Isn't it interesting how many people are willing to tax someone else? Someone said slap on a $5/pack tax, someone else said a pack is $9 in Canada - why don't we tax designer water? Gucci knock-offs? The whole notion of sin taxes is offensive. Other people's idea of sin may be utterly different from mine. For example, I'd love to tax all meat and anything containing animal byproducts. ALL, mind you, though I'd be willing to start with $17-25/pound steaks. Then I'd halt all church tax exemptions for anything but verifiable charitable activity, and I'd add a huge tax on anti-GLBT congregations. I could go on about this at length but I'd rather go on to this - Gary, who is a nice guy, so I mean no disparagement, wrote this:
"Tax destructive addictions to subsidize the programs needed to ameliorate the destructive effects, as well as programs to help people recover from addiction." I guess he forgot because it's not a big issue to him, but we already do this - at least, we're supposed to. But tobacco taxes go mostly into the General Fund, not specifically into health. And the Tobacco Settlement payments - paid for 100% by price increases to addicts - were stolen by the Gov and Legislature to balance the budget. All those promises about prevention and treatment programs went down the sewer. So if the cities start talking about taxing cigarettes to pay for throwing smokers out in the cold, expect opposition. I'm thinking already that there's clear discrimination in exempting Indian establishments from this ban. I'm not clear on whether that's to be only when tobacco is used for religious purposes or if it means casinos. Sorry, I'm probably lumping too much under this topic, but the tax question leads in a lot of directions. Gail O'Hare St. Paul REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
