Wednesday, July 18, 2007

ACP want to raise more taxes

For those who don't read me regularly, the ACP is the American Communist Party, also known as the Democrat Party. And this time the taxes will destroy an entire industry in America.


The federal government has proposed raising taxes on premium cigars, the kind Newman’s family has been rolling for decades in Ybor City, by as much as 20,000 percent.


As part of an increase in tobacco taxes designed to pay for children’s health insurance, the nickel-per-cigar tax that has ruled the industry could rise to as much as $10 per cigar.


“I’m not sure in the history of man, since our forefathers founded the country in 1776, that there’s ever been a tax increase of 20,000 percent,” said Newman, who runs the Tampa business founded by grandfather Julius Caesar Newman. “They had the Boston Tea Party for less than this.”


The Democrat American Communist Party, who never saw a tax they didn't want to raise or increase, would shut down all the cigar companies in this country within a year. Plain and simple. A decent stogie goes for anywhere from $5-$10. That's not for a top-of-the-line cigar, but just a decent one like the kind I buy from the cigar vendor on post. Cigars aren't cigarettes, folks. The tobacco has to age for two years at least before it gets rolled into a smoke. Then you have to bind it, roll it, and the master cigar roller puts the wrapper on it. Any blemishes or mistakes, and that cigar is sold off cheap, at or below cost, which means the maker doesn't actually make any profit off of it. Everything raises the cost of a good cigar. The higher-priced smokes like Upmann, Macanudo, and Cohiba go for anywhere from $10-$20 easy. Now add ten dollars on top of that.

99% of rich people didn't get rich by throwing their money away. People will simply stop smoking cigars. Kim du Toit brings up the example of the "luxury" tax put on shipbuilders:

Incidentally, if this tax proves too onerous for cigar smokers, they’ll either start smuggling in cigars (oh joy, more crime), or else they’ll just quit—very few people are addicted to cigars as others are to cigarettes—which means that cigar-making and -selling businesses will have to close, thus putting thousands out of work.


That’s what happened when the Socialists raised the luxury tax on yachts (another “gimme” for the Wealth Envious)—the local shipbuilding industry folded and nearly collapsed—but Congress is incapable of such feats of memory. Indeed, Congress has no memory at all in matters like this, focused as they are on such weighty matters as soaking “the rich”, reelection, and fundraising.


Congress put that tax on luxury yachts thinking "Oh, those people are rich, they'll just pay the tax." No, they would not. Again, rich people do not get rich by throwing money away, and many a prospective yacht buyer simply decided that they were not willing to pay that extra money on top of a million dollars for the boat. What happened? The yacht builders went out of business. Guess who got hurt the most? The blue collar joes who actually BUILT the damn things in the first place. Carpenters. Woodworkers. Electricians. Welders. Fabricators. All out of a job, because Congress won't stop taxing the everliving shit out of anything that moves.

I don't smoke more cigars for the same reason that I don't drink twenty-year old single malt scotch - I can't afford it. Slap a $10-a-stick tax on cigars, and I won't be smoking any at all. And millions of people like me won't be smoking them either. So guess what happens to all those people who make a living rolling, packaging, shipping and selling cigars?

Yep. They lose their jobs. Thanks to Congress. Just another example of an out-of-control group of professional shitheads who don't deserve to ever sit on Capitol Hill again. I truly am waiting for the next revolution. And I would like to be the person who frog-marches the parasites in Congress out of the building and into jail where they belong.

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