Despite a long Illinois tradition of supporting them, it's not exactly news that Republican members of the General Assembly no longer like voting for taxes of any kind. And that attitude created a couple of somewhat absurd positions last week.
Let's start with the "roll your own" bill. Legislation has been proposed to tax a growing practice of allowing people to use commercial machines to roll their own cigarettes in convenience stores and gas stations.
The stores sell their customers loose, bulk tobacco and then the customers dump the product into special rolling machines, which cost several thousand dollars each. The result is a per-carton sale price that is about half the price of a pre-rolled carton of brand-name cigarettes, mainly because the taxes on loose tobacco are much lower than on commercial cigarettes.