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Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin
You have to make an argument for smoking that cannot be made for caffeine, for alcohol, for sunbathing, for hiding from the sun, and for the countless other behaviors that might be considered bad for you. No one has done that.
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drinking too much caffeine, drinking too much alcohol and rotting one's own liver, getting too much sun and causing melanoma, eating too much and causing heart disease...NONE of these have second hand affects. smoking has shown to cause detrimental second hand affects to the innocent people exposed to same.
case closed.
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Well, for one, they are not adjusting the deal, they are capping a new tax on top afterward, without any negotiation.
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that's just splitting hairs, and there does not have to be a "negotiation" to adjust a bad deal if the leverage to do so exists.
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Second, the government does not do business like happens every day in business. Not in the case of taxes. No one in business anywhere can come take money from you under the threat of imprisonment just because they no longer like the deal they made with you. This is what the government does. That is why we should limit the opportunity to do this, not expand it at every opportunity.
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again, the idea is to impose a tax on PROFITS of the leaseholders who are not paying a fair, reasonable price for the right to extract from public lands.
If they do not want to pay the tax, don't go and extract the minerals. give the lease back and let a new leaseholder strike a deal. likewise, if the extraction isn't profitable even with the low lease payments, there wouldn't be any additional payments to the government as there wouldn't be any profit.
this isn't an additional tax on the industry, and it isn't a requirement "under threat of imprisonment" to make any additional lease payments.