Gunsmoke, Cigar Smoke and Freedoms

Politicians are surely the lowest form of life.

Take a lawyer, strip from him the last vestiges of honor, decency, trustworthiness and respectability, and you'll still have to dig down through seven levels of Dante's Inferno to even approach the average politician's level of living damnation.

Certain lawyers, of course have escaped that particular curse.

But I digress.

Read this, from JR Cigars.

On December 9th, a provision was added to the CIGARETTE ANTI-COUNTERFEIT BILL (S1177), which would eliminate mail order cigar deliveries. This bill was introduced to stop American Indian Nations from mailing cigarettes from their reservations to customers throughout the country. The theory being, the States were not receiving their share of the Master Settlement, as well as cigarette taxes in each state. Cigars and other tobacco products were never an issue. The senators, however, included a section that expanded the scope of the bill to include “any tobacco product.” This bill will now take away your right to buy cigars in the mail.

(emphasis mine)

It's bad enough they're so damned greedy, they're going after the smallest taxation loophole out of the reservations. Sure, spend hundreds of billions on Viagra for the Bill Gates of the world, but put the smack-down on anyone looking for a break on their hideously overtaxed cancer sticks.

Their pretense is to prevent minors from buying cigarattes via mail order. For crying out loud, do they even have any statistics for the frequency of such occurences? Talk about using a howitzer to swat a fly, this is a classic example thereof. Trust me though, it's really all about the money.

Personally, I hate cigarettes. To me, cigarette smoke smells like recycled ashtray droppings. Dry, tastless things, too. But this isn't about cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobaccos. It's about the monster we've made of our government. It's time to rein this particular beast in.

This heavy-handed, nanny-state social engineering is contemptible, and those who promote it should be severely beaten with nail-studded Clue Bats.

It's too late to fix the original Senate bill but not too late to let our Senators know that we expect them to AMEND this bill and exclude cigars from this bill. We need to let them know we EXPECT them to fix this problem. Cigars are not part of the Master Settlement entered into by the large cigarette manufacturers to stop lawsuits against their companies.

Just in the past few months, the former democrat Attorney General of the State of Texas was hauled off to the pokey, for his malfeasence in regards to those lucrative tobacco settlements. Oh, and just as an aside, you do know that only about $0.00001 per settlement dollar actually goes to the healthcare costs which were the alleged basis for said suits? The rest is spent as general revenue by greedy State taxholes.

This is all about 1. Social control (communisim, idiotorianism, call it what you will.) and, 2. MONEY.

Federal prosecutors alleged that the former two-term attorney general misused campaign funds to buy his $775,000 home in Austin and gave a lawyer friend a slice of the state's $17.3 billion settlement with tobacco companies.

In this instance, it's the the damnable nanny-statist "do gooders" in the Senate who got their foul, grubby hands on this bill, and have hijacked it in order to attack the one segment of the tobacco industry which does not promote sales to minors. Sb 1177 seeks to outlaw the sale of all tobacco products by mail.

Asswipes.

Look folks, here's the facts. Minors just don't buy premium cigars! If they buy a stogie at all, it's those damned cheap, foul Swisher Sweets and Phllies Blunts they get down at the 7-11. And most of those aren't bought for their cigar-ness. You know why they buy 'em, and truth be told, so do the Senaturds.

But we've got them stalled for a few days. Here's where you come in. I've written my letters. Now then, I'm asking you to write a few, yourselves.

Even if you never light up a cigar, I'm asking you to help to protect my rights against the onslaught of the nanny-statists, the likes of which are surely causing Stalin to smile in Hell.

The entire story, original bills and contact information is available here, at JR Cigars. I'll go further than they do on this recommendation. Don't just send your letters to your Senator, or the Senators mentioned as affecting this committee.

Send them to your Representative, and all the Representatives on the House side of this isssue, too. They need the encouragement to hang tough in their reconciliation meetings with the Senate.

Here's the latest update from JR Cigars.com

On Wednesday, January 28, 2004, HR2824 was marked-up by a single amendment submitted by Mark Green of Wisconsin and Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, and was reported out favorably by the House Judiciary Committee by a voice vote.

The GOOD NEWS is that, unlike the Senate bill, the House bill and its new amendment remained cigar-free and without any non-mailability provisions.

Thanks to the efforts of the Cigar Association of America (CAA), businesses within the industry and, of course, you guys, we have won a battle! We can not emphasize how important your direct input was to Judiciary and to your own elected representatives. While we in the industry are doing everything we can to prevent this lunacy, there is no doubt that the voices of individual passionate, cigar-smoking voters, such as you, helped SIGNIFICANTLY to keep HR2824 cigar-free! Bravo Zulu to All!

Now what? "The next crunch point will be the House/Senate conference committee which will meet to resolve the differences between the two bills," said Norman Sharp, the president of the CAA. "Once the conferees are appointed -- they tend to be the chief sponsors of the bills and chairmen of the relevant committees -- we will visit them and the appropriate staff members and try to get an assessment of where they stand..." In further comments, he expressed that, depending on how the Conference Committee members react to the CAA's effort to have cigars and the mail order ban stricken from the final bill will determine our next step. He states that our best tactic right now is to await the appointment of the conferees and then identify where they stand on this issue, before we mount another consumer campaign.

So, for now, we are being asked to "keep our powder dry," but be prepared to fire another round of letters to our elected officials when the need arises. We will continue to keep very close tabs on this situation and JR Cigar will remain vigilant in keeping cigar smokers informed of all major developments. While we may have won a battle, this is certain to be a long, hard war. Not only is this specific bill an issue, but various individual states are also considering cigar- shipping bans of their own, under the guise of protecting children. The anti-tobacco zealots are committed to abolishing our prerogative to enjoy a cigar, so we have to be steadfast in our own commitment to fight for our rights. However, for today, relish in our first of hopefully many victories for common sense - relax with a good cigar in hand, and prepare yourself for the legislative battles to come.

I'll keep you closely appraised of this situation as it develops. For now though, think of this as your Second Amendment rehearsal.

I can guarantee you, the Senaturds behind thier version of this bill are the same hand-wringing, do-gooder crowd behind the whole jackbooted anti-smoking craze, and other causes such as saving the gay transgendered baby dyslexic stalinist whales.

On a more serious note, these ARE the same idiots who think that guns anually kill tens of thousands of chilllllldren, who do NOT want the AWB to sunset, and who'd gladly outlaw home brewing mail order supplies in order to cut down on underage drinking.

There's nothing they won't do to either control or to tax every aspect of our lives.

And they must be stopped.

Please take the time to send those letters. And one more thing. Please go to the JRCigars page on my sidebar, and order their free catalog. Same with Thompson. If you're not aware of the world of fine cigars, I think you'd find it one hell of an eye-opener, just to see how utterly stupid this Senate bill is.

My sincere thanks in advance for your time and efforts.

Comments

[Steve H.]

Of course, this won't affect the supply of Cubans. Maybe Fidel is behind it.

A lot of jobs are going to be squooshed if this thing goes through with the cigar part.

[Raging Dave]

Already done wrote the critters. I was ordering when I saw that little memo.

Here in Washington State the tax on tobacco products is 150%. It was only supposed to be a tax on cigarettes, and the money was supposed to go to "lower income child healthcare". Yeah, right.

So far, those programs haven't seen a dime, and the tax now covers all tobacco products. Fucking slime-sucking shitball moonbat politicians in Olympia have no problem lying their asses off. And the worst part is, since the tax was voted in by the people in this state, it's not going away.

I can't wait to get out of here.