Excuse me, but . . .

. . . if this is winning, what was second prize?

By the way, it appears the new spin is “job-killing” taxes -- okay, maybe the 75-cent a pack “health impact fee” on cigarettes might really be a tax after all, but it’s not one of those “job-killing” taxes.

Once again, excuse me, but if you take 75 cents from a person when he buys a pack of cigarettes or take 75 cents away from a person out of his paycheck, you take 75 cents. That’s 75 cents (and of course were talking 75 cents times several tens of thousands) that doesn’t finance value-added contributions to the economy, which kills jobs. Duh.

I don’t know if real “hard-working” Republican legislators are embarrassed by this substance-less fluff on the state GOP web site, but I am.

UPDATE: First peek at an OP-ED by Mike Wigley and Davis Strom in the Sunday Strib.