Word: sinful
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...measure will stop 2 million kids from lighting up and spur about 1 million adults to quit, but the sharp hike has some smokers fuming. Cigarette taxes, detractors argue, are a way for governments to line their coffers by legislating personal choice--and a prime example of a regressive "sin tax," the term often used for fees tacked on to popular vices like drinking, gambling and smoking...
...sin tax is an established tactic. In the early 1500s, Pope Leo X underwrote his lavish lifestyle in part by taxing licensed prostitutes, and Peter the Great preyed on Russian vanity two centuries later by charging men who grew beards. In the Federalist papers, American patriot Alexander Hamilton proposed an excise tax on alcohol to boost revenues and curb consumption. The measure, enacted in 1791, sparked the Whiskey Rebellion, in which federal authorities were forced to quash an uprising by livid Pennsylvania settlers...
...This month's increase--signed by a President who's trying to kick the habit himself--comes as recession-battered states are considering charges on everything from pornography to marijuana as a way to pad their budgets. Tobacco taxation enjoys broad public support, but other recent efforts to impose sin taxes have sputtered. Proof, perhaps, that in trying times, doing bad can feel really good...
...anything particularly offensive about most of these songs, but outside of “Lay it Down” and “Nothing to Worry About,” this album isn’t particularly interesting or memorable. Certainly, making a boring album is not the worst sin a band can commit, but Peter Bjorn & John have proven themselves capable of producing more exciting music than this. In “The Feeling,” Peter Morén sings, “Been waiting for signs / Last time we got high we thought...
Cheever drank himself right to the edge of the abyss but drew back. In 1975 he quit drinking for good. Chastened and sober, he completed Falconer, a magnificent novel of sin and redemption that hinges on a homosexual relationship. One year later, a collection of his short stories became a best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize. He even made a sort of peace with his sexual appetites...