Firms Closing as Leftist Policies Make Costs of Doing Business Prohibitive

I got the tip from James at The Real World.

It turns out that Hav-a-Tampa cigars, a Florida-based unit of Altadis USA, is going out of business. Demand for cigars has declined amid the economic downturn, but aggressive regulations and taxes drove the final decision to close the business:

Several things conspired to hurt Altadis' sales ... including the recession and the growth of indoor smoking bans. The bans have especially hurt sales in cold-weather states, where it's impractical to smoke a cigar outdoors in the winter ... However, the company attributed much of its trouble to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a federal program that provides health insurance to low-income children ...

Yesteday Fox News published this report, "Obama Flirts With Breaking Campaign Pledge on Taxes to Pay for Health Care Reform."

But actually, "President Obama broke his pledge not to raise taxes on lower- and middle-income families with his large tobacco tax increase back in February." The story on that is here: "Obama's Cigarette Tax Puts the Lie To His No New Taxes Pledge."

Now, of course, there's debate this week on the Obama administration's global warming "cap-and-trade" legislation. And Robert Zubrin has this analysis, "The Costs of the Cap-and-Trade Bill":

On June 25, the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate stabilization act, which would institute a cap-and-trade system to restrict Americans’ carbon emissions. While proponents of the bill have sought to argue that the costs of such a system would be negligible, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the bill proposes a massive and highly regressive tax on the U.S. economy, and could potentially cause not only extensive business failures, unemployment and privation within our borders, but starvation among poorer populations elsewhere.

Read the whole thing, here. More analysis at Memeorandum. James' post is here, "Those On the Left Are Mostly Clueles."

See also, Gateway Pundit, "The NRCC Hits Dems Hard Over Cap-&-Tax (Video)."

Related: Los Angeles Times, "Losses of Factory Jobs in California Blamed on Regulation."