This is one of my favorite signs from the Wichita Tea Party Protest held on February 27, 2009. Cheryl Green is the creator of the sign; I am merely the photographer.
Stimulus, the Audacity of Dopes
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One response to “Stimulus, the Audacity of Dopes”
President Obama has also defaulted in a VERY big way on a promise to the poorer part of America.
He has signed the SCHIP bill with a TWO THOUSAND PERCENT tax increase aimed at what is arguably the single poorest large and well-defined minority group in the entire country: those smokers who can’t afford to buy cigarettes but who have historically rolled their own from loose tobacco instead.
Even if you’re not a smoker, think about the folks you know who smoke: how many of them are hurting enough for money that they roll their own? Nationwide there probably aren’t more than a million or two that do so, and while some of them are “elitists” or “guilty tree-huggers” most of them are simply too dirt poor to be able to go out and buy packs of Marlboro.
So what does Obama and Congress do to buy Big Tobacco’s cooperation in not heavily opposing SCHIP? Simple: hit this poor, almost totally unorganized and defenseless minority group with a 2,134% tax increase so that they’ll be pushed into a bracket where they might as well just go out and give Philip Morris their money.
The SCHIP tax increase on cigarettes themselves is wrong: ALL Americans love children and ALL Americans should help with their health care. To say smokers are the ONLY ones who care for children is wrong.
But to then go on and attack a small, voiceless, and helpless minority group with the largest single tax increase in the entire history of America goes beyond wrong: it is morally criminal.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
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