My family lives in Wisconsin. I was born and raised in Minnesota, and for as long as I remember, the govenor in Minnesota was always coming up with excuses for raising taxes on gas/fuel and on cigarettes and tobacco in MN. As everyone may know, the I-35 bridge in MN collapsed a few months ago, apparantly due to the shotty building of the bridge many years ago. I have been told by many people that the reasoning behind the higher taxes on fuel and tobacco is due to having to fix the bridge. Well, why should tax payers have to pay for the state not hiring competent people and having the bridge properly inspected? A few years ago, the govenor approved an extra $1.25 tax on every single pack of cigarettes, making tobacco prices about 2 or 3 dollars higher than if you just crossed the state line into Hudson and buying a pack in Wisconsin. Well, I think that this whole thing is completely ridicilous. It is unfair to the people that have to put a full tank of gas in their vehicle just to be able to make it to work. My husband filled up our gas tank the other day, and it cost over forty dollars. We get 14 miles to the gallon, and we just had a baby in September, and have 2 other young children. Just about every week, someone needs to go to the doctor or we have to go to the grocery store, and the closest doctor that they have is 30 minutes away. Neither of us are employed at this point due to me just having had our 3rd child, and my husband got fired from his job because he was late because when I was pregnant we had a lot of problems and he was late one morning to work becuase we had an emergency with my pregancy thinking that my water had broken before I was full term, which is very bad. They said that he had never called in, which he did as soon as we found out that we had to stay at the hospital and he would be late for work. Unfortunately, there was nothing that we could do about him getting fired (challenging it) becuase Wisconsin has an "Fire-at-will" policy, which means that your boss could come into work and just feel like firing someone that day, and could fire you and there would be nothing that you could do about it. Fortunately, he is on Unemployment Compensation, but that doesnt pay all our bills with having 3 kids. He recieves not even half of what he made while he was working and he has not been able to find any job since he was fired. I am currently waiting for my social security disability decision, but becuase so many people abuse it, I have to go through complete scrutiny in order to possibly get it. Now, I may be going off of my original topic, but I was trying to make a point. We barely make any money, and with higher taxes on everything in sight, we can barely afford to live.
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hey you know what? You know what you can do to stop paying that tax on cigarettes? QUIT SMOKING! The taxes from cigarettes goes maily to health programs to help people quit and to cover medical expenses that smokers have.
Smokers aren't second-class people.
How about if we tax you for every minute you're on the internet.
Wouldn't be very fair for you to be taxed like that, would it? All you'd have to do is stop using the internet.
Those on the left will promise you great benefits for free.
What you get is raised taxes and no benefits, except to a few token examples.
They lower the bar on who can get benefits, so that only the most insanely poor get help, but also lower the bar on who pays for it, so that even the poor pay for benefits that they can't qualify for.
This is just another example. Minnesota has always been liberal. Even many of their Republicans have been liberal.
I never said they were, so chill out. I just said if you don't like the tax then don't smoke. (By the way I am a smoker). I don't think it's right that the government can tell business owners they can't allow smoking in their establishments. State after state are passing these anti-smoking acts. I think it should be up to the individual business owners. If the non-smokers don't want to be around smoke they don't have to go there. I would like to go to a bar and be able to light up but I can't because the government is dictating it.
Wow they responded like this to the bridge collapse but yet didn't respond like this when hurricane Katrina hit, the government never ceases to amaze me!!
Smoking is a personal choice just so long as your not smoking in my face I don't care what you pay or don't pay to get them.