By Bill Starlin
As municipalities across the country scour to find new sources of revenue to balance budgets in the wake of the present fiscal apocalypse, normal citizens are finding that many of the things we enjoy ( mainly to take our minds off said disaster) are coming under assault.
Initially the cigarette society was the first to fall. Citing public health risk not only to smokers but the innocent bystanders, smoking bans in public places were met with general applause. However it didn’t stop there. Many states began to apply “sin taxes” so that there was money collected from the sale of cigarettes that were supposedly earmarked for public good related funds. This sounds all well and good until you realize that the state is, in effect pimping nicotine addicts. No harm, no foul right? Stop smoking and you don’t pay a tax, right? Well when you know that they can’t stop (because of course, you as a state, won billions in lawsuit money from big tobacco) you’re taking advantage. Relatively innocuous on the surface, but what that did was set a precedent…
Read More : http://planetill.com/2009/03/pole-tax-yes-pole-tax/
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