BIG TOBACCO'S MONEY CHOKED LIFE OUT OF BILL

As we watched the tobacco bill die an unnatural death Wednesday, it
left only sour satisfaction to those of us who believe that money runs
American politics. We now have the clearest, most definitive proof any
long-suffering campaign-finance reformer could ever hope for that
money counts more than the public interest, more than children's
health and more than people's lives in a political system so corrupted
by money that it stinks to the highest heavens.

Our politicians can twist this truth, they can distort it, they can
spin it 'til they're blue in the face, but the truth still sits there
bigger than Godzilla. The tobacco industry has been spending $4
million to $5 million a week for eight weeks now on radio and
television advertising to defeat this bill - a total of at least $40
million just in the last two months, according to Ira Teinowitz of
Advertising Age magazine. And that's not counting the money that big
tobacco has sunk into the political system. From 1987 to 1997, Philip
Morris Co. contributed $8 million to politicians, RJR Nabisco
contributed $7 million, and so on down through the big tobacco
companies, all of them major, major political contributors.

Three out of four current members of Congress - 319 representatives
and 76 senators, according to Common Cause - have accepted
tobacco-industry PAC money during the past 11 years. A total of $30
million. The soft money given by tobacco directly to the political
parties has exploded: more than $3 million in 1997 alone. Philip
Morris has been the Republican Party's top soft-money donor for three
years running, giving more than $1 million to the party each year. And
you wonder why Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott doesn't like this
bill?

How long, O Lord, how long? There are studies going back to the 1940s
about the link between tobacco and cancer. The first surgeon general's
report warning that smoking causes cancer appeared in 1964. Every year
since then the evidence has mounted. Thirty-four years, 50,000 studies
and millions of smoking-related deaths later, we now know that the
tobacco industry fought to suppress the information and paid for phony
studies trying to prove it wasn't true. We know that tobacco
executives lied to Congress, they savagely went after whistle-blowers
from their ranks, and they deliberately made their product more
addictive, knowing that it kills. To be blunt about it, the tobacco
industry has murdered millions of people.

It was different when we thought they didn't really know or weren't
sure or were just ignoring the evidence. But now, we know they knew -
they have known for decades - they were killing people. And they kept
on doing it for profit.

Tobacco and its bought tools in Congress have twisted this bill in
every fashion imaginable, claiming it will result in an uncontrollable
black market for cigarettes, it will help wealthy trial lawyers, it's
a "big government" solution and - my favorite - it is a regressive tax
on the poor.

That last bit of blatant hypocrisy, coming from legislators who have
never cast a vote to help poor people in their lives, caused Ted
Kennedy to go into one of the finest rants heard in the Senate for
years:

"I listened to those crocodile tears of our colleagues on the other
side of the aisle about how distressed they are about what is
happening to working families. I give them reassurance; they will have
a nice chance to vote for an increase in the minimum wage later on,
and we will see how distressed they are about all those working
families that they are agonizing about and so distressed because this
is a regressive tax.

"The reason it is a regressive tax is because it is the tobacco
industry that has targeted the needy and the poor and the working

families of this country. It is the tobacco industry that is to blame.
It isn't these families. How elite and arrogant it is for those on the
other side of the aisle to cry these crocodile tears for working
families and their children who are going to get cancer. Those working
families care about their children. They care about them no less than
those who come from a different socioeconomic background. How arrogant
can you be? How insulting can you be to make that argument on the
floor of the U.S. Senate?"

Of course, the bill wasn't perfect. The money should have gone into
health care, especially children's health care, as Kennedy and Sen.
Orrin Hatch originally proposed, but even this imperfect bill died
because tobacco paid the political piper and called the tune.

Checked-by: (trikydik)