Ravenwood - 11/13/03 06:45 AM
Well surprise surprise, States are blowing their anti-tobacco settlement money on pork barrel spending which means the smoke nazis have got their panties in a bind.
States that cashed in on a landmark $246 billion settlement with tobacco companies five years ago are spending little on programs to curb smoking, an anti-smoking group charged on Wednesday.This comes as no surprise to me. When they made the tobacco settlement, they claimed it was for current and future health care costs, and anti-smoking advertising. Many of these states gave away a person's right to sue the tobacco companies, and then took the money and ran. It makes you wonder what their real motive was in the first place.
[...]"The states' funding of tobacco prevention and cessation is woefully inadequate given the magnitude of the tobacco problem," the organization said in findings to be presented to a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday.
States have cut spending on anti-smoking programs by more than 25 percent during the last two years, the group said.
I never wondered about motives. They just wanted the cash, period. It was a shakedown operation.
Posted by: Acidman at November 13, 2003 8:01 AMAnd now I guarantee they're going to go back and figure out a way to shake down the tobacco companies AGAIN - after all, they can't blame the states, can they? Those poor people were only trying to keep the most basic human services going in the face of the Bush depression(TM), so it's no wonder the tobacco money blew away like smoke in the wind.
Posted by: Ripper at November 13, 2003 11:46 AMI agree, some of us never had any doubt what they were going to do with the money.
None of us however work for the NY TImes or CBSNBCABCCNN.
Earmarked money structurally never has any effect. It simply displaces money that would go there anyway. The constant is the negotiated compromise on how much we spend for this and this and that; the amount on the earmarked project is not determined by the funds earmarked but by the compromise against other interests. The earmarked amount simply frees up the decided money for that activity to go somewhere else instead. This is chiefly noticed in lottery income earmarked for schools. There's no increase that results from it.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at November 13, 2003 2:54 PM"Surprise" and "government mismanagement of funds" do not belong in the same sentence, unless there's a negative attached to one of the expressions.
Posted by: Kim du Toit at November 16, 2003 7:59 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
