Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Those progressives think of everything

Eliot Spitzer has come up with a unique and "progressive" way to fund a $13 million dollar shortfall in the state's budget.

Excerpt
Drug dealers beware: Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer wants your help in balancing the state budget.

The governor proposed Tuesday that drug dealers be required to affix a state tax stamp on illegal drugs they sell — $3.50 per gram on marijuana and $200 per gram on drugs like heroin. He expects it to bring the state $13 million in revenue this year.

There wasn’t a whole lot of explanation about the idea, except a brief reference buried in one of the pieces of legislation accompanying the thousands of pages of budget documents released Tuesday. It says it will improve enforcement and tracking of illegal drug sales.


Now call me one of those stodgy, unimaginative, status quo conservatives, but I'm thinking, that drug dealers have already managed to avoid prosecution for selling illegal drugs. I don't think they're all that concerned with paying the tax on a bag of weed.

Here's an idea for the guv. How about arresting those drug dealers and throwing them in jail. You apparently know where these clowns are because you expect to collect a tax from them.

Wait a minute,..........

What's that sound.........

It's another Allied Van loaded up, leaving New York for a Red state.

5 comments:

Eric said...

How about arresting those drug dealers and throwing them in jail

...um, because that hasn't worked thus far. Marijuana arrests doubled in the '90s. What did use and availability do? Increased. In the early part of the new millenium possession arrests tripled. Pretty clear that a simple policy of trowing the bums in jail doesn't do much to solve the problem.

This tax idea is nothing new. I think Koch was doing it back in the 80s. The bottom line on all this is that the "war on drugs" (war on personal liberties) has been so costly to states that they are trying to find ways for it to pay for itself. Hence we have the likes of Tennessee's "crack tax". Nets them a couple million a year. They don't make any money on the tax stamps, but they make a killing on the fines levied for not having them when they bust someone. Pretty neat, huh?

In all, 21 states currently have laws taxing illegal drugs. Not all are what we'd consider bastions of progressivism either:

Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota have all repealed their laws.

Look up Timothy Francis Leary v. United States (395 U.S.6) sometime. Old Tim got the federal illegal drug tax repealed. (Yes, there was one)

Jason Haas said...

Ok, ok, GG -- making the leap from this proposed law to Allied Moving Lines seeing a boost in NY business is a bit, just a bit, much.

On the other hand, what a boneheaded idea. Sorry E, but regardless of how many states, red or otherwise, have this on the books, it's just dumb. Enforcement is nearly impossible at POS, so the law can only function as yet another charge to put on top of illegal possession and sales when a dealer is nabbed. That really...doesn't prove a thing or help anyone. It's not progressive, it's just punitive.

Which when you think about it, means its right of Spitzer's alley.

Anonymous said...

I am sure this tax, (like every other tax) only goes after people who can pay it. By that I mean the guy who works for a living, and gets busted with a small amount of marijuana. I doubt your going to get much money from "crack head joe" I will leave the legalization issue for another time, however how come you never hear about politicians coming up with a new idea to CUT SPENDING?

The Squeaky Wheel said...

Only in New York. Only in the land of Chcuk Schumer and Hillary Clinton

Eric said...

jason says:

the law can only function as yet another charge to put on top of illegal possession and sales when a dealer is nabbed. That really...doesn't prove a thing or help anyone.

EXACTLY. And this is the only point to it. So there's no sense making fun of it by painting pictures of how ludicrous it is to expect drug dealers to submit tax receipts on drugs sold. The point I'm making (and I'm not supporting this whole tax idea implicitly, it's way more comlicated than that) is that states are trying to recoup money that they've been forced by the Feds to spend on the "war on drugs".

A progressive policy would be to not make one of God's creations (hemp) "illegal". There's a great Bill Hicks routine on this - YouTube it. It's insane when you think about it. Punish people who are high and driving or otherwise acting irresponsible, but this cowboy shoot 'em up drug raid model surely hasn't worked well.

Oh, and fix the problem with sentencing disparity first. Yeah, there's that!