Photo Credit: NewsBusters
“I hope you’ve quit smoking,” he said to Kiai, according to a CNN report…
The audio is fuzzy, but Obama can be heard admitting: “No, no no I haven’t…in six years. That’s ‘cause I’m scared of my wife.”
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Photo Credit: KTVAEight Anchorage residents are accused of scamming the Municipality of Anchorage out of more than $1.3 million in tax revenue.
Prosecutors say the defendants are owners and operators of retail stores who collectively purchased cigarettes from two wholesale distributors in Anchorage and lied about where they were going to resell the products in order to avoid paying MOA taxes.
Court documents reveal the scheme took place from 2009 until October 2012.
Wholesale distributors rely on merchant customers to be honest about where they plan on reselling cigarettes. Federal prosecutors say the defendants told the wholesalers in Anchorage that the cigarettes were destined for retail stores in Kenai and Sterling, where there are no taxes on tobacco products.
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Photo Credit: @Guy261492President Obama casually inserted a piece of Nicorette gum into the First Mouth Monday afternoon.
Obama has a well-documented history of using gum control to stave off his smoking urges, but it’s rare to catch the president getting his nicotine fix in public.
Ever-conscious of the many cameras that capture his every move, Obama waited for just the right moment — during an event honoring former President George H.W. Bush — when it seemed likely that no network in the world would be focusing on the current president.
Fortunately, the eagle-eyed producers at the Fox News Channel transitioned to a presidential split-screen at that very moment.
In a mere instant, the president exhibited the requisite sleight of hand of a world class Nicorette consumer.
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Photo Credit: Fried Dough
The D.C. Health Benefit Exchange executive board voted Monday to join Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts in eliminating smoking premiums in their health care exchanges.
Dr. Mohammad N. Akhter, chairman of the city’s health exchange board, said the costs of the surcharge could be prohibitive for poor families. The Affordable Care Act allows states to impose up to a 50 percent surcharge for people who have used tobacco at least four times a week over the last six months.
A June 2012 study by the Institute for Health Policy Solutions estimated that the largest effect would be on older couples whose earnings were at 150 percent of the federal poverty line. If subjected to the maximum surcharge, a couple older than 60 years old who both smoke would face a premium equaling 48 percent of their total income and 143 percent of their income above the poverty level.
“That’s basically unaffordable,” Dr. Akhter said.
An estimated 20.8 percent of D.C. adults smoke regularly, compared to a national median of 21.2 percent, according to 2011 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But smoking rates among black residents in the District were much higher, at 30.8 percent.
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Photo Credit: Daily Caller
Coulter, the author of “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,” also told National Action Against Obesity campaign founder MeMe Roth that President Barack Obama’s health care law opened the door to unnecessary nanny-state regulations.
Watch video here:
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THE busy interstate highway that zips through Richmond, Virginia, and up to the crowded cities of the north-east has long been a conduit for handguns bought wholesale in Virginia and sold to drug-dealers in New York. Now I-95 is siphoning northwards another form of contraband: black-market cigarettes.
Because Virginia’s tobacco tax is the second-lowest in America, gangsters buy cigarettes there in bulk and sell them at enormous profit in New York and other high-tax states. At a minimum, they pocket a big chunk of the difference between what Virginia adds in tax—30 cents a packet—and the higher rates imposed elsewhere. New York’s tax, at $4.35 a packet, is the highest in the country.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that sales of illegal cigarettes cost government—local, state and federal—nearly $10 billion a year. For the smugglers, profits are better than those from cocaine, heroin, marijuana and guns, according to a report in September by the Virginia State Crime Commission. Moreover, the penalty for doing it—a maximum of five years in jail, under federal law—is considerably lighter than for selling drugs. If the smugglers were trafficking in heroin, they would face life in prison.
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