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July 12, 2002
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
July 11, 2002
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
July 10, 2002
CounterPunch Wire
Third Party
Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status
Nassar Ibriham &
Majed Nassar
Bush's
Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing
Robert Fisk
Ain't That
America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom
Dave Marsh
The Return
of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting
Bernard Weiner
Hope and
Despair in
the Body Politic
Gary Leupp
European
Worries and
Bush's Terror War
July 9, 2002
St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic
Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.
Jack McCarthy
Florida:
a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?
Robert Fisk
How a Saudi
Billionaire
Does Beirut
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How Bush
Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
July 6, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Loose
Lips:
Liberty, Democracy & Bush
Michael Neumann
What's
So Bad About Israel?
Steve Baughman
Ashcroft's
Vendetta:
Lynching John Lindh
July 5, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Bush Freezes Peace Process
Todd May
Independence
and Terrorism
Rahul Mahajan
Why I
Won't Celebrate the Fourth of July This Year
July 4, 2002
S. Brian Willson
What
the Flag Means to Me
Philip Farruggio
Independence Day and
the Working Poor
Tom Gorman
The Uncommon
Pledge
of Allegiance
Chris Floyd
Jungle
Fever:
Bush's Bolivian Mercenaries
July 3, 2002
Francis Boyle
The Death
of the Oslo Accords
Mokhiber / Weissman
Cracking
Down on Corp. Crime
Robert Jensen
Lynne
Cheney's Primer
Behzad Yaghmaian
An Alternative
to the G-8s Africa Initiative
Toward a Global AIDS Fund and a Living Wage
John Borowski
Public
Schools Under Seige
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
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July
12, 2002
Sin Tax Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each"
by Walt Brasch
"Pssst."
I walked straight ahead, looking neither
right nor left in a darkened alley illuminated by a quarter-moon.
"Pssst."
I quickened my pace, but there was no
avoiding the shadowy figure. "Ain't gonna harm ya. Jus'
wanna sell ya somethin'."
I hesitated, shaking. Stepping in front
of me, he shoved a pack under my nose. I was afraid to speak.
He wasn't.
"Cigs. Buck each," he whispered
ominously through his throat.
"A buck?" I asked suspiciously.
"You want it or not?"
"That's only $20 a pack." In
tandem with the gnarling anti-smoker lobby, apparently frustrated
by years of smoker abstinence, 11 state legislatures had raised
cigarette taxes in  2002; about 20 more would eventually
increase the cigarette tax.
The largest increase was for New York
City smokers who were being choked with a $1.50 a pack state
tax, a $1.50 a pack city tax, and 39 cents in federal taxes,
raising a pack to more than $7. The price would remain about
a New York minute.
New Jersey, which New Yorkers think
of as a place to dump trash, soon came into line; in a spirit
of comraderie--and because it didn't want all those snooty city
people crossing the Hudson River--the Garden State raised its
taxes. Nearby Pennsylvania, where Ben Franklin once thought hemp
could be the Commonwealth's drug of choice, tripled its taxes
to more than $1 a pack.
To justify the tax increases, governors
and their loopy legislators had claimed they were concerned about
the health of the residents, the fact that teens were buying
cigarettes illegally--and that there were more holes in their
deficit-ridden budgets than potholes on state highways.
To underscore their states' determinations
to keep their residents safe from smoke, by 2004 several state
legislatures created stiff prison time for driving while under
the influence of cigarettes, assault with a deadly cigarette,
and jaywalking while puffing. None taxed smoke-spewing industries,
however, since they all raised their fingers and gave the Boy
Scout promise to some day think about installing filters on their
smoke stacks.
I was desperate and my would-be supplier
knew it.
"You think just because a pack's
more expensive, you can stop?" my dealer asked. "You
don't think those cigarette company executives were blowing smoke
past the Congress when they said nicotine isn't addictive? Don't
you think these states are now addicted to the revenue from cigarette
taxes and really want you to keep smoking?"
I leaped at my stalking shadowy figure
with the miracle junk.
"Not so fast!" he growled,
pulling the pack away. "Let's see your bread."
"I don't have any bread," I
pleaded. "Not since the five buck tax on anything with flour
in it."
"Not that bread, turkey!
Bread! Lettuce!"
"I gave up lettuce two years ago,"
I said, "when we were wilted by the $7 tax on anything grown
by independent farmers. Said it'd help the economy and balance
the state's need to send legislators to off-shore conferences."
"Bucks! Dollar bills!" he explained.
"Not since the 17.76 percent Freedom
Tax for anyone wanting to withdraw anything from their savings,
checking, or CD accounts."
The man pulled up his trench coat and
began to leave.
"Wait!" I pleaded, digging
into my pockets. "I got change."
He laughed, contemptuously. "That's
not even coffee money."
"I don't drink coffee," I mumbled.
"Not since they imprisoned Juan Valdez and his donkey for
trying to roast the $35 a pound bean tax." I grabbed for
his supply of cigarettes, each disguised in a plain brown wrapper,
each more valuable than a banned rap record. He again pulled
them away.
"I ain't no Red Cross. You want
cigs, you pay for cigs. I got thousands who will."
"I need a fix. You can't let me
die on the streets."
"If it was just me, I'd do it. But
there's the boys. They keep the records. If I give you a pack
and don't get no money, they'll break both my arms. Cigs are
big business. I don't cross nobody. And I don't give it away."
"I'll get it from the internet,"
I said. About two-thirds of the internet sales are shipped from
Indian reservations, which don't add state or federal taxes.
"Could do that, but how do you know
the purity of the merchandise? Think Navajos can grow tobacco
in Arizona deserts?" He paused a moment. "I hear the
Indians sometimes cut peyote into their stash. With me, you get
guarantees it's pure nicotine and tobacco, cut just right."
"Give me a pack," I demanded,
"or I'll tell everyone on the street that you have the stuff.
What happens when you can't meet the demand?"
"There'll always be a demand,"
he said, "but I have junk that isn't so expensive. Not many
taxes. Gives you an artificial high but diminishes brain capacity
even faster."
"Everything's being taxed."
"Wouldn't joke about that,"
he said. "Legislators never added taxes to beer or liquor."
"Probably an oversight," I
said.
"Probably because without it, they
never would have passed those other ridiculous taxes."
Walt Brasch,
a former newspaper reporter and editor, never smoked--or even
inhaled--but he understands a tax-shaft when he falls into one.
Brasch's latest book is "The
Joy of Sax," a witty and penetrating look at America
During the Bill Clinton Era. The book is available at local and
on-line bookstores. You may reach Brasch by e-mail at wbrasch@planetx.bloomu.edu
Today's
Features
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
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