NYC Sues Kentucky Cigarette Company

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an article about how NYC's Mayor Bloomberg has filed a federal lawsuit against "a Kentucky-based ring of firms" that have allegedly been selling cigarettes in New York City illegally.

How does that work? Well, it's complicated. You can read the WSJ article yourself, and I urge you read other sources on this matter as well, but the bottom line is this: the taxation of cigarettes is essentially a scam (like most taxes). And when it came to the attention of Mr. Bloomberg that someone was selling cigs and not bothering to mess with his insane and unfair bureaucracy, well, of course he's foaming at the mouth. Just as any other mobster would when they found out someone that ain't got ethics was chiselin' in on their fix, see.

If I own a hammer - if I really own it - it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it, including sell it to you at a yard sale. If you own a pack of cigarettes, theoretically it's just as much your property as your hammer. By what right does some old man behind a desk call the cops and call you a "smuggler" if you sell your pack of cigarettes to some housewife in Forest Hills? Especially when that old man is a billionaire many times over already.

Of course, they say "well, governments must tax things, to pay for important things like roads and schools". That's the same line they used when America invaded the Phillipines in 1899 and forced our ways upon their society. And all this unfair taxation (didn't we start this country in order to get away from this in the first place?) is really paying for all sorts of pork-barrel-project garbage that the public didn't ask for, didn't want, and can't do anything about. Just like in the Phillipines.

It's not about politics - both parties do "tax and spend" equally, and both are taxing things that ought not be taxed (they're even seriously talking about taxing soda pop now) - and Bloomberg has never really been able to decide whether he's a Democrat or a Republican anyway. (I am neither, for the record.)

Having said all that, the WSJ lists the Louisville-based "Chavez, Inc." as a primary defendant in the investigation, and they have something of a bad reputation, although that means nothing to me. I don't necessarily believe everything I read on the internet, not even my own blog. According to WFPL, Chavez Inc. was raided by federal agents in late 2009 and all of their assets were seized, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Kentucky has an ongoing civil lawsuit against them.

The report also says, "Lawyers for Chavez have said the company was not legally obligated to collect taxes on out-of-state sales."

Chazez, Inc. has also been in trouble with the FDA for allegedly flouting Obama's reprehensible ban on flavored cigarettes, which instantly left tobacco stores across the nation stuck with product they could no longer sell, including clove cigarettes.

I don't know anything about these Chavez folks - I just read the papers and the internet same as you - but it certainly seems as if much of their activities fall under that growing group of citizens whose activities were once perfectly legal and they were made into criminals overnight by the stroke of some corrupt politician's pen.

The solution, of course, is less taxation, less government, and more outrage when someone nib-noses into another person's business and tries to tell them what they can't do. (I understand this philosophy is a major plank of the Tea Party, but I'm not one of them, either.)

Statewide Tobacco Ban?

The anti-smoking forces are looming over Kentucky's civil rights like the Death Star over Alderaan once again. The Courier-Journal is reporting that a bill proposing a statewide tobacco ban is now before the Kentucky legislature.

I oppose any attempts to curtail tobacco usage, even though I don't even smoke, myself (aside from an occasional fine cigar after a good meal or a puff of my pipe whilst striking a Sherlock Holmes-esque pose at my fireplace mantle), mainly because I tend to oppose any attempts to curtail people doing whatever they want to do within the law. I repeat, within the law. And there's the rub, you see: tobacco is legal. You'd think we were talking about Heroin or something, the way the rabid anti-smoking militants carry on.

And speaking of drugs, I find it odd that powerful and influential people are on a tirade against tobacco instead of doing something about Oxycontin and Crack and Meth, all of which are major problems for Kentucky's well-being. If these do-gooders would use a tenth of the resources and funding and effort they spend railing against tobacco to instead help put a stop to the Oxycontin pipeline, Kentucky would be a much safer place. But for some reason, they prefer to make second-hand smoke their pet bugaboo. Why is that, I ask aloud? Qui bono?

I believe diet sodas like Diet Coke to be far more harmful than all the tobacco in the Commonwealth, containing as they do dangerous artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet, Splenda, and Acesulfame-K, as well the equally dangerous High Fructose Corn Syrup. Hell, everything we eat nowadays has corn in it, and not just any corn but genetically modified Monsanto corn. As Ivan Stang once opined, "Cocaine's pretty damn unhealthy, alright, but at least it isn't half our kids' diet."

Nevertheless, you don't see me mounting some goofy campaign to ban these substances, because I do believe it's your right to eat and drink cancerous crap if that's what you really want. Or to play golf amongst nerve gas, even.

Similarly, partially hydrogenated oils are one of the deadliest substances in our food supply, and yet they still are consumed on a daily basis by you and I. Whining about second-hand smoke when you eat and drink poison - literal poison every day of your life - is a little like living inside a septic tank and consuming raw sewage, yet complaining that someone else passed gas.

How about the pollution in Kentucky's air, water and soil caused by Rubbertown, DuPont, and places like Valley of the Drums and Maxey Flats? And these sites are only famous because people found out about them, as opposed to the sites that are still buried out there that you don't know about. Second-hand smoke, compared to what unfathomable chemicals that factories are semi-legally allowed to belch into our air from their smokestacks, is not on the top of my list of things to stress about.

How can you decisively point the finger of blame for any given person's lung cancer when we're swimmming in a sea of mostly-invisible car exhaust at all times, and blobs of ozone float around us constantly? And even though people make jokes like "I believe such-and-such lived too close to the power lines as a kid", it's no joke that people are living too close to the electromagnetic fields of power lines and power stations, and no one is doing anything about it.

And I bet most of these "OMG, your second hand smoke is killing me" people use cellphones. Guess what? You're dead already. Game over.

(Even the ones who don't use cellphones can't escape the radiation from cell towers, which are increasingly being hidden so you won't even know when you're leaning up against one.)

Aluminum is a very toxic metal, yet we cook our food in pans made of it, then wrap the leftovers in foil made of it. We use aluminum-based deodorants, day in and day out. In 1993, the World Health Organization announced their findings that autopsies of Alzheimer's disease victims showed abnormally high concentrations of aluminum in their brains, yet since then absolutely nothing has been done to reduce the public's aluminum intake.

A recent exhaustive analysis of 173 brands of bottled water was recently conducted, and only three of them got an "A". One brand that I often drink was given an "F".

As if arsenic and cryptosporidium in tap water aren't bad enough, did you know that the world's water supply is increasingly contaminated by antidepressants, antibiotics, and other prescription drugs that most municipal water treatment plants cannot remove with their conventional filtration systems? Sewage treatment plants can't eliminate it either, nor can they eliminate MRSA or Clostridium difficile, a truly terrifying superbug which Kentucky is sixth in the nation for reported cases.

Do some Google-cizing around the web and you'll find that practically everything under the sun is being touted as "bad for you" by some nutritional expert or other - peanuts, fish, corn, wheat, protein, caffeine, alcohol, dairy products, red meat, even soy. And we're surrounded by toxic BPA-laden plastics that leach estrogen-mimicking chemicals and more. And don't even get me started on Monosodium Glutamate. The sheer information overload of studying all the data from all these experts will either make you move to a desert island or throw your hands up and say, "The hell with it, it's hopeless trying to be healthy. I'm going to the store to buy a pack of hot dogs and a carton of Luckies."

(So what is the solution? There isn't one. I say, just live your life and let the Lord take you when he decides.)

Did you know that toxic coal ash sludge is now being used as an ingredient in the asphalt on Kentucky roads? It's kind of a complicated and unwieldy subject, and frankly, it's pretty boring - even to me - to read about, and it lacks the clear-cut charm of other causes. You know, causes that people can set up donation-raking organizations for, to whip citizens into a hysterical frenzy over to further their own ambitions. But that doesn't make the coal ash any less toxic a substance being introduced into Kentucky's environment.

How about getting tough on crime before we tackle smoking? There are places in Louisville that are essentially places of total lawlessness and danger, even as the LMPD prefers to spend its time combating perfectly legal strip clubs, and citizens like me who get pulled over and fined for nothing more than forgetting to buckle my seat belt. And let's not forget the LMPD's problematic history of framing innocent people for crimes they didn't commit. Maybe the new Louisville mayoral administration should clean house and start the LMPD all over again, from the bottom up and the top down.

But second-hand smoke? Come on. You're arguing about burnt toast in a burning house.

Finally - and I don't think you need me to remind you of this - I hear tell that it's a statistical certainty that we're all going to die in the end anyway.

Enjoy every sandwich!

Louisville's Ashtray Ordinance

It's bad enough that Louisville has a smoking-ban ordinance, but some aspects of it are even nuttier than expected when you go through the fine print with a fine-tooth comb. For example, there's this nugget of comedy gold:

"Any permanent structure that functioned or was used as an ashtray shall be disabled or altered to prevent its use as an ashtray."

That would, by definition, include toilets. Who among us has never flushed a cigarette butt in a bar restroom, or flicked ashes into its sink? I don't see any bars and restaurants disabling their toilets to prevent ashing into them. (And as we all know, public restrooms are the new smoking parlors these days.)

For more fun facts on the unconstitutional smoking ban, visit my Louisville Mojo column on creative ways to oppose it.