Thanks, Alex ~ August 3, 2005

David Heiller

Alex Westberg is my nephew, and he’s got a couple good traits, as this photo shows.

Alex from the newspaper photo:
Cig and sucker...

One, he’s a good fisherman. He caught this white sucker on the fiver a couple weeks ago. It weighed about seven pounds. Turns out the state record is 9 pounds, one ounce. We didn’t realize that at the time or we might have kept it. But Alex let it go. He likes to do that. He’s got a good heart, at least of the figurative sense.

I’m not so sure about the physical one.

Alex is a smoker as this photo also shows, and that’s his other good trait that I’ll mention here. I never used to think that smoking was a good thing, but in encouraging it every chance I get, and I thanked Alex every time he lit up a coffin nail.

Smokers are funding our schools in good old Minnesota, and they are helping pay for the Minnesota Care health insurance program.

Don’t try to figure out the logic behind this.

Our governor proposed a 75 tent ‘fee” on cigarettes, and since he took a no-new-taxes pledge, he felt this was entirely appropriate to fund our government. It’s a fee, not a tax. Duh, OK Governor, whaddeever you say.

So smokers are paying for our health insurance and schools.

Schools should he very grateful to smokers. Take down those anti-smoking signs in the hallway of Caledonia Middle School. Forget about that anti-smoking poster contest for the fourth graders. We should be encouraging kids to smoke. They’d be helping to pay for their education; it would be a good life lesson. “Good job, Johnny, drag on that sucker. Well get another full-time fifth grade teacher yet!”

Teachers, light up. It’s job security. Bring back that smoke-filled teachers’ lounge that we all (cough cough) remember (hack hack) so well.

Cancer? Heart disease? Not to worry. There should be enough health insurance money left over from your habit to help pay for the surgery and chemotherapy and respirator. Your wife will have to worry about the funeral costs, but nothing is free anymore.

Got a problem with any of this? Don’t write to me. Here’s the man you want to see: Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Tell him you’re not afraid to pay a little more in taxes. We should all pay our share for the common good. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

Or we could actually raise the income tax for the wealthiest Minnesotans, another propose that the governor opposed. A tax bracket of 11 percent on income of single filers over $166,001 (the state’s richest 42,000 people) would have raised nearly a billion to pay for extra spending on schools and health care.

Alex and Laura, 2005.

And tell Tim no more Taxpayer Protection Pledges that cozy up to groups like Americans for Tax Reform. Don’t make promises you cannot and should not keep. Then maybe common sense will return.

Until then, thank you Alex. You’re a good kid. You’ve got a good heart, for now at least.