust you my point. 

And you will have to excuse me. I’ve either had too much salt, or it could be that I am coming down with altitude sickness from being out here.

More on the Nanny State later.

Selah

The report is long, but I recommend it highly. It is a pdf file. It is here

Read it and be enlightened. I was!

That industry is beginning to holler about its ox, which is now being gored.

Remember, we told you there would be other goring down the road.

Funny thing isthe weeping and wailing sounds a great deal like pipe tobacco and other smokers who have been in societal cross hairs for lo these many years.

On Feb. 14, the New York Times ran a story, “Is soda the new tobacco?”

Uh, as it turns out, the answer is an unqualified yes.

Here is the scoop: Americans gulp down about 50 gallons a year of sweetened softdrinks, or soda if you prefer. That is making us all fat, but it is really affecting our children, according to a whole lot of nutritional experts.

As a result, not only are adults coming down with diabetes, so are children.

So, what to do?

Leave it to the antis. A group of public health officials says they have the answer: put a tax on soda to help pay for such things as warning labels (you know what those are), produce major public health marketing campaigns (read Tobacco Free Kids, etc.) and other means to discourage the consumption of sodas (sound familiar?).

Something called the Joint Committee on Taxation has computed that a 3-cent tax on each 12 ounces of soda would rake in $51.6 billion over 10 years.

The soda industry has been startled by the amount of vitriol aimed at their little ol’ bottles of sugared and chemically laced liquid.

They seem to be saying, “wait just a minute here. You cannot do this. It’s, it’s un-American.”

What one soda spokesman said makes no sense, but sounds familiar, again: “If you’re trying to manage people being overweight you need a variety of behavior changes . . . . It can’t be done by eliminating one food from the diet. . .”

Smokers recognize this plaintive call. The soda jerks might as well get ready. Big change is coming for Big Beverage.

The anti-soda folks are already shouting the mantra of the anti: adding on taxes will change societal habits, and thereby reduce consumption, while at the same time providing money to pay for an anti-obesity campaign.

Some antis are even saying there should be a 1-cent tax per ounce of soda. This would make a 12-pack of Coca Cola selling at say $2.99 go for $4.43. Already, many states have put on beverage taxes to help prop up bloated budgets that can’t be balanced.

And of course, the beverage industry is saying sweet nothings about how it is concerned about obesity, “supports real solutions to obesity, and continues to step up to do its part.”

Blah, blah, blah.

A medical expert who was also on the team against Big Tobacco told the NYT: “There are aspects of the food industry that are reminiscent of tobacco–the sowing of doubt where there’s no reasonable doubt, funding of front groups, use of so-called experts, claims that new products which are safer for consumers are available, and the claim that they are not marketing to children.”

Smokers should have a good time watching from the sidelines as Big Beverage gets whopped over the head repeatedly by the antis these next months.

Enjoy your pipe and a cup of coffee. Without sugar, of course.

He did not cite the study, but merely quoted “a study.”

I did a little rummaging around on the Internet, Googling this and that. I found a study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab saying that “potent carcinogens are formed when a common indoor air chemical reacts with third-hand smoke–the designation of the residue of tobacco smoke that clings to clothing, hair, skin and surfaces.”

“It is the first to find that nitrous acid, and indoor pollutant created by gas appliances among other things, reacts with nicotine found on surfaces.”

Actually the report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The title is: Formation of carcinogens indoors by surface-mediated reactions of nicotine with nitrous acid, leading to potential third-hand smoke hazards.

The report was written by a group: Mohamad Sleimana, Lara A. Gundela, James F. Pankowb, Peyton Jacob IIIc, Brett C. Singera, and Hugo Destaillatsa.

Without going into all the details, which you can do for yourself at the NAS site, the report essentially says that smoking in your home will give you cancer when tobacco smoke interacts with common nitrous acid inside the home.

Nitrous acidcomes from unvented gas appliances. You can also get nitrous acid from vehicle engines. The nitrous acid fumes filter in from the engine into the passenger compartment.

Unvented gas appliances? Now, who in their right mind is going to have an unvented gas appliance in their home?

Don’t know about you, but I would be afraid to strike a match in a home where a gas appliance was unvented.

OK, let’s say you have an unvented gas appliance in your home, and you haven’t insulated the glove compartment to your truck to prevent leakage of nitrous acid from your truck engine. This is not Toyota, you know.

You smoke and I am assuming that you never roll down the windows in your truck. So, for years you ride in your truck without rolling down the windows. I don’t know why you would do that, but you did. You, my friend, are a gonner, according to the NAS authors.

Let’s take this one more step.

If I were you, I would not walk outside my house, or get out of my truck when you look at what you will be breathing from the very air around you:

Carbon monoxide

Nitrates

Sulfur dioxide

Ozone

Lead

Second-hand tobacco smoke

Particulate Matter

The pollutants come from The American Heart Association, not moi, so you know it is authoritative.

What is particulate matter? Glad you asked.

Particulate matter consists of: solid and liquid particles within the air. It can be generated from vehicle emissions, tire fragmentation and road dust, power generation and industrial combustion, smelting and other metal processing, construction and demolition activities, residential wood burning, windblown soil, pollens, molds, forest fires, volcanic emissions and sea spray.  These particles vary considerably in size, composition and origin.

Again, this is from the AHA, not moi.

” The oxidation of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere is linked with the formation of various particulate compounds, including acid sulfates,” says a study on air pollutants by the American Heart Association.

What does that mean? Well the AHA quoted the Annual Reviews of Public Health, which found that a 1 percent increase in total mortality for each 10 mg/m3 increase in particulate matter.

“Respiratory mortality increased 3.4 percent and cardiovascular mortality increased 1.4 percent,” the public health article says.

“More recent research suggests that one possible link between acute exposure to particulate matter and sudden death may be related to sudden increases in heart rate or changes in heart rate variability,” from breathing in particulates while you stroll in your front yard.

The AHA also quotes the Environmental Protection Agency on particulates:

“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared that ‘tens of thousands of people die each year from breathing tiny particles in the environment.’

“A recent report released by the nonprofit Health Effects Institute in Cambridge, Mass., agrees with the EPA assessment. This study was reviewed by Science magazine and clearly shows that death rates in the 90 largest U.S. cities rise by 0.5 percent with only a tiny increase – 10 micrograms (mcg) per cubic meter — in particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter. This finding is similar to those of other studies throughout the world. The case is stronger with this study, because it eliminated several factors that could confound the interpretation of the data, such as temperature and other pollutants.”

So, what does all this add up to?

Glad you asked.

You buys your ticket, you takes your chances.

Life, my friend, is a gamble. There are risks, and then there is stupidity. And as stand-up comic Ron White says, you can’t fix stupid.

You are more likely to blow yourself up with an unvented gas appliance in your home than you are to blow out your lungs from third-hand smoke.

And, uh, has anyone ever heard of washing clothes, washing your hair in the shower, painting walls, scrubbing table tops, counter tops and floors and not lighting matches around unvented gas appliances?

Selah

The newspaper said the money generated from the increased tax on the people who can least afford to be taxed would be used to pay  for health care. The newspaper says that by raising the taxes, the state gains new revenue and at the same time reduces the number of people smoking.

The latter claim is fraudulent. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that hiking taxes on cigarettes reduces the numbers of smokers. Older smokers may retire their cigarettes, but there are many more young people who will pay the tax to fill the gap. You never hear about how many are beginning smokers, compared to those who quit because they can no longer afford to smoke.

So, what the newspaper is saying is that it is all right to balance the health care books on the backs of smokers, especially those smokers who can no longer afford to pay higher taxes. The taxes create astounding problems for the poor, and not just in the pocketbook. Instead of quitting, they resort to black market sources. The ripple effect of higher crime and family abuse also rises.

And it is simply wrong for states and their bum politicians to punish smokers in social engineering when they are too mealy mouthed and weak kneed to face the real problem confronting states and the nation: how to balance runaway budgets because the politicians helped load the getaway cars with tons of tax money. And we know who was driving the cars: bankers, Wall Street investors, and hedge fund operatives. I call these folks financial terrorists and insurgents.

If this idiocy doesn’t stop, you won’t be able to sit in your own home and smoke.

Here is where you can find the Post and Courier. Read it for yourself and decide what your next move is.

Times are changing in the Old Dominion

The changing

face of the Old Dominion can be seen in the stuff Jimmy Cirrito sweeps up off the floor of his bar every night. It used to be cigarette butts — now it’s gum.

“I got Nicorette and Bubblicious and green and yellow and purple. It looks like a circus down there,” said Cirrito, owner of Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern in the northern Virginia suburb of Herndon, where patrons once smoked so much they burned holes in the curtains. Now they chew to fight the urge.

It’s been one month since Virginia became the first Southern state to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. For about 400 years, that was an unthinkable proposition. George Washington grew tobacco at Mount Vernon. Marlboro-making Philip Morris USA is headquartered in Richmond.

For the full story, read Faye Fiore’s story in the Los Angeles Times.