Fred Grimm, The Miami Herald

March 22, 2009

Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: “Cigarette Tax is what Florida Needs” – Your column this morning and where its Logic forces me to go.

Mr. Grimm,

If, as you say,

“…a dozen tobacco companies combined to give the state
Republican Party and five leading Republican legislators
$914, 517 over the last three years”

the reason why “only five backwater states extract less from a pack of smokes”, what other politicians have sold their honor and their birthright to lobbyists?

Here’s one.

In 2006 Senator Barack H. Obama got $102,000 from AIG. The only other Senator to get more was Christopher Dodd. He got $103,000. Dodd has been in the Senate since 1980 so who knows what Obama could have done with two terms under his belt. Both men are Democrats.

Does that mean that Obama is a poltroon who has sold out his country? Does that mean that they acquiesced in the great AIG raid on the Treasury? Does that mean that the “white envelope” tradition of Chicago politics is the template for doing business with the Obama White House? Does that mean that President Obama is a crook?

Further, you say that it is OK for one group of Floridians [smokers] to commit suicide in slow motion so that another [students] won’t have to pay the full cost of their tuition?

There is a Moral Imperative open to modern American Liberals in the politics. It is also available to their toadish servy boys in the press.




How about introducing legislation banning the use of tobacco in all forms in Florida? “Just say no”, only this time it has the force of law. If we can ban it in restaurants and public building and beaches why can’t we ban it in the rest of the state? The answer is simple. Yes we can! It’s the change we have been waiting for!

The savings of not having to pay for uninsured smokers dying in our hospitals can be applied directly to college tuition relief.

Assuming there are capital markets left after the current batch of dummies gets through with them it would be a natural for them.

Secretary Geithner – Everybody knew he was a weasel but no one knew he was a boob to boot - says that the deficit will be cut in half by not paying for the Iraq war for 10 years. Florida can claim the current value of non-existent future Medicaid expenses for uninsured smokers and borrow on it now. Wall Street will eat it up. Maybe the students can get Plasma TV laptops.

Before Thursday there may have been some Constitutional problems. No more. If Congress can ignore two things specifically prohibited by the Constitution to address a serious social problem can the solons in Tallahassee do less?

It is the opposite of what modern American Liberals said about Affirmative Action. In the confusion concerning goals and quotas the mantra was “Mend it; don’t end it”. Here the solution is simple.

End it.


CC – State Representative Jim Waldman