I hate it when I get anywhere near to agreeing with Rand Paul. Guy always looks like he has been sleeping off a three day drunk in his car. Bear with me, please.
It is true that cigarette taxes are bad law as Rand Paul asserts. We disagree about why these taxes are bad law.
Cigarette taxes are bad law for ordinary folks - never mind "dangerous" for the police. Fuck the police.
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Eric Garner was a small business owner. A old school capitalist. He sold single cigarettes, called loosies in the 'Hood, for profit.
A pack of cigarettes is so expensive due to taxes. Your basic working person and everyday street person cannot afford a whole pack at one time or has to make one pack last a week. Sometimes you just have to have a cigarette. And there on the corner stood Eric Garner ready, willing and not all that able. Eric Garner was murdered for selling a cigarette.
Taxes run government. The Suits decided to tax the shit out of cigarettes and thereby tax the shit out of addicts and working folks rather than tax the pusher Corpos and Wall Street. Naturally the nanny Progressives cheered. All that second hand smoke irritated their eyes, no doubt.
The working classes as a whole who smoke are being farmed for money to run government services just like Ferguson was being farmed for tax money to run government. Every man a profit center.
I think there is plenty of blame to go around for the death of Eric Garner, right and left.
Selling loosies is not a capital offense. It is an interracial occupation in Philly. Whole damn murder was a matter of CLASS not race. This time. On second thought, it is a race and a class and a poverty thing.
I love it when the real world agrees with me. Agreement tells me I am sane. These days I need all the reassurance I can get.
Michigan makes up for its budget shortfall after cutting corporate taxes by taxing people who smoke and drink more! Chad Livengood reports:
Selling loosies is not a capital offense. It is an interracial occupation in Philly. Whole damn murder was a matter of CLASS not race. This time. On second thought, it is a race and a class and a poverty thing.
CLICK ME !
"If Eric Garner had been selling naked credit default swaps instead of cigarettes – if in other words he'd set up a bookmaking operation in which passersby could bet on whether people made their home mortgage payments or companies paid off their bonds – the police by virtue of a federal law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act would have been barred from even approaching him."
Matt Taibbi
I love it when the real world agrees with me. Agreement tells me I am sane. These days I need all the reassurance I can get.
Michigan makes up for its budget shortfall after cutting corporate taxes by taxing people who smoke and drink more! Chad Livengood reports:
Revenue from so-called sin taxes on tobacco, beer, wine and liquor totaled $290.5 million in the 2014 fiscal year, more than twice the $137.6 million net income taxes paid by Michigan businesses after receiving $768.8 million in refunds from tax credits, a Detroit News analysis of tax data shows.
Since Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers delivered sweeping tax relief for businesses in 2011, net business income taxes dropped 90 percent, depleting the state's main operating fund of $1.33 billion, according to state revenue data.
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