What Is Power? The processing power in your kid's X-Box has 17,000 times more power than the processing power used on the lunar module that landed men on the moon in 1969. Is the X-Box a greater achievement than landing on the moon? Of course not. That's apples to oranges, you say. But the comparison is a typical one made by Wall Street, journalists, and politicians, as if a toy is somehow equivelant to that of placing humans on the moon (not to mention safely returning them).

The state of Mississippi like many others is having trouble with Medicaid. They're broke, and the Republicans who run the state don't want to raise the taxes needed to take care of the sick who live in poverty. The liberal answer is to place a fifty-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. Let's see, only one out of four adults now smoke, and they are predominantly poor and uneducated folks who, far the most part, don't vote. Sounds like a safe tax to impose, and since there is no real effort being made to get people to quit smoking on the part of the government, why not tax these folks?

Mississippi isn't the only state trying to raise taxes on tobacco in order to cover their lack of revenue. However, Mississippi is one of the few states who used their wind fall tax benefit that came after the massive tobacco settlement in the late nineties. You'll remember that a number of state prosecutors sued the tobacco companies back then and gained billions in a settlement that purportedly would allow the states to recoup lost tax revenues. The real truth is that the states were always complicit with the tobacco industry and that it was a safe way to fill their coffers. Tobacco, by the way, has earned record profits ever since.

Definition: "Tobacco Settlement": a means by which government conspires with big tobacco to further milk poor people.