My letter to the RNC.

[TakeAStepBack]

I'm not opposed to taxes in general. We all benefit from taxation, whether it's to build the roads we use, the Army we depend upon for protection or something more personal like my VA check. Nobody in his right mind should suggest that we should have no taxes at all. The federal income tax is as fair a way to take from all for the benefit of all that has been devised yet. Is it unfair in it's application? Sure, but that can be corrected and, in fact, is periodically corrected to reflect the current mood of The People. I don't have a problem with it.

What I DO object to is taxation to force a change in behavior. I don't think that's a power government ought to have.

Income taxation, like all taxation, is forcing a change in behavior. How you can not seee that only leaves me with one conclusion. But it isn't very nice so we'll just leave it at that.

We belong to a society and have to contribute to that society. We have elected representatives who determine how and how much we contribute

It is part of being civilized

There is no such thing as we. Just like representative government is a myth. And this argument is different than the other entirely.

 

[auditor0007]

Are you also onboard with any other behavior modification tax in the name of "health," or is just in regards to cigarettes?

Ah, you want to know if I support the soda ban in NYC or something along those lines? No, I do not. Here is the thing; you can drink a soda in moderation or you can can be healthy and eat something bad for you every now and then without causing yourself or anyone else any harm. The same cannot be said for cigarettes. Smoking just one cigarette is bad for you, and anyone else who may breath in your second hand smoke. You cannot say that smoking cigarettes in moderation won't hurt you, because it does. Also, cigarettes are addictive where fatty foods are not. If someone overeats, it's because of their own personal issues, not because some chemical in the food is making them eat more.

Are you sure about that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/m...science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

But, there's a larger issue here which escapes attention: Once we accept the idea that people can be taxed because of the effects of their behavior on others, the door is swung wide open to define just about any human activity as taxable because none of us live in a vacuum. No matter what you do, it will affect someone else, even if only indirectly.

Given the process of incrementalism and the history of finding ingenious new ways to impose taxes, there's no reason to presume that taxing behaviors which might affect others will stop with tobacco, is there? And, if it doesn't stop here, where does it stop?

We're well down the path of the par-boiled frog already. At what point do you feel the heat and say, "Enough!"

I still believe that if the GOP would get out front on the whole underlying issue, it could resonate with enough voters to make a difference for them in 2016, if not before. And, it would be a legitimate political cause because it does concern us all and it is something which a lot of people already feel.

Here's the deal. People who don't smoke think you're an idiot for smoking and don't care if you have to pay more in cigarette taxes. I don't even like it when someone smokes outside and I end up breathing in the stench. I'll go running at the park on the trails and some idiot will blow their smoke in my face as I run past them. It's usually not intentional, but I'm out their running, trying to stay in great shape, and some schmuck is blowing their nasty smoke into my clean air. I don't appreciate it.

Last thing on this subject. Almost everyone who smokes got sucked into smoking, and now they say it is their choice to smoke. As an ex-smoker, I know that is the biggest lie there is because I used it all the time. It wasn't my choice to smoke. I did it because I was addicted and breaking that addiction was not going to be the easiest thing. You can tell yourself all that you want that you smoke by choice, but you are lying to yourself. You smoke because you are addicted. If you think there are a lot of non-smokers out there of any political persuasion who think you should be able to smoke wherever and whenever you want, good luck with that.

 

[rightwinger]

Income taxation, like all taxation, is forcing a change in behavior. How you can not seee that only leaves me with one conclusion. But it isn't very nice so we'll just leave it at that.

We belong to a society and have to contribute to that society. We have elected representatives who determine how and how much we contribute

It is part of being civilized

There is no such thing as we. Just like representative government is a myth. And this argument is different than the other entirely.

Says the man who desires to live in a cave

 

[TakeAStepBack]

We belong to a society and have to contribute to that society. We have elected representatives who determine how and how much we contribute

It is part of being civilized

There is no such thing as we. Just like representative government is a myth. And this argument is different than the other entirely.

Says the man who desires to live in a cave

Are you intentionally trolling, or are you really a fucking retard?

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.

 

[yidnar]

I just sent the following message to the Republican National Committee:



Here's a demographic you can capture right now: Smokers. I'm one, and though I've voted Democrat in the past 3 elections and am not a single issue voter, I HAVE had enough of higher tobacco taxes! As you well know, the President is proposing even more tobacco taxes in his budget request and its high time the nanny-staters find some other whipping boy to pillage. Why not get out front on this tax right now and style it as an issue of fairness, which it is?

Almost 1 in 5 adult American's still smoke, which equates to a potential 40 million + voters. The GOP doesn't have to be pro-smoking to be pro-fairness and you have the opportunity right now to attract perhaps millions of votes simply by standing up for the right of smokers not be continually raped by those who claim to know what's best for them. There is little to be lost by opposing the health-Nazi's and much to be gained.

Will you?

i'm a smoker also .....even though raising the taxes on tobacco pisses me off i still find it funny when a dem bitches when they have to pay a higher tax on something ,but its ok for everybody else to pay higher taxes !!

 

[sfcalifornia]

I just sent the following message to the Republican National Committee:



Here's a demographic you can capture right now: Smokers. I'm one, and though I've voted Democrat in the past 3 elections and am not a single issue voter, I HAVE had enough of higher tobacco taxes! As you well know, the President is proposing even more tobacco taxes in his budget request and its high time the nanny-staters find some other whipping boy to pillage. Why not get out front on this tax right now and style it as an issue of fairness, which it is?

Almost 1 in 5 adult American's still smoke, which equates to a potential 40 million + voters. The GOP doesn't have to be pro-smoking to be pro-fairness and you have the opportunity right now to attract perhaps millions of votes simply by standing up for the right of smokers not be continually raped by those who claim to know what's best for them. There is little to be lost by opposing the health-Nazi's and much to be gained.

Will you?

If 20% of American adults still smoke that means 80% of Americans don't smoke and the largest percentage of the non-smokers more than likely hate it. Plenty of GOP will oppose the higher taxes and nanny-state on principle but I think a larger percentage of GOP hate cigarettes even more. I'm sorry Oldguy, on the whole, nobody has empathy for smokers except other smokers.

I was pissed when California imposed the smoking laws on public places way back when because I was a smoker then. I realize now those smoking laws made life such a pain in the ass, they were instrumental in helping me quit. And I'm so glad I quit.

How expensive does a pack of cigarettes have to get Oldguy before you quit?

I objected to no-smoking laws at first too, but now I support them until they get to the point of stupidity (open areas like beaches, for instance), but taxation for the purpose of behavior modification just flies so radically in the face of freedom that it galls me to no end. And, it's not just cigarette taxes. I'm equally opposed to taxes on any so-called "unhealthy" behaviors. We either have free choice or we do not. Which is it?

And, in a free society, what gives someone else the right to force me to quit doing anything which mostly just harms me? How far are you willing to take that concept? Nobody lighting a cigarette in your presence is going to kill you, any more than eating a Twinkie will kill you, so the question isn't whether or not cigarettes are harmful (they are), but how much risk are you willing to take to preserve your OWN freedom of choice?

It's easy to support making smokers quit through taxation because that public relations battle has already been won, but that's not the end of it, is it? There are new and less personally "dangerous" targets in the sights of the health-nut crowd, like junk foods and sugary drinks, and once you've accepted the idea that society has the right to compel smokers to quit through taxation, you have no grounds for opposing the same thing in regards to what people eat or drink, including you.

The point is that if you don't stand up for the rights of smokers not to be taxed into oblivion for the "common good," you leave yourself and others wide open to having the same thing applied to anything at all which can be defined as "unhealthy" or "dangerous."

Do you not yet see that this isn't about just tobacco anymore and that we all stand and fall together?

I know. I hear you. But those unhealthy freedoms in which we like to partake individually come at a cost to society as a whole. It is only fair that those individuals shoulder the burden of the cost. The tax isn't a prohibition of cigarettes. You still have a free choice to smoke. It's just going to cost you.

Funny, initially, as a non-smoker, I thought banning cigarettes on open beaches and sidewalks was getting carried away too but now I'm in favor of them for this reason: littering. I cringe when I think of every cigarette I snuffed out on the beach or sidewalk and didn't give a shit at all about it. Now, the thought of tossing a lit cigarette out my car window seems so alien to me but in the old days I did it all the time. I'm so sorry for that.

 

[auditor0007]

George Burns smoked up to and including the day he died and he turned 100 by then.

I love when idiots bring up one person who smoked and lived to be 90 or 100 while ignoring the millions who don't make it to 70. Fucking hilarious. You know what is worse than dying from cigarettes? It's spending the last ten years of your life hooked up to an oxygen tank just so you can breath and then dying.

Very true

Smokers laugh as they light up and flaunt death....I don't care if it costs me to die five years early, I enjoy it

They don't consider that smoking makes you age early and that your quality of life goes to shit before you die

It's a tough addiction. Smokers usually only think how bad it will be not being able to smoke rather than thinking about everything they are missing out on because they smoke. It's the addiction that is talking. Most smokers would like to quit but just think it's too hard. Usually all their friends smoke also, so then they worry about losing their friends.

The worst thing though is the cost of smoking. For any young person who starts smoking today and smokes for the next 50 years, the financial cost to them will be upwards of $1 million at today's value. If you look at the price of cigarettes, plus all the other costs associated with smoking, it costs almost $8000 per year to smoke today. Since I quit, I am saving almost $5000 in direct savings, not including the devaluation of my home and car should I resell them. Just what I save from the cost of cigarettes, health and life insurance, and dental costs, I am saving $5000 per year. If a young person took all the money it cost to smoke and invested it over their lifetime, they would end up with $1 million by the time they retired. It's absolutely amazing what it costs to smoke.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Are you done preaching yet?

 

[Oldguy]

Ah, you want to know if I support the soda ban in NYC or something along those lines? No, I do not. Here is the thing; you can drink a soda in moderation or you can can be healthy and eat something bad for you every now and then without causing yourself or anyone else any harm. The same cannot be said for cigarettes. Smoking just one cigarette is bad for you, and anyone else who may breath in your second hand smoke. You cannot say that smoking cigarettes in moderation won't hurt you, because it does. Also, cigarettes are addictive where fatty foods are not. If someone overeats, it's because of their own personal issues, not because some chemical in the food is making them eat more.

Are you sure about that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/m...science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

But, there's a larger issue here which escapes attention: Once we accept the idea that people can be taxed because of the effects of their behavior on others, the door is swung wide open to define just about any human activity as taxable because none of us live in a vacuum. No matter what you do, it will affect someone else, even if only indirectly.

Given the process of incrementalism and the history of finding ingenious new ways to impose taxes, there's no reason to presume that taxing behaviors which might affect others will stop with tobacco, is there? And, if it doesn't stop here, where does it stop?

We're well down the path of the par-boiled frog already. At what point do you feel the heat and say, "Enough!"

I still believe that if the GOP would get out front on the whole underlying issue, it could resonate with enough voters to make a difference for them in 2016, if not before. And, it would be a legitimate political cause because it does concern us all and it is something which a lot of people already feel.

Here's the deal. People who don't smoke think you're an idiot for smoking and don't care if you have to pay more in cigarette taxes. I don't even like it when someone smokes outside and I end up breathing in the stench. I'll go running at the park on the trails and some idiot will blow their smoke in my face as I run past them. It's usually not intentional, but I'm out their running, trying to stay in great shape, and some schmuck is blowing their nasty smoke into my clean air. I don't appreciate it.

Last thing on this subject. Almost everyone who smokes got sucked into smoking, and now they say it is their choice to smoke. As an ex-smoker, I know that is the biggest lie there is because I used it all the time. It wasn't my choice to smoke. I did it because I was addicted and breaking that addiction was not going to be the easiest thing. You can tell yourself all that you want that you smoke by choice, but you are lying to yourself. You smoke because you are addicted. If you think there are a lot of non-smokers out there of any political persuasion who think you should be able to smoke wherever and whenever you want, good luck with that.

Like a lot of people, you're so myopically focused on your own, personal objections to smoking that you can't see the larger picture. By the time it becomes clear to you (perhaps when there's a fee on running to pay for damaged knees?) it may be too late.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Well instead of bitching on a mesageboard, why not write to the Prez and your senators and representative and offer a different solution? I think a 10-mills sales tax increase nationally would do wonders not just for the preschoolers but for the older schoolkids too.

Agree? Disagree? Tell your Congressperson.

Thanks, but I've already done that. Given my past experience, it may be months before I get a reply, if I get one at all.

In the meantime, public forums like this one are a legitimate exercise in free speech and participatory democracy because people outside this little community do read these things. Political parties and campaign organizations DO prowl through internet discussion sites because they're an easy way to judge public opinion.

yep......