I don't give a dam about "the children"!

In the days of itinerant tradesmen, a community mainstay was the tinker. He fixed cracked pans, pots and pails, amongst other things. Part of the method he used was to build a wall of cheap pot metal around the offending fissure, and then pour molten iron to patch the crack. He then chipped off the pot metal wall and threw it away. This wall was called a "dam", and once used, was useless for anything else. :"Not worth a tinkers dam" is a phrase hearkening back to those old days. No cussing, just a degree of worthlessness.


I just got an email from a purveyor of fine smokables:

As you may be aware, President Obama signed the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation into law last week on Feb. 4.

While this program has some valid goals, it is to be funded by increased federal tobacco taxes that will go into effect on April 1, 2009

The new Federal Exise Tax on large cigars will be 52.75% of the manufacturers wholesale price with a cap of 40.26 cents per cigar.
The previous tax had a cap of 5 cents a cigar so this means that your favorite cigar brands like Cuban Delights, Rollers Select, Acid, Cojimar etc. will increase in price up to 35 cents or more per cigar come April 1st.

Aardvark, you can avoid the tax increases by stocking up now, before the prices go up.

You should also note the following other tobacco tax increases
Cigarettes: $1.0066 per pack
Pipe Tobacco: $2.8311 per pound
Roll Your Own Tobacco: $24.78 per pound
Little Cigars: $50.33 per 1000 ($100.66 per pack)


It's for the children, but they are not my  children. I don't give a dam about them. period. Let their parents and local charities help them. The children of layabouts or illegals are not my problem in a governmental sense. For Mr. Obama to forcibly take money from me (overtly punishing me for my choice to enjoy a cigar or pipe) for some stranger's health care is felonious in the extreme. They are not my responsibility.


"Well, that's not very CHRIS-chun," I hear shouted from the back.


Shut up. You don't know what you are talking about.


Charitable and benevolent giving are voluntary in the Christian faith. My responsibility is to my neighbor, and Jesus parable of the "good Samaritan" makes clear that there must be a relationship, even one as tenuous as SEEING a strangers need, as the Samaritan did. Then, I make the decision. No-one decides for me. Except our neo-messiah, apparently.


The government has already robbed me by its war on tobacco. (The schizophrenia is palpable! Many Federal and State health programs are funded by taxes on tobacco products, which they are working overtime to get people to stop using.) I co-own some property in the eastern US with my cousins, which property is leased by a local farmer, who pays us each January based upon what he grows. He used to grow a lot of tobacco. Then the Feds put the kibosh on the tobacco industry, and while cotton and soybeans are nice, the net income from rent has dropped by one third annually. The Government agreed to pay "Oops, sorry" money for a few years to make up for it, but when that program ends in five or six years, we're out that money!  Thanks, Big Brother!


So I am steamed. My pocket is picked yet again for people whom I do not know, and for whom I do not care, nor have responsibility for.


If I know you, and you have need, I will help as I can. Requiring  anything beyond that is robbery.