Sure, you can buy a cigar in Boston...if you're rich enough.

The city of Boston has quietly banned all cigars which cost less than $2.50.  

Translation:  Blunts, no.  Fancy Habanos, yes.

Second translation:  Poor people smoking, no.  Rich people smoking, yes:

The ban is effective February 1, 2012.

But for those upper class cigar aficionados, the elite few who are still allowed to smoke indoors at their pricey cigar bars, will still be able to purchase single cigars. A stipulation in the city ordinance allows tobacco shops to sell individual cigars, as long as they retail for $2.50 or more.

The city agency responsible for the ban, the Boston Public Health Commission, is composed of a seven person board.  I hardly need mention, of course, that the board members all appear to have careers which have undoubtedly kept them far from poverty.  

It is grimly ironic, though, that one of the board members specializes in “racial and ethnic disparities in health care.”  Evidently he isn’t equally bothered by what will amount, thanks to higher levels of poverty among minorities in America, to a ban which will limit the purchasing abilities of minorities at a disproportionate rate.

Third translation:  Government is not a friend to the poor.

A New Generation

When I converse with my peers about current events, I tend to get one of two responses: that of ignorance, or that of despair.  The ignorant aren't the ones that I would like to reach in this article; they still have a lot to learn and a lot of waking up to do.  Instead, I want to reach those who no longer have hope -- those who see the police state forming and feel that if their candidate of choice doesn't win the presidency, well then, there is no more use trying.  I have news for you, friends:  You have a lot more power than you realize.

Each upcoming generation has a great, underrated power over older generations: inevitability.  There is no way to get around it; we will be the leaders of the world, and as such, we are the ones responsible for the world we live in.  We cannot be like the political leaders we despise and blame it on generations passed.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country. -- Thomas Jefferson

Have we already forgotten the lessons of the 60's, or did we simply learn the wrong ones?  I contend it's the latter, another failure of our abysmal education system.  But I digress.  The real lesson to be learned is that the people have the power, especially the youth.  The youth overwhelmingly participated in the civil rights protests -- the sit-ins, the marches, and the boycotts.  In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr. himself was born in 1929, making him a relatively youthful leader.

What It Means to Be Pro-Life (Part 1)

Many Americans with some political consciousness tend to group themselves in one or two political categories: the left and the right, the former are usually associated with the Democrat Party and the latter with the Republican Party.  Whenever people assign themselves to one of these two positions, they usually subscribe to the majority of that position’s pre-set policies and beliefs. 

Both the left and the right have their own views on the sanctity of life, yet their contradictory views -- the left being against war and the death penalty but all for the choice of abortion and the right being against abortion but for the death penalty and war -- become a paradox.  Wherever they stand on the issue of life, both the left and the right are in full favor of death to some extent, and any stance they take on preserving life -- whether in the fetal stage or in the electric chair -- is based on fallacious logic and dishonest euphemisms.  Both sides are willing to kill in order to bring about their ideal conditions in society.

Part I: How the Left Justifies Killing

Leftists love to attack war but most of them are hypocrites for doing so, since they also often favor war but simply for different reasons than the right.  Socialists favor labor violence and outright civil wars which they refer to as “wars of liberation.”  If they subscribe to Lenin’s teachings, violence and outright terror in the name of proletarian revolution are justified (see The Black Book of Communism, Chapter 4: The Red Terror).   More moderate leftists, from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, campaign on peace but instead lead the country into wars for various political and economic purposes.  With Wilson it was the First World War  and with Obama it was continuation of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as intervention in the Libyan Civil War as well as those in Somalia, South Sudan, and Central Africa.   Both social democrats enjoyed wide support from their allegedly pacific Democrat Party.

Rand Paul Disappoints

Rand Paul is good on some things, and not so good on others.

Earlier this week, Paul was detained in Nashville for refusing a pat down after an “anomaly” was spotted during his full body scan. The T.S.A. denies that he was detained citing some Orwellian semantics. His refusal was noble and deserves applause, especially when considering his standing as an American Senator.

But just because Rand is good on some issues of the warfare-police state should not give him a free pass from scrutiny. Case in point: Rand Paul voted for the Kirk-Menendez amendment on December 1, 2011. Equally disappointing is that his vote flew straight under the radar. Whether unnoticed or ignored, antiwar vigilantes failed on this one.

The Kirk-Menendez amendment (#1414) seeks “To require the imposition of sanctions with respect to the financial sector of  Iran, including the Central Bank of Iran.” The amendment’s main focus is on Iran’s oil industry: “Sanctions imposed…shall apply with respect to a foreign financial institution owned or controlled by the government of a foreign country including a central bank of a foreign country, only insofar as it engages in transactions for the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products to or from Iran.”