Up in Smoke

For those of us that are smokers (literally a dieing breed) we noticed a pretty large increase in our cigarette costs today. For those of us that eat, we will notice a grocery tax in Indiana soon. Soon, if Obama has his way, we will notice an increase in gasoline taxes. As well as lottery winnings. And a capital gains increase. Anybody else seeing a pattern here?
Obama ran his campaign by saying he wanted to give tax cuts to 90% of Americans. Those of us that read/blog on here (well, most of us) we saw through the rhetoric and lies and didn't vote for him. Simple math is all you need to know that we are all going to be/are paying more now than previous. For example, the first of these little "sin tax" increases that has been put into place is the tax on cigarettes. Now those of you that don't smoke, this obviously doesn't effect you. And quite honestly, none of us should smoke. It is bad for our health, it shortens our lives, and is overall a stupid and irresponsible thing to be doing. However, isn't that what this country is all about? Taxing my bad habits into oblivion is wrong on so many levels, but I digress. Everyone will soon be receiving around 13 dollars more in their checks (WHAT A TAX CUT!), but after we spend that extra thirteen on higher cigarette/gas/whatever the hell else, what does the math add up to be? We will actually be spending MORE than that thirteen unless everybody decides to be hermits and grows their own food and doesn't drive anywhere.
Now back to the cigarettes. The main reason for raising cigarette taxes is to pay into what is basically the first installment of socialistic health care. BESIDES the point that socialistic health care is wrong (that would take up about four pages, and I've already done that on my site) there is the fact that a lot of smokers are now going to quite smoking because of these increases. Literally ten smokers I personally know (and possibly me) are now quitting smoking. I'll give a conservative estimate and say that 15-20% of smokers will give up the habit. There goes damn near a quarter of the profit that Obama is expecting to have in his greedy little fingers. So now what else is he going to tax in order to achieve his goals? Everything that he decides to raise taxes on to pay for all his (stupid) ideas will naturally stop being purchased as often or at all. He will more than likely just break even on the amount of generated government income, or possibly actually LOSE money.
Now this brings me to my conclusion: Obama is not a stupid man. I don't think that anybody thinks that. I think the only reason that cigarettes were taxed as high as they were was because Obama and all the other liberal dictators don't like people smoking and figured this was a good way to get a lot of people to stop smoking. Effective? Sure. Morally wrong? Absolutely. The greatest thing about being an American is having that right to smoke a cigarette (even though it could/will give you cancer), eat that cheeseburger (even though it could/will give you heart disease), play the lottery in hopes of becoming rich (although its always the elderly that win. Whats up with that?), take those risks in the stock market (for better or for worse), and to eat (I've got nothing for that. The grocery tax is just plain wrong.) So, my fellow Americans, how does it feel to have your personal freedoms taxed the hell out of? Obama voters, I await your apologies.