Want to Lose More Jobs? Ban Cigars
Seriously, it’s that simple. If your economy is getting a little overheated (and who’s isn’t?) and you need to apply the brakes a little to prevent a bubble from occurring then all you have to do is ban cigars. Just like the brilliant mayor of Orange County, Florida, the honorable Richard Crotty.
Apparently without any public hearings or prior publicity, Orange County Mayor Richard T. Crotty secretly signed an executive order late last year that has kept tens of millions of dollars from pouring into the local economy. At the same time, the jobs of thousands of county workers are being threatened, according to the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.
Crotty signed an executive order that prohibits tobacco use by anyone in any workplace or public area on or in county property. The order was effective January 1, 2010. In addition, county employees are required to sign a ‘Tobacco Usage’ affidavit that swears they don’t smoke or be subject to a $25 fee per pay period – up to $650 per year. The alternative is for the employees who choose to smoke more than four cigars per year to quit their jobs.
From: PR Web
If you are a cigar smoker in this little slice of fascist heaven you risk losing your job because you partake in a legal activity.
According to Tom Ufer from the Tampa Cigar Examiner, this ban, which includes a ban on smoking cigars in many outdoor locations, comes on the heels of an indoor ban.
Several major cities, including Orlando, reside in Orange County and the local economy heavily relies on tourism.
The ordinance now outlaws the use of any tobacco product in areas such as outdoors at the Orange County Convention Center, County parks, fishing docks, boat ramps, outdoor trails, county owned parking lots, streets and sidewalks.
From: Tampa Cigar Examiner
Let’s recap the carnage: Orange County, Florida is fine with losing workers who smoke cigars and don’t want to pay the fine. They are also OK with losing cigar smoking tourists, which will lead to some more job losses. Also, according to Tom Ufer’s article, Orange County is using $6.6 million from stimulus funding to pay for this draconian anti-smoking law. If you keep track, that stimulus money was meant to spur job growth, not fund anti-smoking, Nazi block watchers.
And this from a county that is suffering some pretty bad unemployment numbers too! Yup, it’s over 12% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But smell that clean Florida air!
Unless you like losing jobs and tax revenue then it would probably be a good idea to oppose bans like this one. Just to get you on the right track you can oppose this ban by going on over to Tom’s article where he has so thoughtfully put up a list of the people who have a say over this ban: Orange County, FL politicians.
Orange County, Florida: Mayor Crotty bans use of tobacco products
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I would just like to take this time to thank each and everyone one of you who have stopped by to read about my thoughts on cigars.
Now go and enjoy some turkey, your time with loved ones and, if you get some time, enjoy a great cigar or two! 
World’s Longest Cigar
A Floridian created the world’s longest cigar last Saturday when he built a cigar measuring over 180 feet. Now, I’m sure some of you are saying that this is a pointless endeavor and that this guy should be worried about more important things; like creating tasty cigars in a more manageable vitola.
You scoffers are obviously overlooking the buzz this guy is creating for his brand, which means more sales for this guy. You would also be missing the point that it’s just cool doing something like this. After all, if you can’t be the best, you might as well be the longest.
From the story:
“We still here and we still making big things,” said Wallace Reyes, the man who hand-rolls cigars at the Ybor City Museum almost every day, and the man behind the world record attempt. “So why not bring the worlds longest cigar to the cigar capital of the world?”
Over the past few weeks, Mr. Reyes rolled super-long cigars sections in preparation for Saturday’s record attempt.
***snip***
On Saturday morning, the sections were joined over a several hour period and the final adjudication was made later that day.
Before the announcement, Reyes said, “We’re gonna have a brand new record!”
Fortunately, his hard work paid off, and the record was his.
And if you are one of those people who do not believe everything you read then here is video proof!
That is one BIG cigar!
Winston Churchill Cigar
Everyone knows that Winston Churchill loved his cigars and, I think, many people admire him partially because of his ferocious appetite for the good life, which included lots of liquor in addition to the cigars. Now, have you ever wanted to know what one of Sir Winston Churchill’s cigars would cost today? Wonder no more!
The cigar has now been valued at £800 by an expert during the filming of the Antiques Roadshow.
Student Christian Williams, 33, was given the cigar when he was just 12 by his grandad Ronald Williams, a WWII veteran.
At over six inches long the cigar has never been touched by its owner, who keeps it safe in a sturdy wooden box.
It was taken from a historic meeting between Churchill and the other Allied leaders at the famous Casablanca Conference.
Based off current exchange rates that means the cigar is worth something like $1 million – that’s an expensive cigar! But, based off the looks of it, I don’t think anyone is ever going to be smoking this cigar due to the poor conditions it was stored in.
Winston Churchill D-Day Cigar
Still a cool cigar and an interesting story.
Cigar Rights of America Photomosaic
Cigar Rights of America Color Mosaic that reuses the Twitter avatar images a lot
A couple of weeks ago I was playing with a program called AndreaMosaic. What it does is takes a bunch of pictures and arranges the to look like another picture. This sort of thing is more commonly known as a photomosaic.
What I did was upload all of the Twitter avatars of everyone who is following Cigar Rights of America on Twitter. The thing is that since there were only slightly more than 400 followers at the time the ending image looked horrible. So, I cheated and created the image that you see above by reusing images as often as the program wanted to use them and by having more tiles (images) make up the mosaic.
I also created this other photomosaic that you see below using the images less often, that means less tiles.That also means that you can make out the individual images a lot better.
Cigar Rights of America Color Mosaic
The reason why I like this second one the most is because you can actually see the individual pictures that make up this photomosaic. And, if you click on this image, you can see a larger rendering of this image. So you can see the individual avatars that make up the Cigar Rights of America logo even better.
Creating these photomosaics only took a couple of hours. Oddly enough, the most time consuming part of this endeavor was the manual uploading of all the Twitter avatars. That involved lots of clicking and some file conversions – not fun. Actually creating the photomosaic was a snap because AndreaMosaic automates the process, all I had to do was put in a couple of parameters and ipso facto you get what you see here!
Cool, huh?
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