Tax: USA Federal Tax Alert Page 5

President Obama’s cigarette tax up in smoke

May 8, 2013

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Washington’s highest-profile smoker, broadly condemned Obama’s proposals for new tax revenue but didn’t address the proposed cigarette tax hike.

And the Washington press was so disinterested in the idea that Boehner wasn’t asked about the tax during two press conferences he held to discuss the budget. A Boehner spokesman said House Republicans are so opposed to new spending programs that it doesn’t matter how Obama proposes to fund them.

“The tax debate is over. The president got his tax hikes in January, and now the focus needs to be on cutting spending,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), all among the leading recipients of tobacco company campaign cash, each released budget statements without addressing the cigarette tax proposal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) broadly condemned Obama’s proposals for new tax revenue.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who is also among tobacco companies’ top 2012 campaign recipients, wouldn’t even address the proposal specifically.

“The chairman is not interested in one-off tax hikes that fuel more deficit spending,” the spokeswoman said. “Instead, he is focused on comprehensive reform where everything is on the table.”

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and three Democratic co-sponsors have introduced legislation to increase taxes 93 percent on all tobacco products. The bill was referred to the Finance Committee, where it has yet to get a hearing.

Anti-smoking advocates generally have high praise for Obama, thanks to 2009 legislation he signed that increased the per-pack federal cigarette tax from 39 cents to $1.01 and gave the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products.

But his new proposal remains short of a Bush administration idea to make the tax $2.39 per pack. That suggestion, by a Health and Human Services committee in 2003, would have set the federal tax at $2.39 per pack by 2005, with the revenue earmarked to fund an array of anti-smoking campaigns.

Then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson dismissed the $2 tax increase and the idea went nowhere.

As for Obama’s, the moment may have already passed for anything to happen with it, even if the White House changes course and decides to prioritize a push. Hansen, of the Cancer Society’s political arm, said the lack of coordination limited any ability to build a broad-based campaign of support.

But that’s not how the White House approached the effort.

“We saw it,” Hansen said, “when you saw it.”

Tarini Parti contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the timing and extent of the effort undertaken by the Cancer Action Network to support the cigarette tax proposal. It launched a Congressional lobbying effort and grassroots campaign in the days after the budget’s release.

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Obama Tobacco-Tax for Pre-Kindergarten Draws Opposition

April 06, 2013
By Chris Burritt and Jonathan D. Salant

Even before President Barack Obama officially proposed a federal cigarette tax increase to fund preschool programs, tobacco companies and sellers lined up against it while anti-smoking groups praised the plan.

Obama’s 2014 budget proposal, to be released April 10, would finance a pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds with higher taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products. The president outlined the program in his annual State of the U nion speech to Congress. He’s seeking to increase spending in areas such as education while Republican lawmakers are pushing for additional budget cuts as a way to reduce the federal deficit.

White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to elaborate on the proposed tobacco-tax increase. “Wait for specifics,” he told reporters at a briefing yesterday.

The tobacco industry didn’t wait.

“The idea of increasing taxes on low- to middle-income Americans at this time is ludicrous,” said Bryan Hatchell, a spokesman for Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) “As middle-income Americans struggle to make ends meet in a very slow economic recovery period, this is not the time to hit them with higher taxes.”

“It is unfair to single out adult tobacco consumers with another federal tobacco-tax increase to pay for a broad, new government-spending program,” said David Sutton, a spokesman for Richmond, Virginia-based tobacco-maker Altria Group Inc. (MO)
Convenience Stores

Convenience stores would be hurt as higher taxes curb consumer spending, including on tobacco purchases that account for 40 percent of their non-gasoline sales, said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for NACS, formerly the National Association of Convenience Stores.

“It is not just the loss of sales, but also the loss of customers,” said Lenard, whose Alexandria, Virginia-based group represents such companies as Sheetz Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Valero Energy Corp. (VLO)

Robert Bannon, director of investor relations for Greensboro, North Carolina-based Lorillard Inc., (LO) declined to comment.

Tobacco-industry workers and their families contributed $4 million to 2012 election campaigns, with almost 80 percent of that going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group in Washington that tracks political finance. The industry spent $26.7 million last year to lobby Congress and the executive branch, center figures show.
‘Political Win’

Anti-smoking organizations praised Obama’s proposal.

“A significant tobacco-tax increase is a win-win-win for the country — a health win that will reduce tobacco use and save lives, a financial win that will raise revenue to fund an important initiative and reduce tobacco-related health-care costs, and a political win that is popular with voters,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington.

The federal government currently taxes cigarettes at about $1 a pack. The levy was increased by 61 cents in 2009.

“Raising the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective approaches to encouraging people to quit and preventing kids from picking up the deadly habit in the first place,” said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, based in Atlanta.

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Bill Could Raise Tobacco Taxes
Issue Date: Tobacco E-News August 16, 2011
Bill introduced in U.S. senate to raise cigarette and OTP taxes
By Thomas Briant, NATO Executive Director
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has introduced S. 1403 in the U.S. Senate, a bill to reauthorize and fund the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
A portion of the funding for the extension of the Individuals with Disabilities Act would come from increasing the federal excise tax on cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, snuff and chewing tobacco. The proposed tax increases are as follows:
Product?Current Tax Rate?to Proposed Tax Rate
Cigarettes?$1.01 Per Pack?to $2.01 Per Pack
Little Cigars?$1.01 Per Pack?to $2.01 Per Pack (Weighing 4.5 Pounds Per Thousand)
Pipe Tobacco?$2.8311 Per Pound to ?$49.55 Per Pound
RYO Tobacco?$24.78 Per Pound to ?$49.55 Per Pound
Single-Use Smokeless Units (Snus) to??10 Cents Per Single-Use Unit
The bill would tax all other tobacco products at a level equivalent to the tax rate for cigarettes on an estimated per-use basis as determined by the FDA. Also, each of these cigarette and tobacco tax rates would have an annual inflation adjustment. Currently, there is no similar bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.
CSP Category News

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States eye ‘sin’ taxation as salvation for budgets

January 17, 2011
DAVID ELDRIDGE

It could cost a good deal more to be bad this year.

Cash-strapped state lawmakers across the country are looking at raising “sin” taxes on everything from traditional vices, like smoking cigarettes and imbibing alcohol, to more recently vilified habits like drinking sugary sodas and hitting the tanning salon.

• In Mississippi, state Rep. John Mayo, citing the state’s place at the top of national obesity ratings, is sponsoring a bill that would add about 25 cents in new taxes to a can of soda.

• In New York, state Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, Brooklyn Democrat, wants a new “fat tax,” a surcharge on the purchase of sweets and snacks.

• In Maryland, dozens of state lawmakers are getting behind a plan to raise $200 million in revenue with new taxes on beer and wine, but in the face of strong opposition from the state’s business community.

Other states and jurisdictions are looking at taxing the use of plastic shopping bags, raising fees for casinos — even in gambling meccas such as Nevada — and taxing tanning salons. In California, proponents of easing restrictions on marijuana cited the tax revenue legal pot could bring in. Some states have even considered new taxes on buyers of pornography and patrons of strip clubs.

Analysts say lawmakers are motivated far less by a desire to reduce sinning than by a need to increase revenue.

It’s all driven by the massive budget shortfalls facing state and local lawmakers, said Justin Wilson, senior research analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a Washington-based nonprofit that has lobbied against what economists call “Pigouvian taxes” — levies designed to change behavior for the betterment of society. (The name honors 19th-century English economist Arthur Pigou, one of the first to analyze the idea of economic “externalities.”)

“People shouldn’t be fooled into thinking these are about anything except raising money. This is a result of the combination of revenue-hungry legislators and regulation-hungry public health advocates,” Mr. Wilson said.

Politicians say it’s not that simple.

Blog Comments
Name: Steven Cooper
Comment: Is this not Taxation without representation?

Name: Carol
Comment: Oh yes, it is that simple! I remember whenever a municipality had a deficit they would openly announce they were going to raise the cigarette tax. And man named Brooks in one of the New England states wasn’t satisfied with taxing cigarettes before they were smoked; he wanted to tax them after they were smoked. His bright idea was to put a 5 cent deposit on each cigarette to be repaid when the butt was returned. I accommodated him by collecting $37.00 worth of butts and sent them to him along with an invoice for my refund and a warning note that the contents could be hazardous to his health in the package. Needless to say that I was never paid for my efforts, but then too the bill was never passed.

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The War on Cigarettes

April 20, 2010
by William Wilson

Add another chapter to the long and voluminous history of government’s failed “Vice Wars.” Just like Prohibition and the so-called “War on Drugs,” the ongoing cigarette crackdown in both the United States and Canada has not only failed to achieve its objective, but it is creating bureaucracies that threaten liberty and prosperity as well as spawning a violent subculture that puts lives at risk on both sides of the border.

And the more this “sin” tax is raised, the more lucrative profits from contraband cigarettes become – adding fuel to an already-volatile conflagration.

Did we really expect government to do anything differently, though? After all, we’re dealing with a government culture that continues to operate under the fatally-flawed assumption that anything can be solved simply by borrowing and spending more tax dollars. In fact, in today’s world unsustainable borrowing and spending itself can be solved by – you guessed it – additional borrowing and spending, all in the name of “economic development.” Is it at all surprising, then, to discover that our politicians are resorting to the same failed “solutions” of the past in prosecuting their war on cigarette smoking?

Just keep raising taxes and pouring more money into government, right? What could possibly go wrong?

For starters, the same vicious cycle that brought us Al Capone and his band of murderous thugs in the 1920s – and which made Pablo Escobar one of the richest men in the world in the 1990s – will be back for another bite at the taxpayer-funded apple. Just last month in Virginia, for example, a contraband cigarette smuggler pleaded guilty in court of hiring a hit man to murder two people that he suspected of stealing his bootleg cigarettes. According to media reports, the man’s gang was hoping to make a cool $1 million by selling nearly 400,000 cartons of cigarettes in New York City – where taxes alone on a pack of smokes are $4.25. Amazingly, New York lawmakers are seeking to add another $1 to this already obscene amount, an increase which will only fuel additional bootlegging – and additional violence.

“New York has a long, bloody history of cigarette tax evasion,” writes Patrick Fleenor of the Tax Foundation. “Serious problems began in the early 1960s, when tax hikes caused organized crime to ruthlessly push aside competitors and dominate the racket. By 1967, a quarter of the cigarettes consumed statewide were bootleg, and the problem was much worse in New York City.”

Meanwhile in Canada – where exorbitant taxes have pushed the price of brand-name cigarettes over $10 per pack – the purchase of contraband cigarettes doubled from 2007 to 2008.

As a result, Canadian authorities are also facing an increase in organized crime as well as fewer people giving up the habit thanks to the availability of cheaper cigarettes. Suggestions to lower taxes have fallen on deaf ears, however, and beginning on July 1, cigarette taxes in British Columbia will actually increase – to $60 on a $96 carton.

Once again, government is doing the same thing and expecting a different result – which of course is Einstein’s famous definition of insanity.

“Government policies should suppress crime, not encourage it,” Fleenor says. “Bootlegging could be eliminated overnight by relying on broad-based, low-rate taxes—such as those on income, property and sales – rather than on high taxes on easily transportable goods.”

Faced with clear and compelling evidence which proves conclusively that decades of tax hikes have only compounded the problems associated with contraband cigarettes, governments in Canada and the United States are continuing to pursue the same failed solutions. Rather than cutting taxes and let the marketplace do its job, they’re betting our money – and our safety – on an approach that they know doesn’t work.

The only question isn’t ‘when’ these tax hikes will fail, it’s how spectacularly and expensively they will fail – and how many lives will be lost in the process.

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U.S. would reap billions from $1 cigarette tax hike

Feb 11, 2010
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Adding a $1 per pack tax to cigarettes could raise more than $9 billion a year for states, health advocates said on Wednesday, and a poll released with the study shows Americans would support such a tax.

The poll, conducted by International Communications Research, found 60 percent of voters would support the tax to help struggling states and would prefer it over other tax increases or budget cuts.

“An increase in tobacco tax rates is not only sound public health policy but a smart and predictable way to help boost the economy and generate long-term health savings for states facing deepening budget deficits,” said John Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

“We have irrefutable evidence that raising the tobacco tax lowers smoking rates among adults and deters millions of children from picking up their first cigarette,” Seffrin said in a statement.

The report was released by the Cancer Action Network, the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

All these non-profit groups have long supported taxing tobacco more as a way to discourage smoking.

The report, available at http://tobaccofreekids.org/reports/state_tax_report/, projects the revenue that each state could earn by increasing cigarette taxes, based on research that shows a 10 percent cigarette tax increase reduces total consumption by 4 percent.

It projects that a $1 a pack cigarette tax would prompt 1.2 million adult smokers to quit.

“In 2007, Texas increased its cigarette tax by $1 per pack from 41 cents to $1.41 per pack,” the report reads. The next year, cigarette tax revenues nearly tripled from $523 million to $1.5 billion, despite a 21 percent decline in sales.

Analysts agree that higher taxes prompt many to quit, although some smokers merely switch to cheaper brands. In October, cigarette makers Philip Morris America Inc and Reynolds American Inc blamed the economy and a new 62 cent per pack federal tax for declining sales.

Federal taxes now total $1.01. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids says the average U.S. cost for a pack of cigarettes is $5.15.

VOTER SUPPORT

The groups also surveyed 847 registered voters and found 60 percent favor raising the tobacco tax to help state budgets while 38 percent were opposed..

The survey, with a margin of error of three points, found that 72 percent of voters opposed increases in state sales and 80 percent rejected higher gasoline taxes.

“Each year in the United States, smoking-caused disease results in $96 billion in health care costs, much of which is paid by taxpayers through higher insurance premiums and government-funded health programs such as Medicaid,” the report argues

“Indeed, higher Medicaid costs are one of the reasons states are facing budget difficulties.”

The average state cigarette tax is $1.34 per pack, ranging from 7 cents a pack in tobacco-growing South Carolina to $3.46 in Rhode Island.

“It is disheartening the report’s authors are suggesting legislators position tax increases as a way to address health issues while the report clearly describes tax increases as a way to fix budgets and score political points with voters,” Philip Morris USA said in a statement.

“The report neglects to mention the fact that cigarette tax increases rarely generate all of the revenue they are projected to raise — creating more budget problems down the road.”

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Congress Eyes 775% Increase on Pipe Tobacco Tax
February 2, 2010
by Donny Shaw
Earlier this year, Congress passed and the President enacted a major tax increase on tobacco products as a way to pay for subsidizing health care for low-income children. The total cost of federal cigarette taxes went up 62 cents per pack to $1. But taxes on roll-your-own tobacco went up even higher, from $1.10 to $24.78 per pound. That’s a 2,250% increase. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself in the bill text here.
When this tax increase took effect earlier this year, many roll-your-own smokers were worried that it would put ther brand of choice out of business and that what would be left for roll-your-own tobacco would be too expensive to afford. But that didn’t happen. Instead, manufacturers of roll-you-own tobacco sought out and exploited a loophole in the bill. They simply relabeled their roll-your-own tobacco brands as “pipe tobacco,” which is taxed at about a tenth of the new roll-your-own rate, and kept right on selling the exact same product to their customers, now with a picture of a pipe on the label.
The Associated Press estimates that the government could be losing as much as $32 million per month in tax revenue because of the loophole. That’s money that the government had budgeted in and the loophole is going directly to increasing the federal deficit. Needless to say, Congress is looking to fix the problem.
The plan appears to be to increase the pipe tobacco tax by 775% so that it is taxed at the same rate as roll-your-own tobacco. A bill “To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose the same rate of tax on pipe tobacco as is imposed on roll-your-own tobacco (H.R. 4439) has been proposed by Rep. Steve Cohen [D, TN-9] and has been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. With deficits running as high as they are right now, you can expect that this bill will move and eventually become part of the federal budgeting plan for fiscal year 2011.
The bill is currently surging in the blogs according to OpenCongress’s unique aggregation of blog posts on legislation. See the blog coverage of this bill for more commentary and some ways that you can get involved in the debate over tobacco taxes.

PETITION: Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax. H.R. 4439, A tax increase of 775%, from $2.83 to $24.78 per pound. This is nothing more than an attempt to rope in taxes from roll-your-own cigarette tobacco. The roll-your-own industry has re-labeled cigarette tobacco as pipe tobacco to be taxed at a much lower rate.

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Research & Commentary:
Top Ten Reasons Not to Raise Tobacco Taxes
By John Nothdurft
September, 2009
Smokers have become a favorite target of many legislators across the country. Some policymakers seem to think taxing smokers is a win-win way to curb smoking and raise revenue, without hurting the economy. In practice, however, these taxes create more budget problems than they solve. As the tobacco tax revenue stream falls short of expectations, which it invariably does, budget deficits grow … and many of these tax supporters begin singing a different tune.
It’s interesting, for example, that smoking cessation programs–a “public health” justification often linked to tobacco tax hikes–are in many cases being de-funded. When that happens, the tobacco tax itself is left in place, its revenues diverted to general funds in order to help shore up a budget shortfall or pay for entirely unrelated programs.
The hypocrisy surrounding tobacco taxes doesn’t end there. Moreover, they are not the boon many people believe them to be, for the following 10 reasons.
1. They are regressive and disproportionately burden lower- and middle-income people. Not only are lower-income earners more likely to smoke, they also smoke more frequently. They bear more of the tax burden than higher-income earners, in absolute terms and as a percentage of income.
2. They are an unreliable and unsustainable source of revenue and don’t structurally fix budget deficits. Many states rely on these revenues to balance their budgets, year in and year out. More than 20 states are considering tax hikes to fill current budget holes. But tobacco tax hikes don’t address what’s causing the holes in the first place.
3. They are a discriminatory tax on a minority of the population. The smoking public represents only about 18 percent of the population, and there has been a general decline in smoking for decades. Tobacco taxes are part of the “divide and conquer” approach implemented by big-spending legislators who find it easier to tax small groups of the population one at a time to avoid widespread constituency backlash.
4. They hurt local businesses and the overall economy. Hav-A-Tampa cigar closed its factory in Florida and laid off about 495 employees this summer due to the federal excise tax hike on tobacco products signed earlier this year by President Barack Obama. Many people travel outside the state to buy their tobacco products, and they are likely to make other purchases out of state as well, thereby hurting local businesses.
5. They encourage cross-border, black market, and Internet purchases. As tobacco taxes have risen, so has tax evasion. The Mackinac Center reports tax-induced smuggling has become so widespread that it “undermines both the revenue and health goals of higher cigarette taxes, while producing unintended consequences for individual states and American society as a whole.”
6. They help keep government spending up. As policymakers adopt new and expanded programs that rely on tobacco tax revenues, other taxes will inevitably go up when the tobacco tax revenues fall short of the programs’ funding needs.
7. They kick the real fiscal problems down the road and distract from meaningful spending reforms. Instead of raising taxes on tobacco or anything else, policymakers should consider enacting sensible tax and expenditure limits, reforming the state workforce, and performance auditing. Budget deficits are not a revenue problem, but a spending problem.
8. Smokers are not the only ones harmed by tobacco taxes, which do not prevent further tax hikes. A National Taxpayers U nion study found, “Taxpayers face a seven out of 10 chance of seeing another net annual tax hike within two years of a tobacco tax hike.” There is a strong correlation between states that have high tobacco taxes and those that have high overall tax burdens.
9. Tobacco taxes are already high, and states are beginning to experience diminishing returns. According to the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey, the Garden State experienced a net loss of nearly $24 million in tobacco tax revenue during the two years following a 17.5 cent tax increase.
10. Projections for tobacco tax revenues are frequently over-estimated. Only 16 of the 57 tobacco tax hikes implemented between 2003 and 2007 met or surpassed the projected revenue.
The use of targeted tax increases serves only to push sound fiscal policies and real budget reforms to the public policy back burner. Legislators concerned with the public health effects of tobacco should encourage the use of readily available smoking cessation products and services, instead of supporting bad tax policy.
More information on each of these points is available at the links below.
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1. Poor Smokers, Poor Quitters, and Cigarette Tax Regressivity
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/19564/
Dr. Dahlia Remler, with the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, rebuts the argument that cigarette taxes are not regressive.
2. Tax Hikes Often Fail to Generate Expected Revenues
http://www.heartland.org/Article/22891
Economists warn tobacco taxes are an unpredictable source of revenue.
3. The Sin Tax: Economic and Moral Considerations

Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, examines how the economic and moral considerations of “sin taxes” intersect and are not mutually exclusive. He warns, “we ought to consider fundamental issues regarding the interplay between private morality and public policy.”
4. Hav-A-Tampa Closes its Factory …
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article1012864.ece
The Tampa Tribune reports that due to excessive government regulations and taxes, nearly 500 jobs were lost in Florida when the Hav-A-Tampa Cigar factory closed in 2009.
5. Cigarette Taxes and Smuggling: A Statistical Analysis and Historical Review
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=10005
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy takes a state-by-state look at tax-induced cigarette smuggling.
6. 22 Million New Smokers Needed: Funding SCHIP Expansion with a Tobacco Tax
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/wm1548.cfm
The Heritage Foundation outlines many of the problems associated with using cigarette taxes for programs such as SCHIP. The study finds 22 million new smokers would be needed by 2017 to keep SCHIP solvent.
7. Taxing Tobacco: Spending Obligation, not Cigarettes, Is the Real Threat

Joshua Culling of the Tax Foundation describes how tobacco taxes make spending worse and don’t do anything to fix the actual budget problems of a state.
8. Debunking the “Tax Thee, But Not Me” Myth: Five Reasons Why Non-Smokers Should Oppose High Tobacco Taxes
http://www.ntu.org/main/press_issuebriefs.php?PressID=1001&org;_name=NTU
According to the National Taxpayers U nion, “the per-capita state and local tax burden in high-tobacco tax states is 8 percent above the national average, while the general tax bill for residents of low-tobacco tax states is 15 percent below the national average.”
9. Stupid Tax Policy
http://blog.nj.com/njv_gregg_edwards/2009/05/stupid_tax_policy.html
Gregg M. Edwards, president of the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey, reports how his organization found New Jersey brought in less revenue after its cigarette tax hike than was coming in before the hike was implemented.
10. Lawmakers Who Opposed Tobacco Tax Cite Funding Source Concerns
http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2009/05/03/news/news050309_10.txt
Just months after Arkansas’ tobacco tax hike to establish a statewide trauma system, the revenue estimates already had to be updated. The new projected revenues were $15 million less than what was originally estimated.
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For further information on the subject, visit the Budget & Tax Issue Suite on The Heartland Institute’s Web site at www.heartland.org.
Nothing in this message is intended to influence the passage of legislation, and it does not necessarily represent the views of The Heartland Institute. If you have any questions about this issue or the Heartland Web site, contact Legislative Specialist John Nothdurft at 312/3774000 or jnothdurft@heartland.org.
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19 South LaSalle Street #903 * Chicago, IL 60603
312/377-4000 phone * 312/377-5000 fax * http://www.heartland.org

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