Tax Sex And Breathing And Be Done With It

Some town in Quebec is mulling over banning smoking in an open park.

Let aside for a moment the paternalistic attitude by the government persists, the thing that I really, really, really find irritating and disgusting is - and I've said this many times before - how the government has no problem collecting the massive taxes tobacco companies pay. If smoking was so terrible ban the fucken thing outright.

But this is all normal behaviour now. Politicians are pretty much masters of "do as I say not as I do."

When they began the crusade to rid smoking for our midst, I mentioned it was a matter of time before public spaces and eventually private domains would be invaded. As usual, I was told the slippery slope didn't apply here and that the government would not be "unreasonable" and over step its place.

Psst. I have a bridge I want to sell you. It goes straight to London.

Yet, that's exactly what's happening. In Massachusetts, a lollipop tax has been tabled. In New York, a soda tax was proposed. You like motorcyles? Too bad, our sham stats show you're a menace - TAX! Like what we like and you'll be alright, kiddo.

All in an effort to protect us from ourselves. It's all pure bull shit of course. All it is, like any tax, it's an inefficient cash grab. Taxes, the thinking goes, discourages behavior. And until this nonsense is obliterated and demonstrated to be false, the list of taxes - already massive in North America - will continue to grow.

It's not a slippery slope. It's a concrete straightaway. 

Excessive taxes erode wealth. That's how I see it.

All we need now is for the professorial Obama to take up the smoking cause. Him and his two packs a day addiction. Paging Kafka, paging Kafka.

Knowing he can't do that, he wants to introduce a health care plan he barely understands - it's become that painfully obvious. Who could blame him? 2700 pages? Who's going to read that? Tolstoy and Cervantes would be proud.

I'm going to take a guess and say I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in the middle, dark nether regions of the bill there would be the poem 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' with some fancy-dancy-loosey-goosey Marxian language. Like:



He cracks me up.

I don't know if anyone noticed but during the health summit Obama - despite coming off as sincere - displayed poor body language while the GOP (led by Lamar Alexander and Tom Coburn) came prepared to debate the issues. It was a bold move and a "bipartisan" reach over by Obama but Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were the ones who acted anything but. It seems like Obama's strategy is to simply refute and play the "you guys are naive and evil dipshits" game. "Now, where's...my...goddam...CHALK!. I need more chalk dust!"

Indeed. It all feels, all these "well-intentioned" measures, like Animal Crackers.