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.

Combatting the Delusional Local Politicos

Local politicos and some screwy business leaders are blind to the obvious. They think business will relocate to Wisconsin simply because we have water availability thanks to Lake Michigan. Happily, Patrick McIlheran pointed out the fallacy of this type of thinking in an op-ed piece he wrote in Sunday’s local rag.

Some selected highlights. Any emphasis mine.

I wonder if this was what it felt like to own a polka-records company in 1977, telling yourself that with Elvis dead, the kids would forget rock and come back.

Keep waiting. Meanwhile, we’ve got lots of people saying Atlanta’s drought will be what sends ‘em all scurrying back to Milwaukee.

From the man on the street to essays in political journals, people living on the shores of the world’s largest, most beautiful backwater are figuring that the drift of people, money and power to the Sunbelt will surely end now. They want our water, so they’ll have to come back.

Even serious, thoughtful people say this. “This is a very big economic development tool for the Great Lakes region,” said Todd Ambs to Milwaukee business leaders last month. Ambs runs the water division for the Department of Natural Resources. He knows more about the flow of water than I ever will. The message, he says, is, “you can come back to the Great Lakes.”

Not going to happen, says John Kasarda, who knows more about the flow of economies than I ever will. Kasarda, who researches entrepreneurship and demographics at the University of North Carolina, says there’s simply no evidence that constrictions in water supply alone can torpedo a burgeoning region. Phoenix and Las Vegas, you might recall, thrive. The southeast isn’t short of water. It just doesn’t organize its distribution well - yet.

The people who think Atlanta’s drought will send people back here are buffoons. With telecommunications being what it is today, people can live just about anywhere they want. So, the jobs will go to where capital is welcomed and stay where it is treated fairly. As Kasarda points out:

The lake won’t save us. A new attitude might, suggests Kasarda. What made the Sunbelt as much as air conditioning was a pro-enterprise culture, he says - an encouraging attitude toward growth, a “flexible, non-union environment,” decent taxes. “They put out the red carpet for business,” he says, and it worked.

And here? “The attitude in Milwaukee toward business is awful, and you just don’t see it anywhere else,” Briggs and Stratton CEO John Shiely told a reporter this month. He and other executives had the temerity to say the same in public last winter and were excoriated as wanting “to return to the 19th century.” How dare they mouth off! Don’t they know their place?

Suppose Atlanta were rewound to some prior century - that its growth were halted. It’s gained a million people in six years; where might the next million go instead? Shiely contrasted Milwaukee with the welcoming attitude in Murray, Ky., and that should be a hint: There are lots of other Sunbelt towns. If Atlanta’s got too many people drawing from one little river, that’s solved as people spread to other rivers in the welcoming, low-tax South.

Think the above isn’t true? Guess what? Texas just surpassed New York as the state with the most “Fortune 500″ firms with 58 now in Texas.

Some of that was due to the growth of local firms but more was because of firms that relocated out of the high-tax, anti-business climates of states like the socialist shithole under Pol Pot Doyle Wisconsin. Seems to me Texas is not exactly known for having a lot of water. (As I side note, I paid $4.75/gal for avgas in Texas compared to $5.85/gal here.)

Until the negative attitudes toward business are reversed here, we’ll have plenty of water. No jobs, of course, but plenty of water.

Why Worry When You Have Taxpayers? Part II

The “geniuses” in Senate are going to put their housing bill on the floor on Tuseday April 8. It won’t do much for the housing market but will make homebuilders and local politicos erupt with glee. The Wall Street Journal points out some of the highlights.

Like 1990s’ dot-coms that went public with nothing more than a concept, federal programs today can triple their budgets with a single word: housing. But unlike the tech craze, the taxpayer investment in this project will not be voluntary.

Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bipartisan “housing stimulus package” hits the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon, and what it proves is that, whatever their other differences, both parties can agree to throw good money after bad. The bill is a $15 billion list of subsidies that won’t do much for housing markets but will please the homebuilders, local politicians and other influential lobbies.

Among the largest items is $4 billion for notorious Community Development Block Grants. The money is intended to purchase and redevelop foreclosed properties. It’s hard to think of a less promising vehicle than the CDBG program, which is managed – after a fashion – by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A February 2008 report from the White House budget office calls the program “ineffective,” which is putting it mildly. On a 100-point scale of achieving results, CDBG scored a 27. In 2005 and 2006, the Government Accountability Office recommended more oversight and better methods of targeting grant recipients.

In June 2006 Senate testimony, HUD Inspector General Kenneth Donohue summarized the results of recent audits: “CDBG-related reports identified over $100 million in questioned costs and funds that could be put to better use. During the same time period, the HUD OIG indicted 159 individuals, caused administrative actions against 143 individuals, had 5 civil actions, 39 personnel actions, and over $120 million in recoveries . . . ‘Improper use of funds’ is the largest repeat audit finding in our CDBG reviews.”

Another finding is what HUD euphemistically calls, “Lack of policy or adequate management.” Reported Mr. Donohue: “The East Meyer Community Association of Kansas City, Missouri, squandered nearly $800,000 of its CDBG money on company picnics, Christmas Tree lighting ceremonies, luncheons, gifts and bonuses.” Remember, this program theoretically exists to counter urban blight and rebuild neighborhoods. Mr. Donohue found more than $2.6 million in management fees providing little or no benefit in a single loan program at the Los Angeles Community Development Bank.

To put it bluntly, this may be the worst-run program in Washington. So why are Senators making it a centerpiece of this week’s housing splurge? Because just about every dollar of the $4 billion will not remain at HUD, but will instead be routed to state and local governments, which can then share the wealth with “nonprofit” (i.e., politically favored) organizations. And while state and local pols will get the money ASAP – within 90 days of the bill’s enactment into law – there is less urgency to address the housing crisis once these recipients cash the checks. They don’t have to buy the foreclosed properties for another 18 months.

Senator Richard Shelby (R., Ala.), mindful of the program’s appalling history, was able to secure a partial rewrite of the bill last week. Any profits from the resale of homes bought in foreclosure must now be recycled back into buying other foreclosed properties. What remains unclear is exactly how much of the $4 billion will stick to the various fingers touching these dollars along the way.

This CDBG fiasco is consistent with other provisions in this stinker of a bill. The main Republican contribution (thanks to Georgia’s Johnny Isakson) is a $7,000 tax credit for those buying homes out of foreclosure. This means that Americans who behaved responsibly and paid their mortgage but are now trying to sell their homes will have to cut their offering price by $7,000 to compete with foreclosed properties nearby. Thus does the Senate contribute once again to tax fairness and personal responsibility.

There’s also a new property tax deduction for non-itemizers, plus authority for states to issue another $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds. The bonds will fund – of course – subprime mortgages. Having witnessed this disaster for investors, states will now run the experiment again, except with taxpayers eating the losses.

Previous government efforts to subsidize housing did nothing but encourage the real estate bubble. The best that can be said of the Senate’s ideas is that they may be more feckless than destructive.

So let me see if I have this straight. Congress is holding hearings because of the lending practices of companies that underwrote lousy mortgages. At the same time they’re going to give money to the states to do exactly the same thing. After all, why should Congress worry? The taxpayers will foot the bill for this crap, just like they always have.

Thanks for nothing.

.

How They Voted

Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Diane Clinton voted against extending the “Bush Tax Cuts”. McCain voted to extend the cuts.

Guess what the result of that is?

If you’re making $31,850 (individual) or $63,700 (as a couple), your rates will go up once the tax cuts expire. The Dem Presidential candidates consider you rich, and we certainly can’t have that in their version of America.

My Tagline is Correct

Proving once again that the tagline of my blog is 100% accurate, Russ Decker (Leader-Brickheads) again shows why he is unfit for any type of leadership position in any capacity.

Besides, look at the bio of this clown. That’s Russ Decker….dumb as a brick and twice as dense.

Same Old Crap

It’s always kind of funny (and frankly rather tragic) when the MJS Editorial Board writes about taxes. Take this editorial for example.

A tax that lowers costs? In the short run maybe, but certainly not long-term. Let me just add one other thing. The state Senate should be focused on cutting costs, not raising taxes. Decker and his toadies won’t do that though…that requires creative thinking…..something in short supply in the majority in the upper house in Madistan.

Wonder What the Morons in Madistan and Washington Will Think of This

Do you think this will make a difference to Pol Pot Doyle or the other “tax the rich” morons who write our tax laws?

Democrats in Congress remain committed to raising taxes on grounds that tax rates don’t much matter to economic growth, and in any case they only help the rich. They may be the last public officials on the planet to believe this. In recent weeks alone, some of the unlikeliest political leaders have endorsed tax rate cuts in the name of making their economies better.

Start in Europe, where Socialist Party Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero pledged in December that if re-elected, “One of the first decisions I would take is to eliminate the wealth tax [up to 2.5%],” which he says is one of the highest in Europe and “punishes savings.” Mr. Zapatero is no conservative. But he’s joining the European march down the Laffer Curve on taxes, having already phased in reductions in Spain’s corporate tax rate to 30% from 35% and its personal income tax rate to 43% from 45%.

Like France and Germany, Spain is cutting rates because of the tax competition from their European Union neighbors such as Ireland and East Europe. There are now at least 11 nations formerly behind the Iron Curtain with flat rate taxes of 25% or lower. On January 1, a new flat tax of 10% became law in Bulgaria, replacing its progressive rate structure and as far as we know the lowest such rate in the world. The newly elected Polish parliament is also planning to cut taxes, though an earlier flat-tax proposal earned a veto threat from the president.

And this just in: In the Middle East, Kuwait has decided to slash its corporate income tax on foreign companies to 15% from 55%. Finance Minister Mostafa al-Shemali argued for the cut, noting that Kuwait attracted less than $300 million in foreign investment last year, compared to some $18 billion in lower-tax Saudi Arabia (which has a religious tax but no corporate or income tax on Saudi nationals). “This law will encourage foreign investors to enter Kuwait,” says Ahmed Baqer, head of the parliament’s finance panel.

It’s getting lonelier all the time at the top for America, which with a corporate tax rate of 35% is one of the few developed nations left with a rate of more than 30%. Economist Dan Mitchell tracks these trends for the Cato Institute, and he finds that 26 developed nations have cut either personal or corporate income tax rates since 2005. Since 1980, OECD nations have sliced their average personal income tax rate by 24 percentage points, to 40% from 64%. Corporate tax rates have fallen by more than 20 percentage points. Foreign leaders have learned that, in a world of easy global capital flows, high tax rates chase away investment and entrepreneurs.

Some of these tax-cutting nations — such as Estonia, Ireland, Russia and Spain — have seen revenues rise even as rates have fallen. This is what turns socialists into supply-siders in Spain, if regrettably not in the U.S.

I doubt this will have any effect in Washington. We already know the Morons in Madistan will pretend the actions described above are not “facts”.

Seriously Unhinged and Useless

The header on this post describes Nancy Pelosi, the most ineffective Speaker of the House in the history of that institution. Check out this little tidbit from Breitbart. Emphasis mine.

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at Republicans on Thursday, saying they want the Iraq war to drag on and are ignoring the public’s priorities.

“They like this war. They want this war to continue,” Pelosi, D- Calif., told reporters. She expressed frustration over Republicans’ ability to force majority Democrats to yield ground on taxes, spending, energy, war spending and other matters.

“We thought that they shared the view of so many people in our country that we needed a new direction in Iraq,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference in the Capitol. “But the Republicans have made it very clear that this is not just George Bush’s war. This is the war of the Republicans in Congress.”

Asked to clarify her remarks, Pelosi backed off a bit.

“I shouldn’t say they like the war,” she said. “They support the war, the course of action that the president is on.”

“And that was a revelation to me,” she said, “because I thought the American people’s voices were so—and still are—so strong in this regard.”

Pelosi, who opposed the U.S.-led invasion from the start, said the war was “a catastrophic mistake.”

Despite being forced to make concessions on multiple fronts, Pelosi said Democrats have been fiscally responsible and attuned to the public’s concerns. As a result, she said, voters will reward Democrats in next year’s presidential and congressional elections.

Democrats “set a high water mark” on many bills, she said. “Where we have to come to is a different place,” thanks to the “political reality of not having a president of the United States. And nothing speaks more clearly to Democratic victories in the next election than when you see this is what is possible.”

In response, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in statement: “Republicans have stood on principle to protect current and future generations of Americans, whether it polled well or not. The success our troops are having in Iraq today is proof positive that our stance was the right one.”

Nancy, the fact that someone as stupid and naive as you are is actually in a position of responsibility is why the disapproval rating of Congress is where it is. Do America a favor and step down.

My Thoughts on the New Wisconsin Budget

As you drive past an airport, you notice that an aircraft is ready to take off. The airplane contains Pol Pot Doyle, Babs Lawton and every Wisconsin legislator that voted FOR the new budget. Unfortunately, the plane crashes on takeoff, killing the pilots and engulfing the fueselage in flames but, not harming any of the passengers.

When you pull up to the wreck, you see that you will be able to save ONLY ONE of the occupants of the plane before the leaking fuel explodes. Do you:

A) Go have lunch? or,
B) Decide to go to a movie?

Who Is This Man?

If you guessed Joseph Stalin, you were WRONG!!

It’s really Henry Waxman, Stalinist from California and opponent of free speech.

What a wonderful use of our tax dollars. Too bad Waxman and his little sycophants are unaware of the 1st Amendment.