-By Warner Todd Huston
Democrat State Senator Kevin De Leon has introduced a plan to hike cigarette taxes (SB 768 ) in order to pay for more state spending. But this idea is nothing new and has been defeated several times before. Even law enforcement has been against these tax hikes because such plans embolden dangerous criminals
States with high tobacco taxes like New York have reported higher levels of black-market smuggling, a big source of money for gangs and organized crime. By one 2011 estimate three of every five cigarettes smoked in the Empire State was purchased illegally.
Increasing tobacco taxes in California–especially at the extreme rate proposed by De Leon–will bring the same type of crime as that experienced in New York.
But this question has been dealt with by law enforcement in California in the past.
Law enforcement has identified trafficking of black market cigarette sales as a growing problem that costs California hundreds of millions a year in lost tax revenues which is one of the reasons why the LA Deputy Sheriffs opposed higher cigarette taxes in the past.
Continue reading “
California’s New Cigarette Tax Plan Would Embolden Dangerous Criminals”
The hand-in-hand nature of this White House and some of the nation’s biggest corporations is seen in yet another incident as Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign data team is now moving from team Obama to team Google.
One can’t be surprised that Obama’s home state of Illinois is one of the worst five states in the nation–like it is for most other things–in the Mercatus Center’s study of the level of freedom in each state. Naturally Illinois ranks close to the bottom of the most free states.
President Obama chose former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency most involved in implementing the Affordable Care Act. But Sebelius is under heavy criticism for her efforts thus far to break out the “train wreck” that is Obamacare.
Troubles are growing for New York City’s venerable “alternative” weekly newspaper, The Village Voice. With multiple layoffs, ad revenue at an all time low, and resignations by key staffers over the paper’s management, the 58-year-old publication is coming to what one commenter is calling “the end times.”
In yet another example of the retrenching in the national media landscape, the Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff and plans to replace them with freelancers.
The New York Times is exasperated with the lack of progress in Congress of “fixes” to the massive and far reaching Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This exasperation has evinced itself in an odd way as the Times seems to be expressing sympathy for lobbyists and businesses trying to make changes to the law.
Yahoo, Inc. has announced that it has cleared the way to purchase the social website Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion.
Square payment services is one of those new payment applications that merchants can put on a smart phone and, along with the plug-in hardware, is used like a credit card swipe machine to accept payments made by their customers. This month, however, Square has changed its user policy and is now prohibiting merchants from using the service to sell anything firearm related.
The story of the coming demise of Chinatown bus lines in New York City is a tale of multiple failures in both government and the media and shows that both have a bias against entrepreneurs that kills new, start up ideas with unfair regulations, faux public advocacy, and dismal reporting.
Upon coming to office, President Obama began using the obscure National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to give big payoffs to unions at the expense of business and to the detriment of our economic recovery but at last his incredible abuse of this agency is under scrutiny.
On May 10, a spokeswoman for the Internal Revenue Service admitted that over the last year–during the presidential election, at that–the agency had conducted “overzealous audits” of the tax-exempt status of dozens of conservative activists and Tea Party groups. Last year The New York Times dismissed claims that the IRS was abusing its powers but even with these new admissions by the IRS the Times is underplaying the facts.
Apparently, the haters at the AFL-CIO decided that military veterans shouldn’t be allowed to take jobs offered by Walmart.
Supermarket owner Rafael Cuellar from Passaic, NJ, reports that he had to spend $350,000 to install 69 surveillance cameras, recording devices, and video storage banks in order to stop fake “slip and fall” insurance claims against his store. It’s a cost that just adds to the cost of living for everyone and is a perfect example of the abuse of the legal system that we see every day with this avalanche of frivolous lawsuits.
PepsiCo, Inc, owners of Mountain Dew soda, has pulled an online video ad after viewers complained of its use of racial stereotypes. The ad also seemed to be making light of violence toward women.
On the heels of reports that “half” the staffers at the L.A. Times would resign if the paper was sold to conservative billionaires the Koch brothers, the Newspaper Guild–Communications Workers of America, a journalist labor union, have issued a statement declaring the pair unfit to own a newspaper.
Lee Fang has cobbled together a new book ostensibly meant as a guide to things that conservative activists are doing for their cause and in his chapter on the Koch brothers he regurgitates dozens of un-sourced lies that have little basis in fact even as he presents them as fact.
Remember when Obama took office and one of his biggest promises was that lobbyists would never gain a foothold in his Administration? Well, now that he doesn’t have to stand for election again he’s doing his level best to give lobbyists one of their biggest perks yet. He’s trying to make it legal to give them your tax dollars so they can lobby to increase your taxes. And in fact he’s already broken laws governing lobbyists several times since 2009.
Through President Obama’s loan guarantees, the American people gave hybrid car-maker Fisker Automotive millions of tax dollars, but now Fisker is on the verge of bankruptcy and is facing lawsuits from at least three different groups for not paying its bills.
The State of California has one of the worst proposals of any legislature in the country this year with a new bill that would force every restaurant and food service business in the state to commission an expensive “risk assessment” test for every menu item, a test that could cost thousands of dollars for every food item sold. This outrageous and cost prohibitive testing would certainly cause all but the biggest chain restaurants to go out of business almost instantly.
Well, when I said that CNBC’s business coverage was “playing catch up” with Fox Business Network, I didn’t know how close to the truth I had it as this month, CNBC copied FBN’s coverage from last fall of the amazing growth that Houston, Texas has seen over the last few years.