Illustrating Absurdity: The Tobacco Mandate

RUSH: Bloomberg News: "Consumer Prices in US Rose in February as Gasoline Jumped -- The cost of living in the US..." This is inflation.

In fact, let me say that instead of "cost of living." It's the same thing. Inflation "in the US rose in February by the most in ten months, reflecting a jump in gasoline that failed to spread to other goods and services. The consumer price index climbed 0.4%, matching the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The biggest jump in gasoline in more than a year accounted for about 80% of the increase in prices last month, leaving households with less money to spend on other goods and services," including contraception, which is why women emerging from the voting booths on Tuesday night said (summarized):

"The economy is the thing that matters to me most. And the economy is the second most important thing to me. And the economy is the third most important thing." And this caused Democrat women strategists to pull their hair out. "How can these women be concerned about the economy? Don't they know if they lose their health, what goes on in the economy doesn't matter? Why aren't they buying into our war-on-women theory?" It's because of economy. Rising gas prices. Consumer confidence is falling as inflation rises. So there will be a political component for the release of oil from these Strategic Reserves.

One other quick note here before we go to the break. (interruption) Well, yeah, I think it's possible. I was just asked if I thought the price of birth control might go up with inflation. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think the price of birth control might go up? You know, it's between $4 and $9 a month now. I think it's a month at Walmart. It may be 15. At Georgetown it's $1,000 a year. It's $600 a year or less at Walmart or CVS or whatever. If inflation hits big, what do you think would happen to the price of contraception? I don't know. I'm being asked. Some things are immune to price increases. Some things aren't. We just have to wait and see.

"The percentage..." This from the Los Angeles Daily News. "The percentage of Californians who smoke has dropped to an all-time low of 11.9%, the second-lowest in the nation behind Utah's 9.1%. That's good news for the health of Californians," it says here, "but bad news for the state's budget and First 5 program, which funds local services for children up to age 5. The decline in smoking was anticipated, but it has descended at a much sharper rate than predicted. As a result, California will face difficulty in funding $16 billion in bonds the state has issued since 2001. ... Unlike many other states, California made the mistake of deciding not to take the annual payments from tobacco firms but instead borrowed money against expected receipts.

"Now that the payments are less," because people are smoking less, California "faces another fiscal problem." Now, once again, ladies and gentlemen, I must say: You in this audience were told to expect this. Not just in California, but everywhere. I am often illustrating absurdity by being absurd. I've said that we need to give smokers medals. We need to make 'em citizens with great honor, because they are the ones paying for children's health care programs. The taxes, the vast majority of taxes from the sale of tobacco products goes to fund children health care programs. All of this was done by the Democrat Party while demanding that fewer and fewer people smoke, making it harder and harder for people to smoke.

Oh, you can go buy the cigarettes. The cost was through the roof because of the tax increases. And we heard all about how smoking kills and we got all these people trying to ban it everywhere. It became harder and harder to use the product but you could buy it anywhere you wanted to. And the taxes were going to be used to pay for children's health care programs, so something had to give here. If you are urging people to stop smoking, if you are guilting them to stop smoking, if you're telling them, "You can't continue to smoke! Why, you're gonna get cancer. You're gonna get lung cancer and you're gonna cause all kinds of rising expenses in the national health care costs.

"You have to pay higher taxes!" In the meantime we're paying for children's health care programs with the tax receipts from the sale of this product, which are becoming harder and harder to use. Now, this had to happen. At some point the success in the anti-smoking programs is gonna be such that it was gonna cause a reduction in tax revenue to fund these children's health programs, and California is now unable to come up with $16 billion for their First 5 program. So once again the Democrat Party, "doing it for the children," has left them in the lurch.

Children's health programs in California now will be unfunded or underfunded because the taxes from declining sales of cigarettes are falling short, the terms of paying for the programs. What are we to do now? Now what do we do? Taxes from tobacco products pay for children's health care programs, and while all that's going on, we're demanding people stop smoking. We make it harder and harder for them to smoke. They gotta stand outside bars and restaurants. They can't smoke in public stadiums, can't smoke in the park, can't smoke anywhere. In some places you try smoking in your house, and a neighbor will turn you in to the local authorities.

RUSH: Of course I ask the question rhetorically, "What can we do?" I'll tell you what we can do. And again, as the mayor of Realville, I live in Literalville. I'll tell you what to do. The joking thing would be to say, "Okay have Obama mandate that everybody buy cigarettes. If he's gonna mandate that everybody have health insurance, mandate that everybody buy tobacco products. Whether you smoke or not, buy it. Mandate that you buy it." Don't laugh, folks. I know it sounds funny but if they succeed with this mandate of making sure everybody buys health insurance, then there's nothing to stop them from demanding that we buy anything. And Obama and his people are oriented toward this kind of totalitarian regime, authoritarianism.

So if there's a shortage in sales tax revenue from tobacco products, just mandate everybody go out and buy it whether you use it or not. Children's health depends on it. It was the original intent, just like he supports infanticide. He supported legislation as a state senator in on Illinois that if a child survived an abortion, a third doctor could come in and finish the job. If a baby intended to be aborted survives the abortion, Obama supported legislation to allow a third doctor to come in and... I know it sounds grotesque and brutal, but he did! It would be nothing to say, "Look, children's health depends on the sale of these products.

"You buy it whether you use it or not." But what do we do? What do we really do? Yeah, I know it would be a problem if, say, poor students at Georgetown couldn't afford to buy tobacco products after the mandate that they go buy 'em. Then of course what would happen you? You and I would buy tobacco products for the people that can't afford 'em. No, the simple answer is: If you're not going to ban the product, if you're going to make it easy to buy cigarettes, then make it easy to smoke 'em. If you are going to fund children's health care programs with the sales tax revenue of cigarettes and tobacco products.

Then lower the taxes and increase people's incentive to buy them and stop all of these anti-smoking programs. (New Castrati impression) "Mr. Limbaugh, that absolutely silly. We are interested in the health of the people in this country!" No, you're not. You're not interested in the health of people this country. You're using tax revenue from the sale of cigarettes to fund children's health care programs and you've succeeded in driving down the number of people who smoke so your tax revenue is down. So children's health care programs are underfunded. It's all about the children; so if you're gonna not ban the product, you let people smoke 'em when they buy 'em.

It's absurd to fund a program with a revenue of a product that you don't let people use!

I have often chided my state legislators about the hypocrisy of raising tobacco taxes. If we believe what we are told by the anti-smoking zealots, that smoking and second hand smoke is killing little babies in their beds and filling our hospitals, the only moral choice would be to have a prohibition on the sale, manufacture and importation of tobacco products in the state. Yet Legislators are perfectly happy to continue to allow the sale of tobacco products and use the sale as a convenient tax revenue source....in essence the ultimate death tax. Who can object to the great moral purpose of raising tobacco taxes as it is for the smoker's own good that they quit smoking or at least cut down because of the higher cost of cigarettes.

However, the anti-smoking zealots are not satisfied and have in our state successfully banned smoking not only in public buildings, schools and hospitals, but now in all private businesses. The only exceptions are in the Indian casinos. Now the state is seeing not only a drop in tobacco tax revenues, but a drop in video lottery receipts. It seems that people who liked to play the video lottery machines also liked to smoke and are taking their business to the Indian casinos and to new casinos just across the state border where smoking is allowed. The state's ploy of increasing taxes on smokers and gamblers as they are easy groups to target is backfiring and will result in a considerable loss in tax revenue.

How sad we do not learn from history. The proponents of Prohibition promised that banning the sale, manufacture and importation of intoxicating liquors would be a cure-all for society's ills. Instead people who wanted to drink continued to do so and turned most of the country into bootleggers and gave organized crime a new source of revenue. Now with our smoking bans and high tobacco taxes we are driving people out of the state to smoke, causing a loss of revenue to businesses that used to cater to smokers and are causing a drop in tax revenues.

It started with the smokers, but when the revenue dries up, the lefties will demonize something else in order to tax it. Next in line for excessive taxing: sugar and anything that contains sugar, the so called ‘junk food’, salt, alcohol, obese people, pets, firearms, etc. At the end they will tax us for our pure existence under some fancy name like “Humanhood Existence Benefit Tax”. Oh, everything will be for some beautiful uplifting cause, and of course for our own good and the good of our “Mother Earth”. These liberals are like cancer.

Ummmmmmm You're gonna get lung cancer and you're gonna cause all kinds of rising expenses in the national health care costs. More ummmmm...............Beer drinkers are just as likely to get cancer ummmmmmm and that probably goes for Scotch, Gin, Whiskey drinkers also. What about those ladies who have all sorts of aerosol sprays used on their hair along with toxic dyes. Smoking is the only tax vehicle of its kind. Don't like the smell? Go somewhere else...........As a non-smoker, I am really tired of the un-fairness imposed on a free society through this legal entity.

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