There Just Ain't Enough Loot to Go Around!!!

After years of egregious levels of taxation on tobacco products w/ big government spurred on by the anti-smoker cabal, a consequence of the Affordable Care Act brings a new scavenger to feast on the prey and the anti-smokers don't like it one bit.  According to the Washington Post, one of the anti-smoker orgs, the American Cancer Society, "worries that the high surcharges could make health insurance unaffordable to cigarette smokers, who are disproportionately low income".   

They have to feign that they are at least somewhat concerned about the best interests of their prey, but what they are really saying is there just ain't enough loot to go around. 

This new assault on smokers comes years after the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between seven of the tobacco companies and a number of states forcing big tobacco to disgorge some $206 billion over the course of some 25 years supposedly to pay them off for years of state medical payments they claim was for illnesses caused by smoking.  That money didn't come from the companies themselves.  No, the companies were allowed to raise prices to pull it out of their customers w/ provisions in the agreement that were designed to inhibit other companies from gaining market share which were not party to the original suit because they had no liability. 

What a nifty little deal that was.  The anti-smoker cartel, to include the newly empathetic American Cancer Society, set it up just that way so they could reap a large portion of the spoils for all their hard work churning out volumes of propaganda to justify the looting of smokers and blame it all on big tobacco as if that made it all morally right.  Of course, they started crying they were getting shorted years ago when the states started deciding to keep more of the money for themselves that they were supposed to earmark for the other thieves in their back room dealings.

Since then, both the federal government and all the states have been busy raising taxes on tobacco products here and there whenever they could to lay claim to even more loot, even though our very own Congressional Research Service published a report on the proposed MSA before the deal was struck called, "The Proposed Tobacco Settlement:  Who Pays for the Health Costs of Smoking?"  That report estimated that smokers imposed no financial costs on the rest of society at the current tax rates at the time.

The funniest thing is that the anti-smokers and government agencies have claimed they've been doing all this to smokers for their health, because of the claims that smoking shortens the average lifespan by some 7 years or so. So now they're going to be force these people they 'saved' to go up against the Obamacare "Death Panels" to decide if there's enough wealth creation left in them to make them worth saving for a few more years buy providing medical care.

So they came for the smokers and after having picked our bones clean they are still coming back to get more blood out of the stone.  They went after the drugs and imposed similarly egregious forfeiture laws to steal as much from drug users as they can.  They're going after small farmers and driving many out of business for horrendous crimes of selling raw milk and cheese products made from raw milk like they did to Morningland Dairy to steal their property from them. 

It's one huge lawless free for all feast for the predators and scavengers alike, operating under the guise of law of a corrupt government and faux legal system to perpetrate their 'legal' plunder.

If you cannot see this blatant stealing going on right in front of your face, well...  at least file it away so you can identify the process when they're done feasting on their current victims and move on to come for everything you own.