The U.S. government alleges that for the past 45 years, the companies that manufacture and sell tobacco have waged an intentional and coordinated campaign of deceit.
Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multitiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.
Junk food companies are acting very much like tobacco companies did 30 years ago.
Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It's fairly obvious.
As a culture, we've become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.
It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump's finances or his family's finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else.
The federal government, state governments will not do without that tax revenue from tobacco no matter what. I've always thought it was one of the most contradictory setups that we have, because everything said publicly about the product is intended to besmirch it, impugn it, and do the same thing to the people that use it. And yet here's the government scoring, I mean, you want to talk about obscene profits, the government doesn't do a damn thing but stick its hand in. The government taxes tobacco at every stage. It taxes tobacco when the farmer's thinking about planting it.
When you are a coordinated partner, you are, in effect, on the campaign staff. You can talk to the whole staff and have virtually no limits on what you can discuss and strategize around. When you are an independent friend of the campaign, you are not allowed to strategize with the campaign on their political decisions.
When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign.
Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.
People have a misconception that the tobacco epidemic is a thing of the past. Tobacco still kills more Americans than any other cause.
All companies are service companies; some also manufacture products.
Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?
It is illegal for children to purchase tobacco in every state in the country. And in every state ... tobacco companies have invested enormous sums of money and time to encourage widespread lawbreaking.
In the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost.
I don't like the word 'calculated' because it sounds pejorative. Intentional. Intentional is better, I think. Wild in passion and intentional in expression.
I'm not interested in a film about deceit anymore. I think I was always invested in deceit on some level. But it no longer compels me the way it did for so many years.