If You're Not Buying Cigarettes, then... WHAT KIND OF CITIZEN Are You.wmv

If you're not buying cigarettes, then what kind of citizen ARE you?
The children's health care program CHIPRA utterly depends on cigarette taxation. Too few cigarette sales and the program's in trouble. Instead of shaming smokers with exile each time they light up, we should admit they deserve special thanks. (And, given nicotine's scientifically verified benefit to certain individuals' successful daily functioning, our most charitable act for many of the less fortunate might be gifting cigarettes to them.) If you're not buying cigarettes, then what kind of citizen ARE you?
Verse 1:
No, you can't bum a cigarette
But, I'll sell ya one
That's gonna be forty cents
I need the mon'
I need four & a half cents for the re-hab groups
And twelve for the pensions trust
We need two point five for surveillance tech' now
There's violators to bust
My supplier kept him a penny, so I'm keepin' one for my fuss
That leaves the other nineteen for the nanny state taking such good care of us!
CHOUS:
Oh, what a soldier has to do to have a smoke! It really is a pity
Yeah, in the P.O.W. camp they made of the city
A smoker's choice, p-lain as can be
It's either exile or captivity
And those actuarial tables, the better for us all if there's a proper skew
So if you're not buying cigarettes then what kind of citizen are you?
Vs.2.
You don't just light up a cigarette
But, it can be done
In the big house or the Big Apple
They make exceptions for some
Tell them you've got the license to fuss and fume
And children's healthcare is riding on you
If it rides on the air in a cigarette plume now,
Ain't that the least you can do?
And ah, you can keep your peace with the system, you let the system have a piece of you
And you laugh at the joke if you wanta have a smoke, well it's some kind of exile you choose! © 2012

• Category

  News & Politics

[pat boone]

I think Donny, the composer of this classic deserves the Nobel Peace Pipe

pat boone

[CarptheFish]

Oh, hi again.

Nowhere did I suggest printing money, so that comment is irrelevant.

[CarptheFish]

Right, but the fact that money is being printed doesn't change the fact that the money saved by someone quitting smoking is greater than the money that smoker would have contributed to SCHIP, etc. Your dislike of inflation is charming, but yes, it /is/ irrelevant here.

[donnieork]

Whether or not you did suggest printing money has nothing to do with whether or not it's happening. Irrelevant hardly!

[Christopher Banacka]

Not a smoker, i stay away from smokers!

But i am AGAINST raises taxes on smokes, AGAINST indoor smoking bans, AGAINST outdoor public park smoking bans!

[captdot]

Even more apropos now. The budget just submitted by President Obama: new preschool entitlement to be funded by raising the cigarette tax to $1.95 a pack from $1.01 now; 39 cents when he entered office.Using the arguments of some,those wanting to stop smoking hate children.How dare they want to deprive kids! This is a tax on the poor & lower income folks who spent about 23.6 percent of annual income on cigarettes; 28.9 percent of adults below the poverty level are smokers.This is war on the poor!

[donnieork]

The "general fund" is the printing press, I'm sure you recognize. Ponzi-scheming dominant center left governments throughout the industrialized world have depended on it. The only problem for the left (who value equality more than liberty) is that not once in recorded history has fiat currency inflation not gone out of control to eventual catastrophe, and the musical chairs end moment is relatively close at hand

[MzProgressive]

Now this is MY KIND of Country Music!!

NYC = POW ...would be damned funny if it weren't TRUE!

[CarptheFish]

[continued] A cost or saving in one part can be moved to another: the government does it all the time. You may have a pseudo-religious objection to it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

SCHIP is currently funded by tobacco taxes, yes. That doesn't prevent from being funded otherwise in the future. It would be a simple matter to have it draw from the general fund.

[CarptheFish]

A thing need not be centralized to exist. You believe in the private sector (how else could you worship it?), and it has neither office not director. Now that we've got that out of the way, the medical system is composed of hospitals and medical centers, their employees, private and public health programs, and of course, the patients themselves. And it is very much one system: its parts are in close cooperation and competition, a "market", if you will. [continued]

[donnieork]

Does "the US medical system" you speak of have an office or a director somewhere? In attempting persuasive argument, you're inventing abstractions that match no operational reality. There actually is a SCHIP program, no abstraction. And statutorily it's funded by cigarette taxation.