Ladies and Gentlemen,
I may not be the most reliable watch dog on the block, the most reliable whiffer when it comes to so-called NEWS – you know, the stuff that doesn't quite pass my sniff test. But every time I see a headline tied to the word stimulus, my whiffer gets itchy.
Every organization, public and private, seems to be at the government trough or the media trough and of course, the really clever, well-organized ones are at both. They are at the trough looking for money or attention, just trying to help Canadian society during the downturn, but the downer is the country's mood right now. The S word is how you get everyone's attention. STIMULUS. Construction companies naturally want the government to spend on infrastructure projects...it's about stimulus. Unions want the government to spend money on YOU, and name it all in the name of stimulus. We must stimulate the economy. Now even an organization known as The National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco is talking about stimulus. What are they talking about? They have a number and its 2.4-billion dollars in tax dollars the government isn't getting because of the sale of contraband tobacco. Now the assumptions are just wonderful. If only all those people who are making money smuggling and distributing contraband tobacco, if only all of them could be stopped the government would have 2.4-billion dollars in new economic stimulus which they could spend on infrastructure or social programs, etc, etc, etc. So the headline is, “Group Finds 2.4-Billion in Economic Stimulus.” Sorry if I am laughing folks. But who believes this stuff outside of media content fillers who fill their content with anything that moves as long as it contains certain buzz words like STIMULUS, as long as it purports to help children, help create jobs, help our social safety net, as long as those nuggets are in there, somebody is going to call it CONTENT.
Now I am not going to download every component of the contraband cigarette trade which is big and getting bigger. I am not going to talk about the various law enforcement issues and border issues and aboriginal issues that bubble up when this discussion takes place in a substantive way. I just want you to think about this in a common sense manner. Most of you have at one time or another smoked. You may be a smoker right now. Nobody has to tell you how expensive legal cigarettes are. Nobody has to tell you why they are expensive. Only a fool would blame big tobacco for this one. This is all about Government which has taxed the product to the point where obviously there is an abundant market for illegal or contraband cigarettes.
The idea that all these people buying the cigarettes relatively cheaply would buy just as many cigarettes if somehow magically the government were to eliminate the contraband trade is ridiculous. And, telling the public that $2.4-billion of needed stimulus has just been discovered by revealing some great big national secret, that is a secret to nobody, is interesting I suppose to generate publicity for the so-called coalition against contraband. But calling this thing stimulus?
Do we want to talk about how much money would have to be spent in dealing a seriously heavy blow to those people involved in the contraband cigarette trade? Do we really want to go there?
I mean do we want to bring up the words, “War on Drugs” which is and has always been a huge war on the taxpayer's wallet. Do we want to have a war on Contraband Cigarettes? If this organization is really worried about the government not getting enough commission, not enough vig, not enough action on addiction to nicotine, they ought to drop this stupid campaign claiming to have "located money for roads and bridges and getting jobs for the jobless." They ought to figure out how much money the government could harvest by legalizing marijuana and having it grown and marketed by the private sector. The tax take would be exponentially more than $2.4-billion. The tax take could wipe out much of the federal deficits that we will be running in the next five years, which will amount to well over a hundred billion dollars and that's no matter who runs the show in Ottawa, the Tories, the Liberals or some coalition of fools that Jack and Gilles come up with in concert with their friend at Rideau Hall.
Now please don't misunderstand me. I am not FOR smoking Marijuana, as I am not for smoking tobacco. I don't like what the stuff does to my nostrils, to my throat, to my lungs. I don't like being mellow. I didn't even like playing the song, “Mellow Yellow” by Donovan back in the days when my hair was down to my waist and I was wasted from the second-hand dope smoke that was everywhere in the rock’n’roll world I grew up in. I used to have a boss who always wanted to adjust my attitude by having me take a toke or two and I used to humor him, occasionally. And he used to say you don't really inhale enough to get high. And I used to say you don't pay me enough to inhale this garbage.
No, I am not a personal proponent for the smoking of tobacco or marijuana. But I really oppose having organizations blowing smoke up your butt, in the name of attracting your tax bucks, in the name of the so-called public interest.
But if you want the government to raise big buckets of money that is now going to hoods running grow-ops and getting kids involved in the growing drug trade, there are mega bucks lying in the weeds. Weed is where the dope is.
Now back to the regularly scheduled programming. A Monologue on Stimulation. Here's the point folks. We are in a soft economy right now where government revenues are shrinking and that's bad enough. But what's really bad is the lineup that is getting longer and longer and I am not talking about the unemployment line. I am talking about the line up of people, some of whom are in politics, some of whom represent unions, some of whom represent so-called not-for-profit community-based organizations who want to ride this recession like a pony and ask the tax payer to pony up the money we still have on all sorts of dreams and schemes in the name of stimulus, in the name of creating jobs and doing good. The mainstream media will enable the racket as it always does. If someone has a story to tell and it involves rescuing people, creating jobs, helping children and animals we like to pet, there will always be a media platform available to them.
To the National Coalition Against Contraband, I say thanks for the great research and revelations. Good luck with that. But what we really need is a National Coalition Against Crap That Passes for News.
I'm Charles Adler on the Corus Radio Network.
