-By Warner Todd Huston
Rumors are once again rumbling in the cash-starved, big spenders in California’s legislature to raise tobacco taxes. But does this work? History says that not only does the tax hike rarely bring in more money to the state the hike also causes more crime as criminals move in with black market good s at cheaper prices.
Once again the denizens of Sacramento are looking to a huge hike in taxes. Earlier this year Senator Kevin de Leon floated a scheme to raise taxes by two dollars a pack for cigarettes.
Democrats claim that this will bring in millions of dollars in new taxes a year but other states have tried this and found that instead of bringing in what legislators thought would come in all they got was more black market crimes and cigarette smuggling.
In 2012, for instance, the State of New York raised cigarette taxes yet still had a $130 million shortfall. The new taxes did not bring in what Empire State legislators projected.
But this is the least of the problems that large hikes in tobacco taxes bring to a state. The biggest problem is that it also brings a hike in crime.
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High Cigarette Taxes Bring Little Revenue and New Crime”
In the run up to the 2012 election an out-of-state, conservative, anti-tax group put upwards to $11 million into the effort to fight tax hikes in California. Immediately left-leaning groups cried foul and state authorities filed all sorts of charges against the political spending trying to force the group to disclose donors. Now that case has been settled and on terms favorable to the conservative group.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has not only been caught red (or blue) handed in a lie, but now he’s doubling down on that lie by claiming that a Republican leader in the House of Reps. told the President to his face that he “cannot stand to look at him.”
The Old Media establishment hates all Republicans, certainly, but they tolerate liberal Republicans because those sorts of Republicans don’t rock the boat and are quite happy taking the scraps from the Democrats’ table. So, the media always does its best to promote liberal Republicans and will use them as a foil to destroy conservatives–the latter of whom they truly despise. Politico recently had a perfect example of this Old Media strategy.
Representative Alan Grayson of Florida is one of the biggest ignoramuses in Congress. He’s proving this truth once again with his latest hate mongering by using a photo of a burning KKK cross on a fundraising email in his latest attempt to slam the tea party movement and raise some money from his hate-filled supporters.
President Obama’s new healthcare website is so bad that even the famed consumer advocate magazine Consumer Reports is warning thatAmericans should steer clear of the Obamacare websites until (and/or IF) the website ever gets fixed.
The clan leader of the Robertson family on A&E’s Duck Dynasty has a stance on gun control and, like always, the left won’t like it. He says that we don’t need gun control. We need “sin control.”
A Milwaukee, Wisconsin man just received a six-month jail sentence for illegally voting for Barack Obama twice in the 2012 election. And liberals say there is no liberal voter fraud!
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is defiant in the face of criticism of his hardline, conservative tactics during the show down over the shut down and the idea of defunding the President’s disastrous take over of our healthcare system with Obamacare. He didn’t go to Washington to make “99 new friends,” he said.
In a new recorded interview, Gay Talese, a longtime Washington reporter, was refreshingly forthcoming about the failures of the media to properly report on the Obama administration and had some very unkind things to say about both the “disaster” that President Obama has become and the “wimpy” New York Times D.C. bureau that is reporting on him.
After being associated with the Boy Scouts of America for 93 years, a church in Pennsylvania has ended its relationship because the venerable kids organization bent to left-wing pressure and is now allowing gays into the group.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is pretty much run by communists and racebaiters. This month we get yet another example of that with a CTU organizer claiming that the city “belongs” to African Americans and not white people.
So, not everyone in Washington is an evil, dark “man in black” but maybe they want to be. Reports say a DC intern thwarted a mugging in Washington D.C. this week by pretending to be an NSA intern.
If you want an example of the hypocrisy of the left-wing media, there can be no better example than the sudden, new love that Mother Jones magazine has for a Republican that ten years ago they called a disgusting, hatemongering, racist, throw back to the civil war. Why do they love him? Because he’ll attack Senator Ted Cruz.
Information and data is the key to success, so say many companies these days. The newest attempt to gather customer data is soon to occur in grocery stores that want to put surveillance cameras right on store shelves to watch shoppers and gather their shopping habits for further research.
This is the most petulant, most arrogant president in American history and now he is threatening to purposefully crash the global economy unless the Republicans bend over backwards, betray their voters, and give Obama every political policy he wants.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert is sick to death of RINO Republicans like Arizona senator John McCain, dubbed John McLame by most conservatives. Though he didn’t exactly name the RINO from Arizona, he certainly painted quite a picture last weekend slamming him.
CBS’ Jan Crawford is giving it to America straight. The roll out of the Obamacare websites has been a major failure.
Here is a story that shows why we don’t let children decide what they want to do for themselves. In Arizona, a high school teacher thought it would be a great idea for his kids to put on a play that features incest and bestiality. He got suspended for this leftist idea, but the silly children are rallying behind this warper of souls hoping to get his punishment vacated.
The media is attempting to claim that the arrests of two New York Muslims accused of having ties to the Taliban is a case of entrapment, but others are not so sure.
I hate to even use the word “school” for this sort of brainless stupidity, but here we go again having a school attempting to destroy our American traditions and character this time by banning Halloween. Why? Because it is a “religious” holiday and the Constitution forbids religion in schools, of course.