Taxing The Poor Some More

I bought three cartons of PT Classic Lights, a cigarette made in Denton, Texas, at the Smokes, Etc. smoke shop on Alta Mere in west Fort Worth today. They were $30 a carton and I got three of them, which cost me $100, after taxes. I had to find this cheaper brand, which tastes just fine surprisingly enough, because now my usual brand, Pall Mall, ran $40 a carton. So I had to search out a dirt cheap brand and, fortunately, found it. Just because President Obama, who I voted for, is trying to quit smoking --- he now chews the shit out of nicotine gum --- so he goes ahead and signs the Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 into law, under pressure from the far left, his first signed into law bill as the first black President of the United States, that mainly penalizes the poor, especially poor blacks, with an outrageous motherfucking tax hike ($7 a carton) that is supposed to pay for poor kids' health care costs (sure, yeah, right). This tax hike is nothing more than prohibition via exorbitant price cost and will result in a deepening black market in illegal cigarette manufacturing and sales. And now the Federal Drug Administration will be given the power over cigarettes instead of the Department of Agriculture. R.J. Reynolds, the largest cigarette manufacturer in the US, and maybe even the world, sent me an e-mail saying the FDA will make cigarettes taste like lard, another tactic by the government to stem smoking. And giving tobacco over to the FDA means, eventually, that they'll outlaw tobacco and put it in the same category as pot, meaning it will be illegal to possess or smoke. You can be guaranteed that'll happen and happen soon. Now people will be thrown into jail for possessing cigarette tobacco. Or be shot on site for smoking a cigarette.

Fuck this 'free' country. There is no freedom at all anymore. Our Founding Fathers' freedom is gone. Kaput. Fini. History. Pissing on people's individual rights has long been a fad in Washington, D.C. Fascism is here and it ain't going away, ever. It's why our once mighty nation is totally and utterly doomed to the fate of all great empires: a spiraling death from within.

This country has jumped the fucking shark.

And why don't the feds tax other unhealthy products, such as fast food and sweets? This nation is the most unfit and overweight in the entire world. An old man who was in Smokes, Etc., sitting on a stool and keeping the woman who worked behind the counter company, said the powers that be, after I suggested they put a dollar tax on every McDonalds Big Mac, "They should tax the hell out of candy bars."

No shit. All "bad" food should be taxed as much as cigarettes, if not more. If this happened there'd be a lot less obese fatheads walking around Wal-Mart. To be fair, "good" foods should then not be taxed at all or else their price dropped, with the government implementing a subsidy to "good" food making companies to make up for their loss in profit. Now why isn't common sense such as this not possible inside the halls of Congress? Why do we keep electing corrupt, evil politicians who never solve any problems and then turn around and constantly put laws into affect that hurt the common man, woman and child?

Oh, well, another day another dollar.

(I took this photo of an artful public ashtray at Arts Fifth Avenue during Fort Worth's 2009 Spring Gallery Night.)