Minnesota's DFL Smokers Should Sit Out The Next Election

In 2010, then DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton specifically campaigned to Minnesota voters against raising the cigarette tax.  It was a refreshing change from the emissary of a political party that has allowed itself to become the party of lifestyle micromanagement, censuring the mostly working-class participants of lifestyles that it decrees to be "sinful" and generally making both asses and frauds of themselves while doing so.  With that in mind, the scores of thousands of Minnesota smokers who voted for Dayton in the last election must feel like he's the Brutus to their Julius Caesar right now, as the man who not so long ago passionately opposed cigarette taxes has just championed and then signed the largest cigarette tax increase in American history.  And he did so without any public hearing on the pros and cons of such a consequential change in policy, treating smokers without any dignity whatsoever.

I don't even smoke but I am truly sick about this, not only because Minnesota's tax system just got a whole bunch more regressive at the hands of the party whose narrow mandate last year was to tax the rich, but because they show absolutely no signs of ever reining in this impulse to "civilize the savages" into government-approved lifestyles, usually based on the entirely fictional premise that those who indulge in these renegade lifestyles run up higher health care costs.  The Republicans insisted that you don't get to have a welfare state without losing your freedoms, and the Democrats are determined to make a self-fulfilling prophesy about this.  As the Democrats continue to embrace paternalism to the point of making New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg their David Koresh, they are gonna lose me.  Not to the Republicans as the GOP is becoming more untenable as a reasonable governing party with each passing year, but losing me to apathy and resignation that there is nobody in public office whose endgame isn't imposing additional hardship on the already-suffering working class.

Many on the left cannot understand my fury on this issue and can't believe I'd abandon the Democratic Party over something like cigarette taxes, but the issue is a genuine bellwether on a number of metrics and the Democrats' embrace of the issue makes them look increasingly like frauds, predators, and bullies.  This is the party that preaches progressive taxes but their path-of-least-resistance revenue-raiser always seems to be the cigarette tax which is far and away the most regressive tax ever imagined, growing only more regressive with each year that smoking is reduced to a downscale pastime.  This is the party that preaches tolerance but twists themselves into pretzels to justify why they shame and dehumanize smokers every opportunity they get despite having the pedigree of the Democrats' base...or alleged base.  This is the party that preaches secularism yet channels James Dobson and Pat Robertson with its moralistic embrace of "sin" taxes.  This is the party the preaches responsible budgeting yet mortgages its budgets at every level of government on artificially overpriced cigarettes even as consumption rates plummet.  And this is the party that rightfully bemoans the needless criminal culture created by aggressive drug laws as it applies to marijuana, yet are inching ever closer to a de facto prohibition on cigarettes in which the tobacco black market, indisputably controlled by some of the shadiest characters on American soil, is growing with each passing day.  And perhaps worst of all, the template used to humiliate and bankrupt smokers is clearly on the cusp of expanding to all manner of additional "naughty" consumer products, with politicians lying in wait for the years of brainwashing to produce a political climate where they can take on "Big Pop", "Big Fast Food", "Big Ice Cream", "Big Girl Scout Cookies" and whatever other bogeymen they can dream up....all taking the form of usage restrictions and higher regressive taxes levied on the peasantry.

For the past decade or so, ever since this war on smokers began to take its current form, I've held my nose and voted for Democrats despite my growing misgivings and their escalating shrillness on the issue.  But I think I've crossed the tipping point with Dayton's additional $1,000+ per year mugging of low-income workers, abuse victims, and the mentally ill to bankroll a professional sports stadium for millionaires and billionaires.  My previous assumption was that even with its arrogant and paternalistic assault on smokers (and other naughty pastimes of the poor whose paternalistic assault is right around the corner), the Democratic Party still represented a net positive for these voters in comparison to the monsters on the other side raging about the "47% of Americans dependent upon the government".  But as Obama calls for yet another huge cigarette tax increase of his own to pay for universal preschool, it's become clear that whatever benefits the poor would otherwise face by voting Democratic are being canceled out by the party's regressive and ethically monstrous financial censure on their lifestyles.  "Sin taxes" have officially become the left's version of "47% of Americans dependent upon the government", and the premise is no closer to reality on the issue for which the Democrats have become agents of intolerance than it was for the fund-raising dinner full of multimillionaires that Mitt Romney was addressing last year.

As I said before, the Republicans are not an option and don't show any signs of being an option in the foreseeable future, so that means the only hope for genuinely progressive minded voters (and for persecuted smokers specifically) is to teach the Democratic Party a hard lesson.  Until this paternalistic beast roaring inside the Democratic Party is tamed, they will continue to kick us in the crotch with these cynical schemes.  This is why I am calling for the organization of a group vowing to sit out the 2014 election in protest of Minnesota Democrats' intolerable governing philosophy.  The title "DFL Smokers Sitting Out The Next Election" has a certain ring to it, and the name itself should be enough to give Minnesota Democrats' heartburn.  Maybe, just maybe, if an organized group of smokers (and their sympathizers) can embark on a media push to let the Democrats know that they won't be returning to the open arms of their unreformed abusers this time, the message will finally get through that pissing on smokers every time you win an election comes with political consequences.  And if they are well organized, smokers can rightfully claim the scalps of fallen DFL lawmakers in a way unambiguous enough to make this message resonate. 

Just think of how narrow the DFL's mandate was in Minnesota, both with Governor Dayton's 7,000-vote victory and with the majority in the legislature achieved by breathtakingly close margins in more than a dozen Senate and House seats that happened to swing the Democrats' way.  If even 25% of Democratic-leaning smokers sat out the 2014 election, just think of the mischief they could create.  The Senate isn't up next year, but Dayton and the DFL majority in the House would be long gone, most likely along with a couple DFL constitutional office holders statewide like Mark Ritchie and Rebecca Otto, and possibly even Senator Al Franken.  Given how much I fear the Republicans, I don't advocate this lightly, but since Democrats are making it obvious that they will perceive every election they win this millennium, no matter how narrow, as a mandate to impose massive financial and psychological hardship on the state's most vulnerable residents and their families based on their lifestyles, they need to be punished for this.....punished with the kind of prejudice that will make them think twice about their party's direction moving forward.

Anybody who reads this and thinks it's a good idea should e-mail me or comment on this thread and I will be more than happy to help you with any organizational ideas from across state lines.  I really hope Minnesota smokers have enough self-respect not to let the DFL get away with this.

Are Illegal Immigrants "Makers" or "Takers"?

The always controversial debate over illegal immigration is once again churning on Capitol Hill with a fragile new coalition of lawmakers putting forth their latest attempt at a bill to legalize the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in America.  The issue divides factions of both parties, but the tug-of-war this past week highlights the fact that it divides Republicans most, leading to a rhetorical sparring match in which both factions are being disingenuous.

The opening salvo was fired by the Heritage Foundation, which released a study saying that legalizing undocumented Americans will open them up to accessing our social programs, and that the math works out to something like 6 to 1 in terms of government outlays likely to be spent on newly legalized immigrants versus what they pay in taxes.  The return volley came from the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP, personified by antitax ideologue Grover Norquist, who said that Heritage's argument could just as easily be an argument against having children, and when asked what impact it would have on the economy if the illegal immigrants were to go away, he responded that "GDP would go down".

They're both right...and they're both wrong.  And that dichotomy underscores how desperately the immigration debate needs some context.  I'm not sure about the 6-1 ratio Heritage is peddling, but I suspect they're right that if legalized, these mostly low-skill immigrants will consume more public resources than they contribute to the Treasury.  But Norquist's carefully parsed words about "GDP going down" without the immigrants speaks volumes about the real dynamic here, in which the economic contributions of these immigrants does grow the economy, but that all of that growth is being consolidated by the richest of the rich...the people whose interest Norquist is guarding.  Thus the economic contribution of the immigrant worker is understated by the artificially small figure on their W-2s.  If they were compensated proportionate to their economic contribution, they would be net contributors instead of net "takers".

It's basically the same cynical shell game from the last Presidential campaign, in which Mitt Romney spent his entire professional life stripping the working-class and its communities of as much equity as he could squeeze out of it and passing those resources on to the corporate boardroom.....and then having the unmitigated gall to point his righteous finger at the very people he mugged and bemoan the "47% of Americans dependent on government".   The immigration issue exposes the extent to which the factions of the Republican Party have to balance their conflicting goals of turning America into a nation of low-income Americans while simultaneously reducing dependency on the government.  I submit that those goals cannot both be achieved in a democracy, where an undercompensated peasantry will seek an alternative financial livelihood through the government when the reward for work keeps diminishing, and immigration adds another layer of complexity to the issue.

Last week, David Frum wrote the best column I've read in years on the immigration issue.....http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/05/06/david-frum-a-nonsense-consensus-on-immigration.html.............Frum is a former Bush speechwriter, but a moderate Republican who speaks more sensibly on class-related issues than most left-leaning columnists who haven't given two passing thoughts on the impact of immigration on working-class wages.  When this issue had a national hearing six years ago, the pitchforks overpowered the elites and despite the country evolving some in recent years to a more pro-immigration mindset, I still suspect the pitchforks are gonna win the fight again in 2013.  The extent to which the Republican Party of 2013 has shifted from upper-middle-class suburbanites to white working-class Southerners--the very people who will be most negatively impacted by the economic forces Frum describes--has created an extremely lopsided political advantage for illegal immigration's critics.  While the party's power base still lies in its Chamber of Commerce money interests, the GOP has become so dependent on the votes of bubbas earning $20,000 per year and whose blood tends to boil the most about immigration that the prospect of them sitting out elections and denying the GOP victories will undoubtedly tilt the playing field towards the opposition.

And we're already seeing the origins of this playing out with the immigration bill heading to the Senate, and Republican critics such as Jeff Sessions and Chuck Grassley filing dozens or even hundreds of poison pill amendments to make the bill untenable to a majority of lawmakers.  The guy with the most on the line is Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose advocacy for immigration reform is pitting him against the very Republican base most likely to punish him if he plans to run for President in 2016...and you can be sure there will be a large field of opponents willing to take advantage of a Rubio vote looked upon as a mistake by the party's base.  The fear, even among nervous supporters of Rubio's position, is that he's gonna get rolled by Chuck Schumer and other Democrats who are not negotiating in good faith, particularly as it relates to the language of immigrants only being able to become citizens if they pay years worth of back taxes and "get in the back of the line".  Most people don't expect the road to citizenship will be anywhere near that onerous and they are probably right, as you can be sure Democrats will continue to leverage this issue to get the Hispanic vote even if and when immigration reform passes, only now moving the goalposts to "heartless Republicans are slowing down your path to become citizens" by actually wanting to follow the contours of the law just passed.

But there's a danger for Democrats of stepping into a trap with this legislation as well, as it's a good bet the current configuration of the bill will look a lot different after thousands of Senate amendments and after the more conservative House of Representatives gets done molding it.  Democrats could easily find themselves in a position forced politically to accept ANY immigration reform bill, even one framed by Republicans with a frontloaded "guest worker program" and a backloaded "path to citizenship".  I consider a guest worker program to be apartheid and could never vote for any immigration reform bill that contains that provision.  And I suspect a lot of the Democratic base is with me on that, meaning the Democrats could demoralize many of their existing voters by signing on for a bad law without creating a wave of new immigrant voters to replace them anytime soon due to Republicans' successfully slow-walking the citizenship process.

Clearly there are a lot of obstacles here and what's most intriguing is that the contours of a good-faith immigration reform law are widely popular with voters of both parties.  If legislation could be crafted to legalize current undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship, coupled with assurances that the border will be sealed and slow the influx of new illegal immigrants down to trickle, bipartisan majorities would support it.  But as Frum's article acknowledges, the elites in both parties have an entirely different agenda when it comes to immigration reform, and that is a means for their corporate campaign contributors to reduce labor costs and keep them reduced for the rest of eternity.  The more the debate drags on, the more obvious it will become to voters than their cynicism about politicians' handling of the issue is warranted and public support is likely wither away just as it did in 2007.  The biggest issue of our time is the fact that wages are at an all-time low as a percentage of GDP and keep getting lower, and the larger the public hearing is on the immigration issue, the more working-class voters of all political stripes will recognize that the endgame of this legislation is for Grover Norquist's clients to continue "growing GDP" and pocketing all of that growth for themselves.