Jim Doyle Funding Organized Crime? Or Worse?

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that Wisconsin, thanks to Jim “Pol Pot” Doyle, increased the cigarette taxes to $1.00 per pack “for our own good”. At what point does it become a Prohibition-like price point for smugglers?

Check out this article in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Last month, New York law enforcement authorities announced the arrest of Queens resident Rafea al-Nablisi for smuggling 12,000 cartons of cigarettes a week. It was not the first such arrest, and thanks to New York’s latest cigarette tax hike, it will not be the last.

On April 23, less than two weeks after Mr. Nablisi’s arrest was made public, Gov. David Paterson signed into law a $1.25 per-pack tax hike on top of the state’s $1.50 per-pack tax. That’s in addition to New York City’s own $1.50 per-pack tax. Come July 1, New York City’s smokers will be paying on average $9 a pack for legal cigarettes.

But if history is any guide, most cigarettes sold will actually be trucked up from Virginia, or shipped in from China, by “butt-leggers” who can make over $1 million on each tractor-trailer load of smuggled smokes. The blunt fact, which politicians of both political parties are determined to ignore, is that high cigarette taxes in New York have led to a bloody, decades-long smuggling epidemic.[...]

As you may recall, the first bust of Henry Hill in “Goodfellas” (the bio of Henry Hill, a mobster in New York) was for selling untaxed (smuggled or hijacked) cigarettes. How long will it be before the smugglers invade Wisconsin? I’m assuming they’re already here but have yet to establish an efficient sales network. Well so what? you say. Well, here’s what.

[...]As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said in September 2002 of New York’s cigarette smuggling, “Traditional organized crime is involved, terrorist groups are involved, and street gangs are involved.” Rivalry among these groups has resulted in numerous shootings and homicides.

The connection to terrorism is no exaggeration. When New York police cracked another smuggling ring in 2005, they uncovered a multimillion dollar flow of funds from New York City to unknown individuals in the Middle East. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly gave voice to the obvious conclusion: Terrorists probably got the money.

Just a few weeks before that 2005 bust, Buffalo-area businessman Aref Ahmed had been sentenced to three years and a month for cigarette smuggling. The feds said he’d used the racket to fund “scholarships” at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan during the spring of 2001. Going back to 1993, counterfeit cigarette stamps were found in the apartment of the first World Trade Center bombers.[...]

Naturally, none of the above will stop Pol Pot from taxing smokes. After all, it’s for our own good.

Politicians continue to use the health of smokers as their excuse for higher cigarette taxes. This view is myopic. As Gov. Wilson argued three decades ago, high cigarette taxes are bad public policy because of their effect on the rest of us. In the 1960s and ’70s, organized crime exploited high cigarette taxes at our expense. Today we face an even deadlier adversary.

Another Reason to Leave

A new Badger Poll is out regarding health care. You can see the entire report here.

Here’s what’s really disturbing. According to the results of the poll, 61% (!!!) of the respondents favor a health care system that covers all Wisconsinites AND is run entirely by the Socialist Shithole State of Wisconsin!

Living proof the brain drain is alive and well in Wisconsin.