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July 5, 2012 at 8:21 am #762419
kootchmanMemberA slurpee machine is a slurpee machine. Salts, sugar, fats. Why taxes? To raise revenue? We have sin taxed tobacco.. and yet the most persistant smokers are? The relatively poor. less educated. Paying $6 or more per pack.. is no help to their finances. would you argue that smoking cessation is an economic decision, or a cultural/educational decision? The least likely to smoke, are upper income with disposable income, with sufficient income that a 2X a day smoker can easily absorb the 300 per month in sin taxes. Have some decided to not smoke because of the tax? Yes. But here again we have the motives of government. It’s a toxic product, yet we have no shortage of either supply or places to purchase. when I hear howls of protest about repeal Obamacare… how about univeral reduction of coronary disease and diabetes? That would be the most impactful first step to good health care. Why not address the obvious first?
July 5, 2012 at 2:59 pm #762420
dhgParticipantKootch, you hammer on the 54% as if might makes right. If majority rules you must be absolutely incensed over the Republicans’ historic overuse of the filibuster. They have been blocking the will of the people for 3yrs.
July 5, 2012 at 3:13 pm #762421
miwsParticipantAh, but kootch, I’d bet that your good buddies at Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Pfizer, etc would pay big bucks to block a plan that emphasizes preventative care!
Mike
July 5, 2012 at 6:01 pm #762422
waynsterParticipantThe only howls of protest I’m hearing are coming from the right over what their supreme court justice agreed with was a constitutional law they didn’t like…….. leads more to think that the highest court in the land is a bunch of political puppets for the right not the bias court they are suppose to be…..
July 5, 2012 at 7:52 pm #762423
DBPMember>>We have sin taxed tobacco.. and yet the most persistant smokers are? The relatively poor. less educated. Paying $6 or more per pack.. is no help to their finances.
So lemme get this straight . . .
You want to give poor people who are bound and determined to ruin their health smoking MORE MONEY TO BUY CIGARETTES ?
But you want to tell poor people who’d like to get regular check-ups and take care of themselves to GET BENT ?
It must be interesting to live in your world, kootch.
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How do you do it anyway?
Anti-gravity boots? Or what?
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July 5, 2012 at 8:06 pm #762424
miwsParticipantJuly 5, 2012 at 8:09 pm #762425
DBPMemberWhat’s this guy’s diaper full of anyway?
July 5, 2012 at 11:00 pm #762426
miwsParticipantJuly 5, 2012 at 11:22 pm #762427
kootchmanMemberNo.. I go slowww for ya DPB. Education is the reason people stopped smoking not taxes. That improved the national health. not the cigarette taxes.
Now once you absorb that.. let me know. I will then explain how Obamcare Taxes do nothing to improve the health of our citizens.
But I must say.. it was interesting to watch an electric powered scooter shopper, purchase 2 large bottles of Pepsi and 4 super size bags of potato chips… on food stamps. TODAY…. too large to walk the aisles.
July 5, 2012 at 11:24 pm #762428
kootchmanMemberwaynster.. we are not that upset.. really. Now that is is a tax, we have a better talking point still. Tax and Spend lives on. we can work with it.
July 6, 2012 at 12:04 am #762429
miwsParticipantJuly 6, 2012 at 12:41 am #762430
DBPMemberIsn’t it funny how proponents of unrestrained capitalism are all about the “magic of the marketplace” — until you suggest that we actually start pricing stuff according to what it really costs? I mean . . . what it costs society.
Let’s take smoking, for example. Smoking might cost an individual smoker thousands of dollars out of pocket every year. But that’s a chump change compared to what it costs society in terms of lost productivity, hospital expenses, rising insurance rates, etc.
If Wm. Morris tobacco was charging $10 a pack for smokes and keeping all of it, ya think you’d hear a peep out of the marketeers? Of course not. And yet . . . AND YET !!!! — when the government adds an equivalent amount to a pack in order to recoup part of the REAL COSTS of tobacco to society, then suddenly the marketeers are crying foul.
Oh my god! It’s a tax!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!
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Taking a page from Oscar Wilde, I define an anti-government fanatic as someone who knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
July 6, 2012 at 12:49 am #762431
megMemberOk, if you don’t want a crap food tax – Regulate it. Regulate it, ’til the ‘fake food science industry’ folds.
While it’s easy to equate food with cigarettes (or alcohol), Kootch, it is NOT equal. Let’s look at it. Food isn’t optional – I have a basic need for food and it’s not possible for me to give it up and stay away from the food store. Not so much, my ‘basic cigarette’ need. When I give up my cigarette habit I don’t have to continue with my weekly shopping trip to the cigarette store and weave my way around the bad cigarettes, to get to the good cigarettes that I need for nutrition. I don’t have to read all the cigarette boxes, trying to understand all the strange words and tricky meanings. And there isn’t an cigarette science industry that’s trying to get me to smoke unhealthy cigarettes by making me think they are the healthy and nutrient-dense ones.
Catch my drift? I feel the food science industry is “sausage-making” in our grocery store aisles, in a similar way to Wall Street sausage-making. Wall Street technicians and quants take legitimate and standard derivative and CDO products for example, and convolute them so much that they no longer resemble what they were originally designed for, nor are understood by anyone including the ratings agencies and regulators. Then Wall Street packaged and sold them to the public market as good standard quality financial products with nice quality ratings. Those “sausages” sit in bags, boxes, packages, bottles, and cans at the food store and in food vending machines. Processed and refined foods, ‘baked’ goods, sugars in everything. Why does ‘real’ orange juice, in that refrigerated carton, always taste the same? Cuz every one of them contains a food science industry created ‘flavor packet’. How do they create those flavors, you may ask. Research it.
Do we need finance in this country? Do we need food? What say you then, to some serious & heavy food regulation in this country? Like the same as what’s needed on Wall St? I say, bring it.
July 6, 2012 at 1:18 am #762432
megMemberI would start by allowing regulatory freedom for all foods that are whole foods, recognizable to any ancestors living 100 years ago. Fresh stuff like carrots, garlic, meats, butter, raspberries. I would heavily regulate any ‘food’ with added flavors, texturizers, sweeteners, enhancers of any kind, preservatives, modifiers, isolates, etc… or anything else that was born in a science lab.
1.8 million years as Homo Erectus. 300K+ as Neaderthal. 200K as early, then modern Homo Sapien. Absolutely nothing in evolution prepared my DNA to survive this nutritional trickery.
July 6, 2012 at 2:07 am #762433
DBPMember>>Absolutely nothing in evolution prepared my DNA to survive this nutritional trickery.
And yet, we just keep living longer and getting beautiful-er.
‘Splain me that. ;-)
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July 6, 2012 at 3:21 am #762434
miwsParticipantif Wm. Morris tobacco was charging $10 a pack for smokes and keeping all of it, ya think you’d hear a peep out of the marketeers? Of course not. And yet . . . AND YET !!!! — when the government adds an equivalent amount to a pack in order to recoup part of the REAL COSTS of tobacco to society, then suddenly the marketeers are crying foul.
DPB, that’s always gotten my goat, too. (And my Llama was none too happy about it either).
It’s just fine for the big Corps to make big bucks off of a product that kills, but let the Gubmint tax or regulate it, that’s just wrong!
Mike
July 6, 2012 at 3:31 am #762435
megMemberBeautiful-er! Me too, DBP. Like you, evolution has made me most attracted to the constipated, runny-sniffly, pale-discolored, big bellied, curtain armed, short of breath, medicated, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen. Thank gawd, now there are so many to choose from!
;-)
July 6, 2012 at 4:32 am #762436
kootchmanMemberDBP. That;s easy. Vaccinations and antibiotics. miws won’t you be surprised when you find out that $1.50 goes to the tobacco farmer for lost market share. Still in favor of the “tax”… ? Interesting, I started smoking in the service… when they put cigarette packs in C-rats. Did WA state use one dime of the tobacco settlement for tobacco related treatment or illness? Gregoire was the AG .. what did they do with it?
Tobacco Settlement Authority
Authorized by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Gary Locke on April 4, 2002, the Authority makes decisions relating to the sale of $450 million in bonds from the state’s tobacco settlement funds. Washington is one of the many states receiving annual payments from tobacco manufacturers from the 1998 settlement of the national tobacco litigation.
They skimmed the money off to general revenue.. like SS and Medicare taxes are skimmed off to pay current account balances… give em’ a stream of revenue and it goes to support the state apparatus. More state workers, higher pensions and benefits… the “palintiffs”.. the smokers.. nothing, not a dime.
July 6, 2012 at 4:45 am #762437
kootchmanMembermeg… yes their is.. the ones that aren’t adapting are dying off… let nature take its evolutionary course. (grave yard humor) You have choices.. and labeling laws. Read and decide. I can eat exactly as my foraging ancestors did… or not. The food source is available. Nothing says I HAVE to eat nitrate laced bacon or salt preserved cold cuts. we are not penned hogs or sheep that have only what our herd keepers feed us.. we have personal choices. I know the concept is getting rarer and rarer .. we just hand it over to government to think an do for us. We need a nanny?
July 6, 2012 at 12:50 pm #762438
redblackParticipantmeg: i’m with you 100%, but we are not going to regulate the junk and fast food industries in america. it’ll never happen. ever. congress, lobbyists, and corporate media will make sure of that.
adbusters – yeah, them – saved their anarchist pennies and came up with enough scratch to buy some commercial air time on any number of networks: CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, etc.
the subject of their ad? how much fat is really in a mcdonald’s hamburger.
every single one of those networks responded the same way: “we won’t talk sh!t about a sponsor. especially one that has as much ad revenue as mcdonald’s.”
so i have a question to the libertarian free marketers out there: who – other than the government – has the money and power to take on mcdonald’s? and whose airwaves will they use to educate the public about how bad their food is for you?
and people actually believe mcdonald’s and their lobbyists, you know. i recently had a republican guy tell me that not eating mcdonald’s was silly. “it’s the same food you get in the grocery store,” he said in an annoyed tone of voice, as if i was an idiot for suggesting that maybe there’s a healthy – and acceptable by FDA standards! – dose of rat turds and floor sweepings in a mcdonald’s hamburger. not to mention the most important and relevant part: the terrible nutritional value.
so where’s that heavy-handed government you all are screaming about? ’cause it ain’t regulating much of a damned thing that we eat, drink, smoke, or buy, it seems to me. unless it’s a blatant poison or explosive, like gasoline…
July 6, 2012 at 7:26 pm #762439
kootchmanMemberredblack… you don’t give your fellows much credit. C’mon do you think anyone thinks Mikey “D” is good and good for ya? It’s junk food.. convenient, inexpensive, and tastes good. No one says make it a lifestyle. Are you that susceptible to advertising? “No”… you cant have Cap’n Crunch, Count Chocula, or granola…. for all that crap.. they still make oatmeal, raisin bran, shredded wheat… you can eat healthy and well, in any major grocery store. That’s why your insurance should be adjusted for your risk profile. Your cholesterol profile, BMI, are two well correlated stats. Use them to adjust insurance rates.
July 12, 2012 at 1:33 pm #762440
redblackParticipantsee, kootch, the problem is that a lot of poor americans rely on that crap for what little nutrition it offers. and mcdonald’s likes it that way. fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive in comparison.
do you see the problem with corporations running the food supply without oversight from a powerful FDA? or not? how about placing an emphasis on eating the right foods and coming up with ways to make them accessible to the poor?
then again, i’m talking to a guy who probably made fun of michelle obama for starting a veggie garden on the white house grounds and daring to tell people to exercise and eat right.
July 13, 2012 at 11:31 pm #762441
kootchmanMemberI just had a grilled salad at McDonalds today… in a hurry.. and there it was, a low fat, no salt, salad with a grilled chicken option. Not one single government mandate, not one single tax. FDA? How about USDA who runs the school food programs. I think Michelle picked a great first lady “issue”. Have ya noticed a correlation between poor people, food issues, and economic status? Ya think they might be intertwined. Popyes’s chicken anyone? As the topic was started, food stamps wasn’t made for soda and chips… ya wanna be the one at the cash register saying “what are you thinking’?… Food Stamps should be restricted to unprocessed foods… period. I’d support that.
July 14, 2012 at 1:08 am #762442
JanSParticipantgot news for ya, Kman…every salad at McDonald’s has salt in it. The side salad has 10mg. If you had the chicken, it’s just like the chicken you get already cooked at the grocery store…loaded with a sodium brine. I have had to so pay attention to sodium with this kidney thing (they make you take classes), and it can really surprise you where you may find it. If you had salad dressing? More salt. It gets really frustrating when you have to limit all salt intake for the day to 1500 mg..
July 14, 2012 at 1:19 am #762443
jamminjMemberagain, attack the poor and needy. You worried about tax dollars going to chips and soda, gets your panties all in a bunch. While we spend billions on corporate welfare, you are nitpicking about a bag of chips.
Want govt to tell people what people do with their welfare check, then you would have no problem with govt telling businesses what do as well with their handouts as well.
You are so concerned about that dime that you dropped, while someone is picketing your whole wallet.
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