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| April 15: A Day to Live In Infamy.... |
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| The Cancer Trust Tells the Government to Bring It On |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, April 15, 1998. A black day, this, in American history. One hundred thirty-eight years ago, Lincoln died. Eighty-six years ago, the Titanic sank. Then, to commemorate these events and to fixate public mourning, the government made it tax day. So, when something awful need happen, it almost seems April 15 is the day to schedule it. Not one to miss such a chance, the revolting American Tobacco Industry, the Cancer Trust, chose today to unleash a series of public relations moves that may set the standard for future hypocrisies in American politics. Think about that for a moment. The lawyers for the Cancer Trust have announced that certain tobacco companies are pulling out of an infamously lenient blanket agreement with the federal government, of which you have heard much. The agreement would have financially killed lesser behemoths and would affect the bonuses and stock options of the cancer trust executing who were to sign it. Now with the help of their lawyers, fully the ethical equivalent of Tobacco Institute doctors, the Cancer Trust thinks they can get out of the agreement by claiming big government and bureaucracy and waste of tax dollars. Brief review: we have now read many internal memos from these companies since World War II. In them, we learn their scientists proved and demonstrated nicotine addiction and various diseases from heart attack to lung collapse, gum rot, and virtually every know cancer. These same memos list that these companies planned to market to children, keep the problem in the dark, and lie to the government. Which is to say, at three hundred thousand people a year who are admitted to die from tobacco, sixteen million have died since the end of the Second World War, all of whom were assured by Big Tobacco that smoking was safe, non-addicting, and had health benefits. Viewed in this manner, nothing in writing between Eichmann and Himler is as chilling as these memos. Worse, these are Americans preying on Americans for cash. If anything cries for the death penalty, it’s these pudgy reprobates and their absolutely nauseating shills, doctors, and lawyers. And for them to have the nerve to criticize the government for acting – and acting at glacial pace – in the public interest is just beyond the pale. And for them to complain about the bureaucracy is worse, given the huge price supports handed Tobacco from seed to puff. They chose tax day for their counterattack to benefit from what they see as a nation of tax rebels. Even if true, and it is not, even the crabbiest militia nut case has, by this time, lost a loved one to smoking. Who among us hasn’t had a friend or relative fade out in agony, with that awful skin color like grey-green clay, trying to whisper last endearments, preying they can get it out before the coughing begins again, the racking lung tearing coughs? Addicted as children, dying in middle age. If people do not, at this late date, shape up and squash Big Tobacco – The Cancer Trust -like an aphid, the disastrous April 15 will have a new headline event: the day Big Tobacco publicly announced it planned to get away with murder for profit and, you know, deserves to. |
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