Free Republic

Out of all the topics the Joe Biden White House didn’t want to see in Sunday’s Washington Post, this had to be up there on the list. The capital city’s newspaper of record published recordings Sunday of President Joe Biden’s brother, James, engaged in scoring off his famous last name during the late 1990s. The fact that the recordings were made by FBI investigators couldn’t have made things easier in the Biden household either. The Post article was headlined “James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe,” and just the words alone had to be unsettling at...

The House Oversight investigation into President Joe Biden and his family's influence-peddling schemes digs all the way back to ties to the late-’90s big tobacco settlement, including James Biden's deal-working caught on FBI tapes in an unrelated 2008 bribery scheme. James Biden's deal-making getting picked up on FBI tapes in 2008, as The Washington Post reported Sunday, are resurfacing amid the House Oversight investigation and the official impeachment inquiry. Mississippi trial attorney Richard Scruggs admitted to paying James and Sara Biden's "consulting firm" $100,000 to help grease the wheels for the Senate to pass a 1997 big tobacco law that...

Steady declines in smoking, a big win for public health, are creating problems for municipal bond investors. A handful of bonds backed by yearly payments from tobacco companies under a landmark settlement with 46 states are in the earliest stages of default, and more distress is expected. Dozens of states, counties and cities issued the bonds to receive billions of dollars upfront from the 1998 settlement. But now they are seeing smaller payments than expected from the companies as tobacco sales decline in America. There is also a renewed legal battle between the states and the tobacco companies, with the...

The percentage of Californians who smoke has dropped to an all-time low of 11.9 percent, the second-lowest in the nation behind Utah's 9.1 percent. That's good news for the health of Californians, 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. The bonds are supposed to be financed by payments from the...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Legal Newsline)-Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon on Wednesday criticized his state's handling of the multi-state tobacco settlement that provides states millions of dollars annually.

Good news: At long last, an American company has sued New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, rather than the other way around. Now here's the bad news: The lawsuit was filed over Spitzer's and his fellow state AGs' alleged failure to make good on their promise to protect an industry cartel. That failure, the suit claims, has facilitated a "huge increase" in the number of "renegade companies" selling "very cheap" products and making unprecedented gains in market share. Welcome to the strange world of tobacco regulation. The plaintiff in the case against Spitzer is Commonwealth Brands, a Kentucky-based maker of...

DETROIT (AP) — Officials for Asterand Inc., a human tissue bank, are hoping that the city's moderate wages and laboratory costs will help it become one of the top firms in its field. Detroit's pool of scientists, lab technicians and supply chain experts, plus the state's financial support of life-science companies, have also helped Asterand become one of the fastest-growing young biotech companies in the United States, company officials said. "Moving to Detroit is the best thing that's happened in my commercial life," founder and chief executive officer Randal Charlton told Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press for a...

<p>CASTLE HAYNE, North Carolina (AP) -- Dan Norris makes no bones about smoking's dangers. The logo for his Grim Reapers cigarettes -- a black-hooded death's head -- is like one big surgeon general's warning.</p> <p>Even his company's name makes a statement: Poison Inc.</p>

<p>BATON ROUGE - Louisiana Attorney General Richard Ieyoub has become a NASCAR fan in recent months.</p> <p>The gubernatorial candidate can't tell one driver's number from another, but he can rattle off numbers that show the nation's fastest-growing sport pumps a lot of money into the states that have NASCAR tracks.</p>

AUSTIN -- Former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales entered a guilty plea in federal court today to two counts including mail fraud and a tax-related charge. Morales, 46, had pleaded innocent in April to charges that he and Marc Murr, a friend, tried to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees for Murr resulting from the state's $17.3 billion settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998. Morales has agreed to a four-year prison term, which has to be accepted by a federal judge, said Daryl Fields, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton. All other counts against Morales...

<p>I am referring to the 1998 tobacco litigation agreement reached between states and tobacco companies. This famous legal settlement required the tobacco companies to reimburse states nearly $250 billion over 25 years for the smoking-related health care costs incurred by state financed Medicaid programs.</p>

NJ Mulls Hiking Legal Smoking Age to 21 By Jeff McKay CNSNews.com Correspondent April 25, 2003 (CNSNews.com) - When it comes to tobacco, New Jersey has been a leader at making it harder and costlier to smoke. Now, legislators want to raise the legal age for buying tobacco, a step that would make it the only state in the nation where you must be 21 to smoke. The bill's primary sponsor, Assemblyman John McKeon (D-West Orange) believes this bill would benefit teenagers and be easier to enforce. "The statistics are clear -- 95 percent of all smokers start before they...

Study: States with highest lung cancer rates spend least on prevention By JUSTIN PRITCHARD Associated Press Writer Many states with the highest lung cancer rates are squandering tobacco settlement money intended for disease prevention on unrelated programs, according to a study of health and fiscal data released Thursday by a national anti-cancer group. Even more alarming, anti-smoking advocates say, is that states with the gravest need for stop-smoking programs often spend the least on them. In 1998, 46 states won $206 billion from major cigarette makers. Since then, policy-makers have struggled over how much of that money should be earmarked...

Antismoking activists once had high hopes that the landmark $246 billion tobacco settlement would have a major impact on smoking, but a new study from Yale shows that almost none of the money spent so far has been used for prevention and cessation programs. Approximately $32 billion has been paid out since the settlement was reached in 1998, with much of the money being used to pay the bills in a growing number of states with budget shortfalls. "This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for governors and state legislators to address the leading cause of preventable death in the United States,"...

In these troubled times, it's nice to know that there is one thing that can always bring a smile to our faces, and maybe even cause us to laugh so hard that we cry.I am referring, of course, to the War On Tobacco. Rarely in the annals of government -- and I do not mean to suggest anything juvenile by the phrase ''annals of government'' -- will you find a program so consistently hilarious as the campaign against the Evil Weed.Before we get to the latest wacky hijinks, let's review how the War On Tobacco works. The underlying principle, of...

Philip Morris U.S.A. (MO) and other major tobacco companies will make their scheduled payments to the states under the terms of the 1998 tobacco settlement agreement. According to the National Association of Attorneys General, this industry payment will be about $5 billion. In a press release Monday, Philip Morris said it has made payments of more than $11.5 billion since 1998 as part of its obligation under the tobacco settlement agreement between the states and participating tobacco companies. The agreement calls the industry to pay more than $200 billion to the states over 25 years, and payments will continue in...

A federal judge on Wednesday refused a request to set aside a $102 million tobacco settlement payment, allowing Tennessee to use the money to help balance its cash-strapped budget. Attorneys for two Tennessee smokers asked that this year's payment be held in an escrow account until a larger lawsuit over tobacco-related injuries was resolved. In denying that request, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger agreed with government officials who said if the state didn't receive this year's payment, it could "precipitate an unprecedented fiscal emergency." Charles Temple's and James Wheeler's lawsuit claimed that people treated for tobacco-related injuries under the state's...