You Never Know...

...who you'll run into when waiting for a plane. Walking up, newspaper in hand, was U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown for the 8:40 to Washington-Reagan Airport Thursday morning. Just like the rest of us -- he was running late.


Brown actually took off from his northeast Ohio home via Cleveland Hopkins International on the 7:30 flight, which would have gotten him to the meeting room where Senators (including Brown) were getting their pitch from the Big 3 automakers today.


Unfortunately, a glitch and a warning light turned the flight around. The next plane out was the 8:40, which didn't spell much hope he would be sitting in the hearing room on time but he promised me he would be doing whatever he could to get there before the testimony was over.
Funny how transportation humbles even the best of us; the Detroit automakers got clobbered for taking private jets, then drove this time to DC in hybrids. Brown normally would be moving heaven and earth to be there on time, but the craft taking him through the heavens is another story.


At least I had the pleasure of saying hello and playing photographer for a young mom from New Orleans who wanted a picture with the Senator and her two kids. No need to burn any fossil fuels for that task.

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In DC on RTNDA business; this city is clearly chomping at the bit for Obamaville just about a month and a half away. All of the sidewalk vendors have Obamagear for sale, including sweatshirts, hats, buttons, dishes, posters -- you name it. For $20 bucks you can get a sweatshirt, some of the other take home gifts are a bit pricier but people are gobbling this stuff up like crazy. It's tough to imagine just where they'll be putting the four million folks they expect to squeeze in between the Dome and the White House. My friend Jane's PA nieces and nephews are coming in just to say they were here -- even if it means watching on TV.

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If you are one of the millions here's a tip: Shelley's Back Room at 13th and F. Take the Metro Center stop and find it but advance notice: it is one of the few places in the District where it's legal to smoke indoors. A very nice cigar bar (enjoyed a fine Mac with a cup of clam chowder tonight, reasonable prices too...) with nice ambiance but air you need a chain saw to cut. It was nice to smoke a stogie tonight in some place other than 25 degrees. Nice to be at the center of America's capitol, within site of the Treasury Department and White House...dreaming of an end to the Cuban embargo.

Smoking Hot Over Washington

Washington is surfing for more ways to squeeze more dollars out of us? That's not news...but when it comes to raiding my humidor it's time for action!

Disclaimer: I smoke an occasional cigar.

My wife absolutely hates it and won't let me in the house with one lit, barely one cut and ready to go. She did buy me a very nice humidor for Christmas but filling it up with stogies is up to me and she never misses the chance to remind me it is a dirty, filthy, awful habit bound to lead to mouth cancer, lip cancer, lung cancer and just-plain-cancer.

But ever since the Silva twins and I started puffing away on then-much-cheaper cigars during basement poker games while my reformed-smoker father looked the other way, it has been one of those lifestyle habits I cherish. I've given up just about every other hurtful habit but relaxing on the deck with burning rope after a satisfying steak is safe harbor, one of the last vestiges this aging scoundrel is still permitted.

Until now, that is, when the folks at Thompson Cigar forwarded this article from TampaBay.com alerting cigar aficionados to the threat of politicians in Washington -- hell, those are the guys who CREATED the cigar-smoke filled room image of power and prestige -- raising the ridiculously low cigar tax from five cents a puro to as high as ten bucks.

$10 apiece? What are we smoking, gasoline?

It would be a tax hike of more than two thousand percent...a 2000% increase, something even oil companies cannot image. But to the eager-to-pillage political class in Washington, damn the torpedo, let's roll on those rolled stogies!

Thompson Cigar and just about everyone else associated with the pleasure of firing up a piece of rope these days express outrage and demand cigar fans call their U.S. Senators and demand this foolishness be abandoned. Light up those phone lines, stop the $10 tax!

Here's what will happen, though: the $10 max tax is really a brilliant political move, because who in their right mind really wants to defend just five cents on each $20 cigar? Raising any tax is always easier when you aim high and settle for mid-range, and that's what will happen here.

Cigar taxes will be pushed to the normal range (although still not as much as what cigarette smokers pay), health advocates will feel more satisfied they've been able to carve out a chunk of big tobacco to fund their favorite boondoggle, and cigar smokers will still pay for their favorite stogies while apologizing to their wives, family and lovers and promising the smoke will stay outside.