HolyCoast: Vote NO on Proposition 29 in California
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Vote NO on Proposition 29 in California

I wrote a brief piece on the ballot propositions yesterday, but I want to expand a bit on this one.  This is yet another in a long line of tobacco taxes that purport to make all our lives better by taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of the economy and throwing it who knows where.  The total haul is supposed to be something like $735 million, most of which will come from lower income Californians because statistics tell us they make up a majority of smokers.

What I find particularly aggravating about the ads (that are running several times an hour now as desperation grows) they're using the line "if you don't smoke you won't pay the tax" to justify passing this monstrosity.  This is the same argument used to justify increasing tax rates on high income earners.  If you're not rich, no problem, you won't pay the tax.  But in reality we all pay the taxes as those funds leave the economy and drop into the black hole of government.

Tobacco taxes are also among the most cynical taxes levied.  They're piled on people who have a physiological addiction to the product being taxed and for whom quitting is extremely difficult.  We all know that smoking is dangerous, but unlike many other products or activities the government will ban if dangerous, they'll never ban smoking because they have a built in revenue source.  Untold numbers of government programs would collapse if smoking were banned and those funds cut off.

Prop 29 would create a giant bureaucracy funded on the backs of low income people, and would undoubtedly provide slush funds for all kinds of activities unrelated to smoking prevention or cancer cures.

Please vote NO on Prop 29.

3 comments:

Underdog said...

My general take on voting on propositions, honed after decades of observing, researching and digging for the motivations of why these kind of people put such things on the ballot in the first place, is to say and then vote "NO!" to these things on the ballot, short, long, or in between.

And yes, I'm aware enough and discerning enough to have voted down through the years for Propositions 8, 187, 58, and the granddaddy of them all, 13. But for the rest of them in general, hooey. Bond issues get the extra third degree of scrutiny from me anymore as well.

You can't tire ME out of election ballot "fatigue" on some of these incessant issues. . . there's no need to fear. . . I WILL stand up for truth. . . you know the drill. . . (grin)

Sam L. said...

If there is new tax revenue, or increase flow in a single revenue stream, the bureaucracy will grow to feed on it, and...that's it. That's the plan.

Underdog said...

You got that right, Sam. . . they are hoping they can wear and tire us out. Then the revenue stream and the bureauacracy will increase, a la Europe. No way in San Jose!

And if they don't like that, TOUGH BANANAS!