![]()
Chapter 1 Smoke for the Children I smoke cigarettes because I love kids. Seriously. Think about it: with every drag on a cigarette, I am doing my part to help support all the needy children in America forced to grow up in a world without health insurance. Sound preposterous? Let's look at the facts. The tax on the cigarettes that I smoke funds the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and provides health care for children of the working poor -- and for children of the not-so-poor. On February 4, 2009, President Obama signed into law a $0.62 increase in the federal cigarette tax, along with increases in other tobacco taxes. The total federal tax on cigarettes is now $1.01 per pack. That, by the way, is on top of state, city, and local taxes. In states like Massachusetts, where smokers are basically on par with terrorists, the total tax on a pack of smokes is now $3.52. And that doesn't even put them in the top ten. Barrow, Alaska, came in seventh place with $4.01 per pack. Chicago, Illinois, clocked in second at $4.67 per pack. And crossing the tobacco finish line in first place is New York City, at $5.26 per pack -- and remember, that's just for the taxes. I can almost hear the Smoke Nazis cheering, "More! More! More! Higher! Higher! Higher!" After all, it's "all for the children." Revenue produced by the increased tax will not only allow the federal government to expand the budget of SCHIP, it will also bring our nation closer to a government-controlled program for universal health care. All "for the children." All funded by my nicotine addiction. It makes a man proud. That's what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said at the signing of the SCHIP bill: "When people ask me the three most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: our children, our children, our children. When the SCHIP bill passed the House of Representatives, we were on the floor, and it was the end of the day, and I quoted the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 'The Children's Hour.' And I said that when we passed that bill, it would be the children's hour for the Congress of the United States. As many of you know, when I took the gavel as first woman Speaker of the House, I took it surrounded by children. This is a comfortable environment for me. It reminds us constantly of our responsibility to the future. But when I took that gavel, I said, 'I take this gavel on behalf of all America's children.' And let's hear it for the children!" For those of you who buy into Pelosi's sincerity, the same Nancy Pelosi, at her swearing-in as speaker of the house, said this: "After years of historic deficits, this new Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: pay as you go, no new deficit spending. Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt." So much for the children. Taxing cigarettes on behalf of the children is only one symptom of a broader governmental effort to control our lives. Whether it's driving an SUV, eating a burger, watering the lawn, or chugging a soda, government wants you to cut it out or pay through the nose. And when government says something, you'd better listen. It's easy to increase "sin taxes" when it's "for the children." But I warn you, it's only a matter of time before they come after something you enjoy. Government has become the Pleasure Police. And the administration of Barack Obama and the dogooders in Congress are looking into every nook and cranny of our lives -- as Pelosi put it, "every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory." When they came for the smokers, you did nothing because you weren't a smoker. When they came for the beer drinkers, you did nothing because you weren't a beer drinker. When they came for the gamblers, you did nothing because you weren't a gambler. When they come for something you enjoy, who will be left to stand up for your rights? I will. Loving the Sin, Hating the Sinner Let's start with a case study: SCHIP. After the Clinton universal health care plan failed in 1993 -- and after that failure led to the Republican Revolution of 1994 -- Democrats were looking under every rock for an alternative plan. One that would be less expensive and easier to sneak by the eyes of Congress. In particular, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton discovered that it was far easier to con Americans into supporting health care for tots than universal health care. After all, it takes a village to pay for a kid's vaccinations. So Hillary and Co. put together an action team, led by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Kennedy spearheaded the initiative to provide medical insurance to children -- and he suggested that the bills be footed by dastardly smokers. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) joined on, happy as a clam to be linked with any cause that could "help the children" -- as Hatch said, "Children are being terribly hurt and perhaps scarred for the rest of their lives" by living without health insurance. Now, this "all for the children" move was terrific. After all, who doesn't want to give poor, innocent kids medical insurance? Especially when smokers are paying for it. How can anyone argue with that? Obviously Congress couldn't. Hence the U.S. Senate was able to muster enough bipartisan support to pass the bill in August 1997. The only controversy surrounding SCHIP at its creation was its attempt to raise federal taxes on tobacco. Ironically enough, many states opposed this rise in taxes because it would cut into the revenue they were getting from taxing tobacco. The Republican Policy Committee, for example, called the bill "admirable" but misguided, stating that smokers would stop buying cigarettes due to high prices, and that such a market drop-off would cost states and localities $6.5 billion over five years. Kennedy's predictable response: "If we can keep people healthy and stop them from dying, I think most Americans would say 'Amen; isn't that a great result?' " Of course, that wasn't exactly Kennedy's true feeling on the matter. While Pleasure Police legislators across the partisan divide despise smokers -- even President Obama, who likes to light up, won't do it in front of the cameras -- the same Pleasure Police rely on smokers to keep buying to fund their socialist health care schemes. After all, as President Bill Clinton put it while signing the bill, "Because we have acted, millions of children all across this country will be able to get medicine, and have their sight and hearing tested and see dentists for the first time." Would Teddy want to deny those millions of children their sight if all of us smokers decided to go cold turkey? That's the schizophrenic attitude of the government on smoking -- we need you to smoke, but you're bad people for smoking. Or, as I put it, love the sin, hate the sinner. So we get two conflicting policies: as SCHIP grows toward universal health care, the government has to increase the taxes on cigarettes. In short, the government needs smokers. At the same time, the Pleasure Police hate smokers, so they try to stop them from smoking. This is somewhat like wearing a scuba suit while trying to drown yourself. But there's one thing that unifies these two conflicting ideas -- universal health care and the war on smoking -- and that's control over Americans' lives. Your life and my life. SCHIP: Th e Government Doctor Will See You Now When SCHIP began, it was slated to provide a whopping $24 billion to provide health care to uninsured children (remember those quaint days when $24 billion was a lot of money?). That hefty chunk of change wasn't nearly enough, though. Not when the government could use Helping the Children™ as an excuse to control everybody's health care. During his administration, George W. Bush twice vetoed bills to increase SCHIP funding by raising tobacco taxes. As soon as the CEO of America, Barack Obama, was elected, he and his overwhelmingly Democratic Congress pushed through a measure to expand the program, moving closer to their goal of nationalized health care. On February 5, 2009, Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, which was designed to increase the program's coverage to four million kids and adults -- yes, I said adults -- in addition to the seven million it already covers. Naturally, the new funding was going to come directly from smokers. Not only did the bill raise tobacco taxes, it loosened requirements for SCHIP eligibility -- now newly legal immigrants, particularly pregnant women and people under twenty-one, could receive benefits right away, without spending one day paying taxes (previously, a five-year waiting period was required to receive benefits). No waiting period required. And citizenship documentation was loosened, too -- instead of requiring a passport or birth certificate to demonstrate citizenship, states are now allowed to verify citizenship by matching an applicant's name and Social Security number with federal records. Basically, steal somebody's Social Security number and you're in the pink -- or, rather, the green. Said Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA): "While this bill is short of our ultimate goal...it is a down payment, and it is an essential start." The key words: "ultimate goal." You can already see the Democrats' creeping incrementalism, which we will discuss in detail shortly. And Nancy Pelosi seconded the motion: "This is the beginning of the change that the American people voted for in the last election, and that we will achieve with President Barack Obama." What's the problem with expanding government-covered health care, you ask? Actually, there are two problems. Number one: you don't get to choose your doctor anymore. The government chooses where, when, and why you'll see a doctor. Two, at the very least, you're going to be paying for someone else's health care. And now that Congress has begun expanding SCHIP to cover even those who aren't poor, you're probably paying for your next-door neighbor's health care. You know -- the schlub who owns the Bentley. Here's how it works. Individual states determine the eligibility requirements for SCHIP based on the federal poverty guidelines. State governments are allowed to broaden the scope of eligibility to families making as much as 300 percent more than the federal poverty level. You read that right. Three hundred percent. That means middle-class children, even kids of the semirich, are now covered under the public health care system. For example, in New Jersey a family of four making over $66,000 who may already have insurance is eligible for SCHIP. It's even worse in New York, where the state legislature attempted to pass a bill promoted by former Governor Eliot "Client #9" Spitzer to expand the eligibility for SCHIP to more than 400 percent over the poverty level. That would have meant that children in a family of four making $82,600 would have been covered. I know New York City is expensive, but do you think it's possible that a family of four could eke out an existence on an annual income of $82,600? That's quite a "limit." By allowing states to subjectively define poverty, more and more kids who are covered by private health insurance paid for by parents will be dumped off private rolls and signed onto government-issued universal health care. In turn, these families are beholden to the politicians and dependent on government programs. It is not likely that a person who depends on the government to pay for their medical insurance, food stamps, school lunches, education, and numerous other subsidies will vote against the congressman who protects and expands these programs. This means the beginning of the end of private health care -- the best health care system in the world. I'm not exaggerating. Listen to the Democrats on this score. When Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked whether it was "the real intent of this legislation to replace the private health care system with a government-run health care system," Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) quickly responded that he did not want to "trap people into private health insurance." This is government "care" we just don't need. In 2007, 12.5 percent of the population was living in poverty as defined by the federal government, and most of these people were in metropolitan areas. That sounds like a lot of people. But that's much lower than the 18.5 percent of the population that was living in poverty in 1959, when this information was first recorded. We are doing better, despite President Obama telling us that American families are barely scraping by and can't survive without the government's help. But Obama and his political pals have a stake in telling us how rough we have it -- after all, that's how they get us to vote for them. That's the payoff. They tell us the world is an awful place, they provide us the comfortable safety net of substandard services, and then we vote for them. That's why Obama and the other politicians who are pushing for nationalized health care cite misleading statistics with unnerving ease. Sally Pipes, president and CEO of Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and author of The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen's Guide and Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer, addressed some of the false facts on my syndicated radio program. For example, Pipes explained that Obama and his cronies like to say that preventive care, weight loss programs, and antismoking programs will save health care dollars. There is no solid evidence to show that those initiatives have any positive effect on medical spending in the long run. In actuality, after Congress mandated nutritional information posted on food labels, the "percentage of obese Americans increased by two-thirds." Supporters of the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of tobacco cite figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that smokers cost the country $96 billion per year in direct health care costs, and an additional $97 billion in lost productivity. But as Sally Pipes pointed out, smokers die earlier than nonsmokers, and actually provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, pensions, and other government programs. The average smoker dies at age seventy-seven; the average nonsmoker dies at age eighty-four. Those extra seven years cost about $100,000 more in medical costs. A Dutch study published in 2008 in the Public Library of Science Medicine Journal backs her up -- the study found that health care costs for smokers were about $326,000 from age twenty on, compared with $417,000 for thin and healthy people. The reason? Thin, healthy people live longer. According to the Associated Press, the CDC refuses to put a health tag on the price savings from smoking -- they think it's ghoulish, even though it's accurate. Smoking not only helps the children, it saves the whole health care system money! The most important myth propagated by liberals all across America is that 45 million Americans have no health insurance, and therefore no access to health care. That's a phony statistic. What politicians fail to mention is that the "48 million uninsured" figure includes about ten million illegal immigrants. Over nine million of the "uninsured" live in households with incomes above $75,000. About 30 percent of those "uninsured" lack insurance for only six months or less. And according to Pipes, "as many as 12 million uninsured Americans are eligible for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- but they haven't signed up." When you subtract all the people who are in this country illegally, voluntarily do not have insurance, or just haven't applied for it, the total number of uninsured Americans is a fraction of the 45 million that we hear repeated over and over again. With this administration, branding is the key, whether that branding is the truth or not. The reality is that we have eight to nine million chronically uninsured people that we should be focused on helping. What we don't need is a program designed to save the other 37 million people who don't need it. Then there's the lie that uninsured people have no access to health care. This is absolutely false. The federal government passed a law in 1986 that requires any hospital that participates in Medicare to accept any patient that comes through the emergency room door and to provide care regardless of the patient's ability to pay. Do not believe politicians who blather that America must be ashamed because "people in this country do not have access to medical care"; it's a flat-out lie. Everyone in this country has access to medical care, and most hospitals are required to provide it. But lies matter less than ramming through policies that give government control over your life. The expansion of SCHIP is a perfect example of creeping incrementalism. Little by little the government takes control and intrudes into our private lives. You don't see it happening, but it's happening right in front of your eyes. I first began to think about creeping incrementalism while I was living in Florida. Each morning, I would go down to the Jupiter Inlet jetty and chat up the local fishheads. Every day, I would watch the relentless pounding of the waves on the jagged edges of the rocks, and with every wave, those edges were being slowly eroded, worn away. But unless you watched it as I did, day after day, year after year, you never saw that it was happening. It's the same thing with the government's creeping incrementalism, intruding into our lives under the guise of government programs we can't live without. They start with a small step and use an emotional symbol like a poor sick child to get support for their health care program, or a seemingly starving and stranded polar bear to convince us that global warming is going to destroy the planet. A bill is passed. Taxes are raised. Then slowly, over time, the program is expanded. The regulations and programs keep growing. The jagged edges of the rock are worn away. The more dependent private citizens are on the government, the more powerful the government becomes, and the less freedom we have to make decisions in our lives. Sooner or later, somebody becomes the scapegoat -- somebody has to pay. Lately, it's been the smokers. Congressman Jack Kingston, a Republican from Georgia, was on my radio show, and estimates that we need 22 million additional smokers in this country to pay for the expansion of SCHIP. The tax revenue from my pack of cigarettes is paying for your kid's health care. I choose to smoke, but I do not choose to pay for someone else's medical insurance. You had the kid. You pay the freight. Unless I was invited to the conception and birth, I don't want to be responsible for paying for your kid's medical coverage. But in the liberal worldview, everybody is responsible for everybody's medical coverage. Which means that everybody gets to decide whether you really need that new hip, or whether you're just whining about it. It means that everybody gets to decide whether you or poor sick little Billy deserves chemo. Here's the problem with "it takes a village" medical care -- medical care is inherently about the individual, and socialistic medicine is inherently about the community. When you've got a broken leg, you're not concerned about the rest of the folks in the hospital -- you want your damn leg fixed this very instant. In a socialized system, your broken leg might have to wait for Bentley Boy's sprained ankle. Liberals love it. They believe that they're the brightest, smartest folks who ever lived. And they believe that they should be in control of idiots like me and you. The Assault on Smokers As we just saw, smoking pays for children's health care. So the next time you see someone who's not smoking, ask them, "Why do you hate children so much?" In fact, ask a liberal. Here's why: while liberals are constantly encouraging people to smoke so they can tax the sales, they're also treating smokers like they have the plague. In Las Vegas, you can't smoke in the airport, but as soon as you get off the plane you can gamble away your kid's college tuition, hire a prostitute (so I've been told), or play video blackjack until you are broke. Or as people in the industry say, "play to extinction." In Nevada the state and federal tax per pack of cigarettes is targeted to be $2. That means a carton of cigarettes costs about $50. Every time you buy a carton, you're paying the equivalent of your phone bill. In New York, a single pack of cigarettes may cost you upward of $8. On the federal level, the largest tax hikes have been on bulk tobacco and small cigars. Bulk tobacco was previously taxed at $1.10 per pound. That was raised to $24.78 per pound, a 2,259 percent increase. Small cigars were taxed at $1.828 per 1,000 and are now $50.33 per 1,000, an increase of over 2,700 percent. Worse than the tax hikes are the numerous laws seeking to turn smokers into social outcasts. Around the country, smoking bans have been put in place to protect the innocent public from cigarette smoke. It is illegal to smoke on the beach in San Diego; we wouldn't want smokers tossing their butts on the beach, don't you know. (By the way, I'm all for courteous behavior -- people should throw their butts in the garbage. But by the same token, I don't want to watch some fat slob toss his Big Mac wrapper on the sand.) At Torrey Pines Golf Course, which is a municipal course, smoking is not allowed at all. You can't smoke a cigar on the course even if the others in your group all want to smoke cigars and the only offendable people are hundreds of yards away. Torrey Pines is located on a cliff near the ocean. The winds are so strong at Torrey Pines that hanggliders use the air currents to fly along the coast. But apparently, the winds aren't strong enough to carry away the stench of cigarette smoke or cigar smoke. It isn't just restricted to golf courses and beaches. The entire state of California treats smoking as though it's the bubonic plague: "Stay away, you diseased bastard, and keep your cancer sticks to yourself!" If California treated illegal immigration the same way it treats smokers, the illegal population would be cut in half within the year. California started its attack on smokers in 1994 when smoking in the workplace, including restaurants, was made illegal. Four years later, smoking was banned in bars. The bar ban included $100 fines for bar owners allowing smoking for a first offense. The second time around, the fine jumps to $7,000. In October 2007, California went even further, making it illegal to smoke in a car with another person seventeen years old or younger. "I am so proud that my fellow legislators and the governor agree that our children must be protected from the toxins in secondhand smoke. I will continue to help lead California in eliminating pollutants that hurt our kids' health," said State Senator Jenny Oropeza (D). It's all "for the children." Anything "for the children." And hey, just to help the children, how about lighting up with me, Senator Oropeza? In October 2007, Belmont, California, passed one of the most ridiculous smoking restrictions -- they made it illegal to smoke in your own apartment or condominium. In fact, under applicable local and state rules, residents of Belmont can't smoke anywhere except in detached homes and yards, streets and some sidewalks, and certain outdoor "designated smoking areas." The rationale? If your home has a shared wall with another residence, your smoke could seep through the wall or out a window and into your neighbor's home. The noxious fumes could magically creep through solid steel and tainted Chinese drywall and poison you to death. This is a massive violation of property rights. If you own a condo and want to allow your tenants to smoke in Belmont -- well, tough for you, bud. If the Pleasure Police catch your tenant lighting up, they'll fine you $100. Belmont isn't alone. El Cajon, a town in San Diego County, California, made it illegal to smoke in most public spaces -- including on sidewalks. The city outlawed smoking in parks, and required businesses selling tobacco to acquire a license. The City Council vote in favor of the measure was unanimous. "It's a health issue," said city spokeswoman Monica Zech. "It is not taking away rights." What, exactly, would "taking away rights" constitute? Locking smokers into public stocks? Summary execution? Branding with the scarlet "S" of smoking? They're moving in that direction in Calabasas, California. In March 2006, the Calabasas City Council prohibited smoking in all public places where anyone -- anyone! -- might be exposed to secondhand smoke. The ban encompasses bus stops, soccer fields, parks, sidewalks, and outdoor cafés. You can smoke in your car -- but not if the windows are open and someone is nearby. Barry Groveman, mayor of Calabasas and an environmental lawyer, crows that the regulations "push the envelope," and celebrates the "ground breaking public health law." "This is the right time and the right place to take this step," says Groveman. "We hope it will be the way things are done all over the country and all over the world." First offenders, reportedly, will be given a warning and a breath mint. Second offenders may get a caning. It's not just smokers the government hates -- it's the tobacco sellers. In April 2009, Teddy Kennedy and Henry Waxman passed a bill through Congress to have tobacco regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Never mind that the bill actually benefits Big Tobacco -- companies like Philip Morris backed the bill, since it effectively shuts down smaller competitors. Congressman Waxman couldn't be prouder: "Today is truly a historic day in the fight against tobacco, and I am proud that we have taken such decisive action...now we all can breathe a little easier." With all the crappy food we eat in this country, doesn't the FDA have enough to worry about? It doesn't end there. The SCHIP expansion bill, which relies on nicotine addiction for its income, requires any manufacturer or importer of tobacco to apply for a permit from the Tobacco Trade Bureau, which is part of Timothy "Son of Shifty" Geithner's Department of the Treasury. The TTB states on its Web site that "as a result of the [Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009], any person who manufactures or imports processed tobacco will now be required to qualify for and obtain a permit from TTB, and take inventories, submit reports, and keep records as required by regulation." The government now requires you to qualify for the business you are already in, and submit reports to them. It's even worse. The TTB can put any importer or manufacturer out of business, or tie up the permit application with bureaucratic nonsense for so long that it is impossible to survive. According to the TTB's Web site, "As a result of the Act, the basis for denial, suspension, or revocation of permits has been broadened." In other words, the government gives itself the authority to deny you a permit to make tobacco products, and suspend or even revoke the permit once they've given it to you. Here are my questions: Where's the bailout? Is the government now going into the tobacco business? If you are a tobacco manufacturer and the government denies your permit, what will they do for those laid-off employees? Will they take over your business and make you a government employee like they have with executives at General Motors and AIG? This hurts consumers and business at the same time it sucks the lifeblood for children's health care from those very folks. It's a radical 1960s agenda packaged as a nice way to pay for kids' doctor's appointments. But here's the real question: How far will the government go? If smoke is so damn dangerous, how about outlawing backyard barbecues on the Fourth of July? Or how about buying carbon offsets before dumping on the lighter fluid? And here's an even bigger question: Why not just make it illegal to smoke tobacco? The government wants us to stop smoking -- we just spent $75 million in Obama's stimulus behemoth in order to create programs to get people to quit smoking (perhaps Obama can be the first beneficiary). Yet they won't just ban cigarettes. That would be the easiest way of stopping people from smoking. We could have a modern-day Tobacco Prohibition. We could stand up for health. We could stop lung cancer right in its tracks. We could do it "for the children." And the Democrats and Republicans have the votes to do it. So why not? The answer is simple: they don't want to make it illegal. First off, they want to milk the tobacco companies for all they're worth. The same Democrats who say they just want to "help the children" are taking boatloads of greenbacks from companies in the tobacco industry. Over the last decade, Democrats from New York have gotten rich from the tobacco folks: former Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Charles Schumer took $5,000 each; Rep Gregory Meeks took $17,000; Rep. Joseph Crowley took $17,000; Rep. Edolphus Towns took $15,450; and Rep. Charlie "I'm Investigating Myself" Rangel took a whopping $44,000. Only one Republican took more money than Rangel -- Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who pocketed $48,000. In California, it's the same story: Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson took $26,000; Rep. Dennis Cardoza took $26,500; and Rep. Joe Baca led the Democratic pack with $28,310. The only Republican who received more money than the Democrats was Rep. Devin Nunes at $44,500. Even in Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) took $23,000 from the evil tobacco industry. They want the tobacco industry to stay in business, and they want smokers to smoke. All so they can pocket everyone's money, control your life, and do it "for the children." And they want you to smoke "for the children" so that they can expand their control even further, by taking over the health care system. It's a big cycle of control. And it doesn't stop at cigarettes. The Fight Against Fat So now you can't smoke. "Okay," you figure, "at least I can still go down to the McDonald's and have a burger and fries." Not so fast there, buddy. The government is coming after your food, too. In December 2006, in a regulative move that shocked the nation, the New York Board of Health banned the use of trans fats from all restaurants in New York. Of course, the FDA had already approved the use of trans fats, but that didn't stop those brave New York legislators. Trans fats are hydrogenated oils -- products like Crisco are trans fats. They're cheap and they have a long shelf life. They're used in everything from pizza to hot chocolate mix to French fries. According to the FDA, the average American eats 4.7 pounds of trans fats every year. And yet, somehow, the country has been functioning for years. And the legislators went even further: restaurants that included certain health info on menus were forced to start listing calorie counts on their menus, too. Just in case that dude at Dunkin' Donuts thinks the chocolate éclair is good for him, of course. Some might call this fascistic control over everyday life. After all, if you want to chow down on some greasy fries, that's your business. But the government calls it a step forward. "Nobody wants to take away your french fries and hamburgers," says New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. "I love those things, too. But if you can make them with something that is less damaging to your health, we should do that." Now, contrary to popular elitist opinion, Americans are not
Learn Anything, Anywhere, Anytime
India's Largest Online Education Marketplace
