Counterblaste

In 1604, a European monarch was moved to write a treatise on a new social problem. King James I of England, of King James Bible fame, was upset by the introduction of an addictive new product to his realm. He predicted this product would damage certain parts of the body, such as the lungs, and applied a stiff excise tax to curb its use.

We're talking about tobacco.

You can read King James' treatise here. It's recommended for fans of early-modern English.

The CDC publishes periodic reports on tobacco use in the 50 states and DC. The counterblaste continues, more than 400 years after the King of England couldn't stem the tide. The CDC just published its 2009 report on tobacco use, which may be read here. This post provides data from the CDC report as visual information.

We begin with tobacco use by men. Combined use of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products are ranked from highest to lowest state. The CDC report covers population subsets that use both forms of tobacco. That data was used to eliminate overlap between cigarette and smokeless use ratios.

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Fun fact - ratios of cigarette use are higher for men in all but eight states. The states in which female cigarette use is at least one percentage-point higher are: Arkansas; Idaho; Kansas; Montana; North Dakota; South Dakota; West Virginia; and Wyoming. (It should be noted that men in Wyoming and West Virginia are heavy users of smokeless tobacco).

We now look at use by women. Fun fact - the three states with the highest ratios of female smokeless users are: Alabama (2.5%); Indiana (2.4%); and Tennessee (1.9%).

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The third presentation juxtaposes adult tobacco use with higher education attainment. Higher education attainment is defined here as the proportion of adults who've earned a bachelors degree (or higher). Education attainment data is from 2008 and was published by the Census Bureau. Note the correlation between high levels of tobacco use and low levels of higher education attainment, and vice versa.

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Fun fact - more adults use tobacco than have obtained a bachelors degree in nine states, including: Alabama; Arkansas; Indiana; Kentucky; Louisiana; Mississippi; Missouri; Oklahoma; Tennessee; West Virginia and Wyoming.

While the CDC surveyed 432,607 adults, its survey was limited to persons with land line telephones. The CDC reports that persons who rely exclusively on cell phones are twice as likely to use tobacco. If survey results differ from reality, the only logical conclusion is that reality is worse.

Accepting that no one sees tobacco in a positive light, our next presentation compares current (2009) levels of tobacco use with state cigarette taxes in 1995. Big tobacco still held sway in historic "tobacco states" 15 years ago. Higher levels of tobacco tax are associated with lower consumption, so the converse must hold true. Comparing current levels of tobacco with tax rates in effect 15 years ago makes sense because, as we all know, nicotine is highly addictive.

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Fun fact - four states had a cigarette tax of less than ten cents per-pack in 1995: Kentucky ($0.03); North Carolina ($0.05); South Carolina ($0.07); and Virginia ($0.03).

In context of public disapproval of tobacco, 15 years was a long time ago. State legislatures have had more than enough time to see cigarette taxes as the most effective deterrent to long-term public health issues, such as lung cancer. Anti-public smoking laws gained traction years ago. Have the states wisely applied retail economics to reduce their tobacco problem?

The Federal government finally got religion and quadrupled its excise tax in 2009, from $0.24 to $1.01 per pack. Have a look at state tobacco taxes in 2009 and then we'll compare 1995 with 2009.

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Uh-oh. 2009 tax levels indicate that the states with the biggest tobacco problem, who needed to raise taxes the most, in fact did the least. Pennsylvania and Montana are exceptions. Let's have a look at differences between 2009 and 1995 tax levels to zero in the culprits.

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Fun fact - five states didn't raise cigarette taxes by a single penny between 1995 and 2009. More than 20% of adults are tobacco users in four of these states:
(1) Florida ($0.34 tax / 18% use);
(2) Mississippi ($0.18 tax / 27% use);
(3) Missouri ($0.17 tax / 26% use);
(4) North Dakota ($0.44 tax / 24% use);
(5) South Carolina ($0.07 tax / 23% use).

South Carolina is its own special case. South Carolina's cigarette tax remains a pathetic $0.07 per pack. With regards to the health of its citizens, failure of the South Carolina legislature to take appropriate action can only be described as cruel and irresponsible.

To put cigarette tax in a broader context of responsible vs. irresponsible politicians, the ten highest-tax states average $2.23 per pack while the ten lowest average only $0.30.

Does any of this really matter? Has any scientific evidence been established that demonstrates higher levels of cardiovascular disease, stroke and lung cancer in states that have high levels of tobacco use and low tobacco taxes?

You be the judge:

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Outreach to Albion

Albion – place name, archaic or poetic Britain or England (from Latin, of Celtic origin)

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Memo to United Kingdom
c/o Simon Jeffery
The Guardian

Hello,

Just an ordinary American citizen here. Wanted to let you know that we're not all insane on this side of the salty pond. Glen Beck, who is otherwise unqualified for any form of gainful employment, has an audience of only 1% of the adult US population. Yes, he's a complete fraud. But only one percent buy his rubbish.

Sarah "Death Panels" Palin appeals to the same demographic. White, generally middle-aged+, less educated, dis-empowered, bitter, not terribly bright and wallowing in ignorance. We have 307 million people here and the bell curve applies like a human law of physics. Of course we're going to have millions of stupid people. It's just that the confounded Internet has everyone clacking away, even the illiterati.

 

Carl Paladino can only be described as someone who seeks suicide but lacks requisite courage. As opposed to flinging himself off a bridge, he'd rather self-combust by giving voice to antique notions precisely aligned with his age, gender, ethnicity and political representation in the Tea Party. Paladino would be a breakout star in South Carolina. Perhaps he just needs a map.

Christine no-ohhh'Donnell is another dreary huckster who discovered the stupid demographic as a road to riches. It's no coincidence she looks like Palin's little sister. At least the American Right has the decency to serve female ignorance in distasteful packaging. Palin, Coulter and Gellar are "sexy" or "attractive" only if you're sight-impaired. Seeing women prostitute truth for filthy lucre becomes untenable in a smart package.

Which brings us to Michelle Malkin. Why would a bright, well-educated babe like Malkin forge a career of filthy lies? She earns $300,000/year from her blog alone. Throw in book deals, TV and speaking engagements and she's easily at a half-mil per year. At least we know her price.

And then there's Rich the idIott, Tea Party candidate for Ohio's 9th Congressional district. This is the SS 5th Panzer Division fool who claims ignorance while impersonating someone who understands history. It's the same story, with O'Donnell's broomstick swapped for symbols of genocide. He's badly trailing a seasoned opponent. Republican party reaction was swift and furious. This signals that IdIott's chances weren't terribly good to begin with and that SS optics retain their luster after all these years.

All things considered, America's sudden lurch towards the late 19th century isn't as bad as it appears. Ratios of education attainment have never been higher and the proportion of people holding university degrees tracks higher still in younger cohorts, even in our developing states. This explains a paucity of young adults at Tea Party events.

No, our seeming return to populism is more like a system purge. Stupid was contained for so long that a pressure release is prudent. Recent displays of mass ignorance are due more to Republican disintegration, and less to Democrat rule. Reagan put a lid on Stupid and Rove let it slip off. Michael Steele isn't exactly a disciplinarian.

It should come as no surprise that a black, democrat outsider to national machine politics in the White House has sparked visceral reaction from the stupid demographic. Obama is only the best President since Truman and he may prove to be the best since Roosevelt. That would be Teddy Roosevelt. The Right simply has no answer - they've got no one who comes close. Scare-mongering is always a last resort but it was the only Republican option. The eruption of Stupid calls to mind an old saying regarding care in what one asks for.

 The real America is urban, literate and worldly. Millions of us ordinary folk have good command of history. Not university professors, hobbyists or military fetishists. People with mere bachelors degrees who study American history and quickly learn that mastery is impossible without also studying Europe's. Do we counter-balance Stupid?

Time will provide an answer. Meanwhile, I offer this bit of weighty evidence. David Hackett Fischer is an American professor, historian and prize-winning author. Fischer's treatise on the origins of American culture is worshiped by professional historians and read by all serious students of history. No other book provides so many answers regarding modern America.

It's called Albion's Seed.

Best to all,

TRS

Conservative politician vindicates TheRaven

Perhaps you thought TheRaven had too much fun at the expense of all those sincere Tea Party folks.

Perhaps you don't agree that Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, Inhofe, et al lead the risible class or that their followers are even more contemptible.

Well, guess what?

A republican congressman from South Carolina now understands. This fellow has a 93% approval rating from the American Conservative Union and he recently lost a primary to a Tea Party candidate. In fact, he got thumped. The final tally ran more than 2:1 in favor of his opponent.

Meet Bob Inglis, a soon to be unemployed, conservative Christian, Republican congressman.

Congressman Inglis unburdens himself in this interview published by Mother Jones. The interview confirms of our worst fears about the Tea Party. If you thought the Tea Party was just innocent silliness, please, don't read any further.

"They (campaign doners) were upset with me" Inglis recalls.

"They are all Glenn Beck watchers" 

About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, They say, 

"Bob, what don't you get?"

"Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn the U.S. into a Muslim nation.'" 

Inglis didn't know how to respond.

Give Inglis credit for decency. He had previously encouraged constituents to cease watching Glenn Beck. He also called on Joe Wilson to apologize for his unseemly outburst at the President. He's a Christian who actually practices the teachings of Christ. He notes that calling Obama a socialist would violate the 9th commandment.

While he was campaigning, Inglis says, tea party activists and conservative voters kept pushing him to describe Obama as a "socialist." But, he says, "It's a dangerous strategy to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible...This guy is no socialist." 

The Tea Party demographic skews toward older, white voters. One-third of South Carolinians aged 65 or older didn't complete high school vs. 22% who have attained higher education. Sixteen percent of South Carolina's 45-64 age group (one in every six people) also didn't complete high school. South Carolina is not a well-educated state. (Click here for charts covering all age groups)

If the Tea Party attracts a disproportionate number of credulous, uneducated people, we'd expect to hear some really strange myths and superstitions. What did Bob Inglis, the "firebrand conservative", hear from voters?

Shortly before the runoff primary election, Inglis met with about a dozen tea party activists at the modest ranch-style home of one of them. Here's what took place:

I sat down, and they said "on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks."

I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative.

So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!"

And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.

Has Inglis seen the light?

Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven "demagoguery" that he believes will undermine the GOP's long-term credibility. And he's freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.

You might be thinking that Inglis is just another politician who lost and this is nothing but sour grapes. Perhaps, but his conservatism is genuine and his story has the ring of truth.

"I hated Bill Clinton. I wanted to destroy him. Then I had six years out (after leaving Congress in 1999) to look back on that, and now I would confess it as a sin. It is just wrong to want to destroy another human being and to spend so much time and effort trying to destroy Bill Clinton—some of it with really suspect information."

Even though Inglis had previously won six congressional elections since 1992, perhaps his story is pertinent only to South Carolina.

"We're being driven as herd by these hot microphones—which are like flame throwers—that are causing people to run with fear and panic, and Republican members of Congress are afraid of being run over by that stampeding crowd." 

Inglis says that it's hard for Republicans in Congress to "summon the courage" to say no to Beck, Limbaugh, and the tea party wing. "When we start just delivering rhetoric and more misinformation...we're failing the conservative movement," he says. "We're failing the country." 

Yet, he notes, Boehner and House minority whip Eric Cantor have one primary strategic calculation: Play to the tea party crowd. "It's a dangerous strategy," he contends, "to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible."

Republican weakness in the face of mass ignorance shows that political machines can't learn new tricks. The Democrat party followed an old playbook by nominating Al Gore in 2000. Bill Bradley would have been the inspired choice. Eight subsequent years cause anyone who remembers Bradley to wonder what could have happened if the Dems had a clue. The Democrat party subsequently doubled down with John Kerry, a politician even more lacking in personality, charisma and credibility than Al Gore. The Democrats co-own the 43rd President. It took an unknown outsider to turn the Democrat machine in a new direction.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Instead of feeble Democrat attempts at the moral high-ground we have the Republican party drowning in its own quicksand. Decades of cynical appeal to so-called values created an environment ripe for takeover by media demagogues. Having traded away legitimate positions for swift-boat style politics, the Republicans are now in no position to appeal to reason over racism, ignorance and hate.

Can it get worse?

Inglis points out that some conservatives believe that any issue affecting the Earth is "the province of God and will not be affected by human activity. If you talk about the challenge of sustainability of the Earth's systems, it's an affront to that theological view."

A lot worse.

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UPDATE: 8/26/10 - Timothy Egan weighs in at the New York Times with a pitch-perfect critique of American ignorance. Early in the 21st century, we're reliving the 19th. A growing number of people who think for a living are climbing on TheRaven's bandwagon, for a War on Stupid.

Once upon a time, in Charleston II

This post provides and addendum to the prior one with another look at St. Michaels church, 140 years before I visited.

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Photo: Shorpy
Charleston, SC
1865

Once upon a time, in Charleston

 

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From the St.Michael's website: St. Michael’s Church is the oldest church edifice in the City of Charleston, standing on the site of the first Anglican Church built south of Virginia. In the 1680’s a small wooden church, the first in the new town of Charles Town, was built on this spot for the families of the Church of England, and named St. Philip’s. By 1727, the town had grown too large for the small church and a more spacious one was built of brick on Church Street, later destroyed by fire in 1835.

 

By 1751, St. Philip’s had again proved too small for the increasing population, and another church as authorized by the General Assembly of the Province, to be built on the old site and to be known as St. Michael’s. The cornerstone was laid in 1752 and in 1761 the church was opened for services. Except for the addition of the sacristy in 1883 on the southeast corner, the structure of the building has been little changed.

IN MEMORY of

ROBERT STEDMAN

who died on y 9th of

Sept AD 1766 in y

45d Year of his Age.

He was much refpected

and therefore is

regretted by all who

knew him

Here Rest The Remains Of

JAMES REID PRINGLE

Ninth Son of

William Bull and Mary M. Pringle

Born in this City 8th October 1842

In the recent war

He served as a Captain

In the First Regiment of

South Carolina Artillery

IN MEMORY

OF

JAMES RICHARDSON

a native of Westmoreland

ENGLAND

for many years a resident

Merchant in Havana.

Whilst on a visit to this City

for the benefit of his health.

he departed this life

on the 13th of March 1831

aged 41 years

Pringle family head stones

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All photos by TheRaven

Charleston, SC

December, 2005

Sure reward of piety and virtue

SACRED
To the never(?) ___ Memory
of
SARAH W. READ.
The Youngest Daughter
of
DR. WILLIAM
and
SARAH READ
Who died on the 31st of May 1833.
In the Meridian of her life,
Constant and steadfast in all
Religious and moral duties.
She was the support and comfort
of her aged Parent.
The delight of her relatives
connexions and friends
Her death leaves a melancholy
void in the domestic and
social circle and grief is
assuaged by the well founded
hope of her Eternal bliss
the sure reward of piety
and virtue.

J. White

 

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Photo by TheRaven

Charleston, SC

Dec, 2005

Low country

Photo by TheRaven

South Carolina - Aug. 2007