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"Governor Coupe Deval bleats that "at least we are trying.""

And that is all that matters to those who maintain a big-government, nanny state mindset. Appearing to do something counts more than actually solving or correcting the problem.

"Costs are soaring and Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing a dollar-a-pack hike in the state's cigarette tax to help pay for a larger-than-expected enrollment in the law's subsidized insurance plans."

New Hampshire will undermine this approach. I worked up in Boston for about two years, and we'd always pick up a shopping list of booze and cigarettes whenever anyone went to New Hampshire. Who's going to be stuck paying extra for the "sin taxes"? People who don't drive to New Hampshire to get reasonable priced goods. The same folks liberals pretend to care about.

And if it's not happening already, soon the same people will start getting denied "free" health care because of their unhealthy habits.

Spot the lie in the sentence: "Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing a dollar-a-pack hike in the state's cigarette tax to help pay for a larger-than-expected enrollment in the law's subsidized insurance plans."

They knew their enrollment estimates were phony, but they hid them to disguise the real cost of the program.

OT: SKYY Vodka, the Anti-Absolut.

Not-so-OT: Bill challenges rich leftists to put-up-or-shut-up on higher taxes.

No surprise. They only needed to look at our NHS to see what always happens; from shortly after its birth it has been in financial and structural crisis ever since.

Smokers here are pumping about £8bn ($16bn) extra taxes per year into the system, and being refused treatment as a thank you from the kleptocratic state.

I'm moving into a new flat right now, and some post came for the previous (deceased) occupant; a newsletter from the Oddfellows. I made a joke to my dad (he's helping with the decorating) and he revealed that he was an Oddfellow when young too. They're a "Friendly Society" who, prior to the NHS, offered affordable health insurance to ordinary folks. Then the NHS's "free" health care arrived, and schemes like the Oddfellows' were no longer necessary; the result of course is people paying far more via taxes for a ramshackle service without choice or patient control.

He also mentioned how when he was young, every village had a volunteer ambulance service. Then the NHS arrived and confiscated all the ambulance stations. Then the NHS hadn't got enough money to run them, and closed all those village ambulances down, just like all the local hospitals.

It's amazing, how socialists refuse to accept that systems which have never worked before won't work the next time they try them.

That's the problem. If government didn't try to do more than the Founding Fathers meant it to do, we could look at the future without wincing.

So true No one could have said it better!

While I agree with the sentiment, it's sad to note that your Founding Fathers' fundamental failure was to place inadequate checks on government power. I was reading the Federalist Papers recently and it struck me at some point how much naive faith was put in the belief that the power of government would be held in check by the indignation of the people; that if government overstepped its bounds, militias would be raised and the government's bottom smacked. History proved otherwise.

That's not to blame the Founding Fathers. They were products of their time; to them tyranny meant kings or priesthoods. The tyranny we all in the western world now face to some degree is the strange tyranny "of the people" (literally, Marx's tyranny of the proleteriat) which, rather than being the tyranny by a small aristocracy imposed upon the masses, is the bizarre idea that people can only be "free" if everyone in the population tyrannises everyone else, with government as the agent. The US Constitution wasn't designed as a bulwark against a slavery demanded by the populace; it's difficult to know what constitutional arrangement could stand as a bulwark against it. It contains an implicit assumption that anybody in their right mind would prefer freedom to tyranny. If those fine men were to arrive at today via time machine, they'd shake their heads in disbelief at the restrictions not so much imposed upon as demanded by the population.

But as this is a conservative site in general, and I lean more towards the libertarian approach (I'm a strange kind of internationalist nationalist libertarian hawk, I disagree with those many libertarians who promote military isolationism and open borders, for instance) I'll just wave the flag for the libertarian approach. I take the view that conservatives who talk of small government and freedom, but demand social engineering in some areas (often based on faith, or tradition) are being inconsistent. The US Constitution doesn't describe a country that bans drugs, prostitution, or porn, or violent video games, or limits the sexual choices of people, or what they may read on the internet, for instance. Let people do these things as they wish, to make the mistakes they may make and, perhaps, learn a lesson or, perhaps, destroy their lives; however their cookie crumbles. Demand, rightly, that these things not be imposed upon the unwilling, and protect your children as you see fit until their age of majority, and argue for or against by your consciences. But they are no more the interest of a good government of a free country than should be healthcare or gun control.

Small government has to mean small government. We all need to get behind that, be it you fine USAians or us poor benighted subjects of the country formerly known as England.

/rambling rant

Oh cool. Dollar a pack tax increase on cigarettes. A whole new market for smugglers and dope dealers to enter. Go guys. You'll maybe help create the next Joe Kennedy dynasty. What a great business opportunity.

In New Mexico, a Christian couple who own a photography studio turned down business based on their religious convictions and were fined by the State a total of $6,637.94.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61342

Freedom? Not in America.

Ian, that is a good rant.

Although I will support more sin taxes than health taxes.

Parker, sin is a matter for the church, not the law :)

Truth be told, it was Romney that started this. Yes, the "dynamic duo" you have pictured are truly clueless, but I can't lay the blame all on them.

Ian: I would add to your post about the Constitution by noting that the federal government didn't wield the sort of power it now has until the FDR era. FDR wanted to push through the New Deal, but previous Supreme Court decisions regarding federal power were a barrier. FDR threatened the Court; they rolled over, and suddenly "interstate commerce" became the federal hook for Washington's involvement in everything. There is a depression-era case stating that a farmer cannot keep his own home-grown produce if the government tells him to take it to market, because keeping your own tomatoes has an effect on "interstate commerce." Same thing goes for all of the modern-era laws about domestic violence, segregation, etc - it's all based on the Commerce Clause (Article 1, sec. 8). Once the Supremes ruled that "The Congress shall have power... To regulate commerce... among the several states..." means "Congress shall have the power to regulate anything that has even a microscopic or hypothetical effect on interstate commerce...", the juggernaut was set in motion.
All of the talk about "judicial activism" really starts here - with judges deciding that "A" doesn't really mean "A".

How come that picture? The bill was Mitt Romney's idea, not Coupe Deval.

BTW, the tax increase in smokes will likely be "enforced" with checkpoints at the borders. They gotta get the bucks somewhere since Coupe Deval's casino gambling scam fell through. Just another crooked Cook County machine politician. Go back to Chicago, Coupe, baby...

P.