terratogen wrote:

n an overwhelming majority of 17 to 4, and in defiance of a threatened veto by President Bush, the US Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to expand child healthcare using a large increase in tobacco tax. Most of the Republicans on the Committee joined the Democrats to vote in favour of the bill.

I'm glad that Bush is going to veto this piece of crap. I'm of the opinion that ideally, your tax dollars should go toward something you would want to support. Smokers don't give a shit about your fucking kids. Smokers probably don't give a shit about you either... Hell, smokers don't even care about themselves. There's probably more people who smoke who are struggling financially than there are financially secure. Taxing these people because you can't afford to care for something of yours which could have been prevented with a condom is just victimizing poor people with an addiction. Using the tax dollars in helping them quit, or in their own healthcare makes sense... other than that it's bullshit.

A better idea would be to legalize marijuana. Pot smokers would be more than happy to pay for your fucking kids in exchange for legalization.

This is wrong on multiple levels. First, I'm a smoker and was asked to sign a petition against this measure recently. While I am not a fan of raising taxes, this one is a perfectly reasonable to me on multiple fronts.
First, it increases the price of cigarettes possibly encouraging people to either cut back or quit. That's health benefit #1.
Second, it provides insurance to kids. Kids who don't have it because their parents can't afford it. Bush is vetoing it because maybe it would encourage some people to drop their coverage to get in on this, and I say so god damn what? Adding 4 million kids who can see a doctor at the price of a few of them who quit paying KaiserPermanente? BFD.
Third, going back to issue one, a lot of those kids have health issues from the smokers. Is second hand smoke as dangerous as some people say it is (that is to say more dangerous than being the smoker)? I don't buy that one, but I don't have any question about its ability to cause problems, especially in kids, which is why I never smoked indoors when my daughter was around (and still don't).
This has nothing to do with birth controll so tossing that one in there is just obnoxious.
Finally, I do agree with the legalization issue. The are issues there as well, but primary health, based on a study at UCLA, does not appear to be one of them. So pot smokers could also foot part of the bill while making the world unsafe for Dorito's? Works for me.

But taking this argument out on kids who don't have coverage is a poor choice.

RE: Senate Panel Approves Huge Tobacco Tax To Fund Child Healthcare