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• A call to arms for a class war, from the top down 

Two months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court, Lewis F. Powell Jr. penned a confidential memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calling for an aggressive counterattack by business against the progressive ideology that had gripped the nation.

Lewis F. Powell's 1971 memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce --- "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" -- may or may not have been the first shot fired in the nation's late-20th-century right-wing revolution. But from the document's title to its ominous conclusion -- "Business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late" -- it was a literal call to the political arms that have subsequently driven the nation's devolution from democracy to oligarchy. . . .

In a brief introduction to the document itself, the Primary Sources website declares, "The memo is credited with inspiring the founding of many conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute."

In an October 2011 speech at Public Citizens' 40th anniversary gala in New York City, journalist Bill Moyers pinpointed its submission as the moment today's ruling oligarchy began taking form. An excerpt titled "How Wall Street Occupied America" was published in the Nov. 2, 2011, issue of The Nation.

"The rise of the money power in our time goes back 40 years," he said. "We can pinpoint the date. On Aug. 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell -- a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court -- released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down." . . .

Schmitt credited the Alliance for Justice's 1993 report "Justice for Sale" with reviving interest in the Powell Memo. He termed the report "a superb and still-relevant analysis of the use of corporate and right-wing foundation funds to reshape the legal academy, to introduce judges to 'law and economics' dogma, to promote tort reform and to build right-wing public-interest law firms." . . .

Still, Schmitt said, the Powell Memo has been "routinely invoked as the blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s - 'a memo that changed the course of history,' in the words of one analysis of the anti-environmental movement, 'the attack memo that changed America,' in another account." "The memo is credited with inspiring the founding of many conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute."

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• Tobacco: The intriguing story of Bermuda and Virginia  

Could it be that the Spanish or Portuguese, well acquainted with tobacco since 1492, planted tobacco in Bermuda and probably the better quality Caribbean variety? Raleigh's Indian tobacco was of inferior quality compared to the Caribbean variety. Tobacco does not cross oceans easily and grow naturally or wild, yet two patches of tobacco were found in Bermuda: In 1603, tobacco was found by the shipwrecked Captain Ramirez at Spanish Point and it is arguable that Sir George Somers found or grew a patch of tobacco at Tobacco Bay, St George's in 1609. Could it be that Sir George Somers and John Rolfe (both on the Sea Venture which was wrecked in Bermuda on its way to Jamestown in July 1609) took the Bermuda Tobacco seed to Virginia from Bermuda on the two ships they built, the Deliverance and Patience, in May 1610?

Several facts support this theory:

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THIS WEEK IN LOCAL HISTORY: Agents raided Mid-Missouri strip clubs  

25 YEARS AGO

From the Centralia Fireside Guard, April 29, 1987: The Boone County Courthouse was set to go smokeless on May 15 — almost. The city of Columbia enacted an ordinance restricting smoking in public buildings, but the Boone County Commission made a change at the courthouse because it was not a part of city government.

Smoking in courtrooms was already banned. Individual offices within the courthouse would be allowed to designate a private smoking area.

Northern District Commissioner Alex Gates was a smoker but voted for the ban.

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When smoking was ‘in’  

The American Tobacco Company was the largest and most powerful tobacco company until the early 1900s. Several companies were making cigarettes by the early 1900s. In 1902 Philip Morris company came out with its Marlboro brand.

They were selling their cigarettes mainly to men. Everything changed during World War I (1914-18) and World War II (1939-45). Soldiers overseas were given free cigarettes every day. At home production increased and cigarettes were being marketed to women too. More than any other war, World War II brought more independence for women. Many of them went to work and started smoking for the first time while their husbands were away. . . .

When moving to Marshall with our young family, I would entertain my women friends at our home in the afternoons for coffee and cookies. In those days we served coffee in a cup and saucer. Most of my women friends smoked. My 4-year-old daughter would go around to each of my friends, as they drank their coffee and smoked, and tell them: "Please don't leave your cigarette stubs in the saucer, because my little sister eats them." . . .

In the early 1980s my father, who was an avid cigar and cigarette smoker as well as chewing tobacco, heeded the surgeon general's warnings about tobacco, and challenged my two brothers and my husband to quite tobacco use along with him. They all met that challenge, for which our family was really proud.

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Jim Kershner's this day in history  

From our archives, 100 years ago

J.B. Lister of Spokane wrote a letter to the editor complaining about an issue that today we would call “secondhand smoke.”

But in 1912, Lister called it the “ungentlemanly habit” of making “your fellow take your smoke.”

“At different times, I have seen men at table in a high-class grill light a cigar or cigarette and puff the smoke all across the table and make others take it in, or get up and leave,” wrote the indignant Lister. . .

Lister might have been gratified to know that the smoking-in-restaurants issue was eventually addressed. But he might have cussed when he found out it took almost a century.

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Iconic skyscraper may find new life as hotel  

Enoch Williams, 5-Term New York City Councilman, Dies at 84  

Enoch H. Williams, a former New York City councilman who used his leadership positions to pass a law banning smoking in most public spaces and to help stop the Giuliani administration from selling city-owned hospitals, but who also came under fire from gay rights groups, died on Tuesday at his home in Heathrow, Fla. He was 84.

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Betsy's Trivia: Smoking Edition 

During John F. Kennedy's inaugural Meet the Press appearance on December 2, 1951 (sic), the MTP set saw a rare event: a panelist smoking during the program. Legendary New York Times journalist James Reston, the paper's longtime Washington Bureau Chief, smoked throughout much of the interview, including while questioning Kennedy. Host Lawrence Spivak's hatred of tobacco was well-known at Meet the Press, where there were no-smoking signs and artwork warning of its dangers throughout the office. Spivak was usually unshakeable in his ban of smoking during the program, including during commercial breaks. Even his famous guests did not escape: Randolph Churchill, son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, once called Spivak a "goddamned dictator" for not letting him smoke. And when Edward R. Murrow was denied his usual supply of cigarettes during a 1961 appearance, he was visibly unhappy on camera and crew members reported seeing his legs twitching under the table from nicotine withdrawal. . . .

A visibly annoyed Spivak leaned farther away from Reston for the remainder of the interview. While Reston then questioned Kennedy on his striking criticism of the State Department, he gestured with his lit cigarette, with no apparent awareness of how much it was upsetting his panel neighbor. You can watch a clip of the smoking drama unfold below, as well as more from John F. Kennedy's first appearance on Meet the Press.

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• PITTS: Hitler comparisons vandalize our national memory  

Requiring him to put up no-smoking signs, is, he reiterated, “very similar” to requiring Jews to wear yellow stars. “It might be smoking today, it might be Big Macs tomorrow, then Coca-Colas the next day, then Jack Daniel’s, then we’re in trouble.”

Yes, he actually said that. And one can’t help but recall the famous thing Martin Niemöller said about the Holocaust: “First they came for the Big Macs, and I did not speak out — because I did not eat at McDonald’s. . . .

For what it’s worth, the experience of a Jew in the Holocaust and a smoker in America are comparable in only one regard: the death toll. The Nazis killed six million Jews in 12 years. Cigarettes kill that many Americans every 13 and a half. Of course, a smoker has a choice. A Jew had none.

And the idea of equating the two is ridiculous, offensive and unworthy of serious people. That should go without saying.

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CONYERS: When smoking was ‘in’  

When I was a little girl, one of my jobs was to roll cigarettes for my brother. A copper colored item about 3 inches by 5 inches opened up where I inserted a cigarette paper, then poured the tobacco onto this, closed the lid and turned the handle to roll the cigarette.

I then opened the box, took out the rolled cigarette and moistened the edge to hold it together.

Men also smoked cigars

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VIDEO:Tobacco magnate mansion up for auction 

GOLDEN AGE OF STOGIES 

• GOP Candidate Equates Smoking Ban to Nazi Policy 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced West Virginia GOP Senate candidate John Raese on Thursday for equating a smoking ban to Hitler’s policy of forcing Jews to wear the Star of David.

A video posted on Youtube shows Raese saying that requiring stickers on buildings declaring them smoke-free is like how “Hitler used to put a Star of David on everybody’s lapel.”

“This inappropriate comparison betrays an ignorance of what really happened in Nazi Germany, and demonstrates a callousness to the millions of Jews murdered by Hitler’s Third Reich,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Center, and Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs. “It compares signs that are meant to protect people’s health with the yellow stars designed to dehumanize and degrade millions of Jews by a racist, genocidal regime,” they added.

“The Simon Wiesenthal Center has spoken out against the manipulation and distortion of the Holocaust for political purposes in the past by the left and right, and we hope that Mr. Raese’s colleagues and fellow citizens in West Virginia will register their disgust at this inappropriate analogy,” concluded Weitzman and Cooper.

Raese, however, said that he didn’t care about the Wiesenthal Center’s reaction and said he was just “reciting history.”

“I don’t see anything that’s incorrect in any of the statements I made. It’s all very factual,” he said.

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Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds recycle losing arguments that the used to (unsuccessfully) oppose Prop 99 in 1988  

Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds (and a few pals) have started their media blitz against Proposition 29, the initiative to be voted on this June that would increase the cigarette tax by $1 and allocate the money to reinvigorate Californian's anti-smoking program and fund medical research on cancer and other tobacco-induced diseases.

What is amazing is how little has changed since voters saw through Big Tobacco's lies in 1988 and passed Proposition 99 that changed the world of tobacco control by creating the California Tobacco Control Program.

From a public health point of view Prop 99 has been a huge success; smoking has been cut by half, most remaining smokers are light smokers, and the possibility of essentially eliminating tobacco as a major public health problem is now within reach in California.

That, of course, is the problem as far as Big Tobacco is concerned. Every cigarette not smoked may be a public health success, but it is money right out of their pockets. Indeed, we have estimated that when Prop 29 passes it will reduce cigarette consumption by $1 billion a year. Right now $800 million of that leaves the state and ends up in Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds' and other tobacco interests' pockets.

Protecting that money is why they are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars running ads saying whatever their marketing research identifies as undermining support for Prop. 29. . . .

Here is the side-by-side comparison of the tobacco industry's arguments then and now (PDF); you can judge their veracity by comparing them with the bullet points above:

TOBACCO INDUSTRY ARGUMENTS AGAINST PROPOSITIONS 99 AND 29 IN THE CALIFORNIA VOTER BALLOT PAMPHLET

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Legal cases on SHS and Condos (PDF)