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For several years, I've argued that the Mountain West is a hinterland, organized to serve any needs but its own.
To understand our region, all you have to do is figure out who's doing the organizing. In the trapping and trading days, St. Louis provided the guidance. This dominance was contested by Chihuahua, but the Mexican War settled that.
Then Chicago took over, organizing the region along the railroads when all lines led to Chicago. The plan was to develop resources which had to be shipped east, and to populate the territory with folks who'd buy manufactured goods, thereby insuring that the trains would have freight going both ways.
Now we're being taken over by Los Angeles, and by
extension, California. Instead of bulk commodities, we
produce meaningful recreational experiences.
Land
that once served to raise cattle for the packing plants of
Chicago now provides pristine mountain views
for
California-style subdivisions.
For further proof of the California conquest, look at our politics. The most powerful man in Colorado is Douglas Bruce. Guess where he grew up.
Also note what he learned during his formative years in Lalaland. His Amendment 1 here was a revision of California's Proposition 13. The California ballot is notorious for its scores of referenda and initiatives; ours is getting there, thanks to Doug Bruce.
So if you want to predict the future in Colorado, just look west. Whatever happens in California will soon happen here as the Golden State increases its cultural, economic and political dominance of the Centennial State.
This explains why there's a tobacco education initiative on the Colorado ballot this fall. California passed one in 1988.
The idea is to raise the tobacco tax--not just
cigarettes, but snuff, chew, pipe blend and even the can of
all natural
Top roll-your-own often found on my
desk.
The proceeds go into a special fund, and if you've got a scheme for educating people about the horrors of tobacco use, then you can get money from the fund.
In modern America, this is an excellent income-transfer mechanism.
Smokers tend to come from the lower orders of society. People who know how to write grant applications and operate propaganda campaigns are from the upper echelons. They're college graduates, often post-graduates, and often they have trouble finding positions commensurate with their credentials.
But if America has a shortage of $75,000-a-year jobs that have vague feel-good descriptions, this elite is clever enough to create some publicly-financed niches for itself.
And as part of the lower tier of American society, I know that it is my duty to support my betters. We get to finance colleges whose students come primarily from better neighborhoods. We get to build baseball stadia for millionaires. We get to support symphony performances for the haute monde.
That's not the real problem with the tobacco tax, though. The propaganda campaigns in California worked. Fewer people smoked.
So did the propagandists celebrate? Well, no, according to an article I saw in the Wall Street Journal a while ago. Since they're financed by tobacco taxes, fewer smokers meant less money in the public trough for our moral supervisors, and the dismal prospect looms that some of them will have to find honest work.
Since that is happening in California, it's sure to happen here. So let's ponder what could happen then:
1) They'll raise the tax further. However, there's a point of diminishing returns somewhere. This just postpones the inevitable.
2) They'll start encouraging people to smoke, so that they'll have money to discourage people from smoking. Granted, it sounds preposterous, but that's more or less what we do now with another vice, gambling. We promote the state lottery so we'll have money for wholesome outdoor recreation that will presumably discourage gambling.
3) They'll discover another threat to public health and safety, and arrange to tax it in order to keep those unearned dollars flowing in the right direction.
While there are many possibilities -- salty food, fatty food, beer, wine, whiskey, gasoline -- I propose a television tax. For one thing, television is a habit favored by people who can't afford the opera, and for another, there are many studies which prove that television turns people into sluggard couch potatoes or violent sociopaths.
So levy a small tax of a quarter per hour per viewer, the money to go into a fund, and if you've got a plan to further discourage television watching, you can get money from the fund. As a writer, I'd encourage reading. Our resort industry could get money to promote skiing or cycling as healthful alternatives.
The only people with the means to oppose this would be network and cable executives, and they're just another greedy special interest group like the tobacco lobby, right?
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