My take on the politics--looking at both repeated Clinton prouncouncements and also on how the agenda is being pursued at the state level--is that a number of people are serious about using tobacco money to jump start an expansion of health care services, not reduce the debt.
The other side is being quite insidious. Christine Whitman for example put the funding of the state employee health plan onto tobacco money (if I read my NYT right) and then pushed through tax reductions in the the rest of the budget. This puts a democrat state employees union in the uncomfortable position of being "hooked" on her version of how to use the money. When I say in my article, which alas could not give every detail, that the Repubs will try to build the money into state budgets in ways that will be difficult to undo, and that they therefore gain from dilatory tactics, I had ploys like this one in mind. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. Judging from the masturbatory fetishism of the materials I am getting, qua New York homeowner, about my supposed tax break (I'll believe it when I see it), I would have to say, looking at news from round the country and right here, that insofar as the Repubs have a coherent strategy (and here look to Whitman as one of the brightest of the bunch) it lies in middle class tax relief (to supplement tax relief for the rich). Consistently, the Repubs are using the settlement money for almost anything *but* anti-nicotine education.
Clinton on the other hand has been pushing the tobacco-health care linkage and I *do* think that he has a genuine interest in getting something like this through, though I question whether it is now possible. However, I perceive the Dems (to a much greater extent than the Repubs) as split between use-the-money-to-advance an agenda and do-everything-you-can-to-kill tobacco. The latter policy requires denying immunity and implementing aggressive anti-smoking policies of almost every conceivable kind. I was somewhat surprised to see that Tom emphasized the regulate-as-drug over immunity but I do think--and the article as written unfotunately dropped this from earlier drafts-- that there is a component of reform-the-south in all the tobacco politics. It is not an accident that the Surgeon General's report and the voting rights act came out in the same year; Johnson wanted to light a fire under the rednecks. He did and they rednecked into the Republican party. I think *part* of this administration's interest in anti-tobacco policy is based on the desire to weaken the political-economic foundations of the reactionary southern base.
Well I'll be interested to see what comments I get from this list and the general world. I do believe they'll be putting my email into the biotag. I think the circulation of Barron's is 300,000. If 10% read the article and 1% of that 10% decide to send me some kind of comment (no doubt not all favorable), I'll be getting 300 emails on this topic. Given the readership some of them may have quite interesting things to say. We'll see. This is all assuming, of course, that Barron's does indeed put the thing into print.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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