Representative Jim Waldman

November 18, 2009

Representative Jim Waldman
4800 West Copans Road
Coconut Creek, Florida 33063-5600

RE: What is to be done next? – Some comments on your “win” on the cigarette tax as outlined in today’s Page 1 story in the Sun-Sentinel

Representative Waldman,

When last we spoke, in January, 2008, you told me that in a first step to outlawing cigarettes you would push for a tobacco sales tax to be as high as was legislatively possible. You did it.

It must now be considered absolute empirical evidence that Arthur Laffer was right when he said that a tax code could either punish or reward behavior. Your successful drive to increase the per pack tax has succeeded in cutting cigarette consumption by 27%. Better yet is the fact that state revenues have not declined. A win/win all around. There is a bit of a moral quandary in Florid acquiescing in and profiting from allowing the sale of any carcinogen even those that are certified organic. Let me say that, while they are still legal, we probably shouldn’t watch laws or sausages being made. Sausages, not laws. How can laws be illegal to any right thinking modern American Liberal?

If raising a tax rate can cause a drop in demand would it not be Logical to infer that dropping a tax rate would cause increased activity? You would be wise to remember that every time an argument, however fallacious, is made to tax our way to prosperity. The evidence of your own eyes will tell you otherwise.

There are two points to be made.

#1 – If you are familiar with the role of the marketplace in the pricing of commodities there is one thing that stands out. When the price of any commodity spikes upward two things happen. A – The marginal user is shaken out and B – New supplies come to the marketplace. Thus the 27% drop is explained. I will use my testimony in a lengthy trail in Federal Court to explain B. “If eggs go to $5 a dozen the rooster lays.”

I expect there to be a burgeoning industry in the shipping and distribution of cigarettes from low tax states. Bootlegging has long been a popular industry in America. I suspect that buttlegging will soon join it. Since debits no longer have to equal credits in the Job Stimulus program perhaps some enterprising entrepreneur can find an out of work ACORN poverty pimp to steer him through the Federal maze of inchoate balderdash and claptrap and get some Federal swag to finance a start up smuggling enterprise. The trucks will have to be American-made and they can’t use CITGO products. Why enrich Chavez, this hemisphere’s latest anti-Semite? It’s a better idea than running a pre-pubescent whore house peopled with underage illegal aliens, don’t you think? Talk about creating jobs!

#2 – Would I be politically incorrect if I were to suggest that it is time, in fact it is past time, to corral the local Redskins? Because some Black robed ohmadahns have stretched the concept of Injun sovereignty into an unrecognizable entity American Abos collect money that used to go to Florida. Lung cancer is not made better or worse because of the DNA of the seller.

Why should these scofflaws be allowed to sell tobacco, be it cigarette, cigar, pipe, or dip, without sales tax and without regard to the age of the buyer? That they do it across the street from a Stop and Shop that complies with the law is a particularly bitter pill for the public and the proprietor.

As far as I can tell there are no Miccosukee or Seminole hospitals. Lord knows where the revenue from gambling and tobacco sales goes but it does not go into cancer research. I feel it will be a long time before we see a Chief Spotted Owl Tumor Center.

Since I am from Hudson County, New Jersey I have some practical solutions to offer. You could sue them in Federal Court but why bother? How about have the police stop every car leaving any Noble Redman smoke shop and confiscate any untaxed tobacco? Why not dig up the entrance and exit of one shop every day because a 911 call was made of a potential gas leak? [It worked on the New Jersey Turnpike in Secaucus. Honest.]

Sometimes the people don’t know what’s good for them. That’s why right thinking people, people like you, are needed in the legislature.

I am told that President B.O. still smokes. How about you sponsor a sense of the legislature motion censuring him for that? How about mandating that every public pension plan in Florida divest themselves of any company that is connected to the sale of any tobacco products? Florida Senator Eleanor Sobel succeeded in getting the word “Shylock” banned from public usage. Kipling, the original multicultural poet and champion of diversity, speaks highly of tobacco. Maybe it’s time for him to go also.

Let me give you a big time Shout Out for getting your legislative goal accomplished. Next is the way people eat and drink. I think we should do something about salt and sugar. The epidemic of teen age obesity must be looked at legislatively.

If you picked up on my introduction you would have noted that “What is to be done next” is a play on words of Lenin’s fascinating prediction of what he had in mind.

We live in exciting times.
Kevin Smith