When Republicans talk about cutting taxes, whose taxes are they talking about cutting? In the case of Republican Senator Richard Burr, the tax cuts are for foreign-made poisons for cigarette makers. No kidding.
This week, Senator Burr has introduced a piece of very specific legislation, S. 2680, that provides a special tax exemption just for companies that import a substance called Butralin. What’s Butralin? It’s a pesticide with a very particular use. It’s used by tobacco farmers who don’t want insects eating the tobacco leaves that they’re growing for use in cigarettes. It’s a threat to natural habitats in the USA too, having been described by the EPA as an environmental hazard that’s toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates.
How is it in the public interest to eliminate an import duty so that companies can import a foreign-manufactured poison that will enable cigarettes to be sold at a cheaper price, encouraging people to smoke more? Well, it isn’t in the public interest, but it is in the interest of cigarette manufacturing corporations that are very influential in Senator Burr’s home state of North Carolina.
Thanks for exposing that. Think it’ll stop it from happening? Let’s watch and see, while TRYING to get the dunderheads down in N.C. and especially in Congress to shoot this proposal down.
It’s a lot like the toxic Chinese drywall thing (only you caught it before it added to an on-going problem – just how is it that tobacco, PROVEN to cause cancer, is allowed to be sold while the FDA, CDC and EPA all stand around impotent), when somebody’s makin’ money off it, HEY THAT’S CAPITALISM!