An “American spring” … really?

The death of Eric Garner has stirred the emotions of many, as have previous such instances of conflict with law enforcement. As a result of that, government officials are already talking about reviews of existing procedures and even looking at new laws to regulate certain tactics during arrests. In a way, no matter what you may think of either Garner’s behavior or of the officer’s methods during the encounter, it could be said that the freelance cigarette salesman may wind up being an agent of change in one form or another.

Unfortunately, some writers tend toward hyperbole at times, and such seems to be the case with David Boaz in an editorial this weekend. He takes the occasion of the protests over Garner’s death and decides to draw a parallel to the death of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia and the beginning of the Arab Spring.

Bouazizi was a street vendor, selling fruits and vegetables from a cart. He aspired to buy a pickup truck to expand his business. But, as property rights reformer Hernando de Soto wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “to get a loan to buy the truck, he needed collateral — and since the assets he held weren’t legally recorded or had murky titles, he didn’t qualify.”

Meanwhile, de Soto notes, “government inspectors made Bouazizi’s life miserable, shaking him down for bribes when he couldn’t produce licenses that were (by design) virtually unobtainable.

Eric Garner’s story is surprisingly similar. He had been arrested more than 30 times, for such crimes as marijuana possession and driving without a license, and most often for selling untaxed cigarettes on the street.

Boaz goes on to write at length about the sin taxes which make cigarettes so expensive in New York and how it leads to black market situations such as the one being exploited by Garner. It’s a subject which I’ve written about extensively myself, and Boaz is absolutely correct in his analysis of that part of the equation. But… an American spring?

Bouazizi’s struggles with the government in Tunisia were just a tad different. What he was trying to do was engage in activity which should, by any rational analysis, be available to anyone. He was selling food. As awful as the taxes are in New York (and they are awful) they are laws passed by the duly elected representatives of the liberals who keep voting Democrats into office there. And Garner was breaking those laws. Similarly, marijuana possession and driving without a license are also small potatoes, but they are still violations of current state laws.

Further, Bouazizi was struggling against an entire government system which was corrupt. People rose up in mass at frustration with the corruption and repression. Our government is far from perfect, but we at least get to elect the people passing the laws. And our police forces are not corrupt in mass. They are hard working people doing a dangerous and increasingly thankless job. You can argue if you like that the cops who engaged Garner acted improperly, but they were not a roving gang of government sanctioned thugs going around the city and shaking down the honest business folk. If any reforms and changes come from this, some – such as the use of body cameras perhaps – may be a benefit, but no sane person thinks the protesters should be bringing down the current government structure.

Garner is not Bouazizi, and the protests taking place in the streets are not the equivalent of the Arab Spring in any way, shape or form.

This is so idiotic. Are cigarette taxes too high in NYC? ALL taxes are too high in NYC, which is why I no longer live there.

But that’s a separate issue.

Eric Garner’s cigarettes were not “tax free” because he was exempted from taxes for doing a charitable service to the bums and the poor; they were “tax free” because they came from organized crime rings, which in NYC at the moment are either Mafia or Middle Eastern jihadi support groups, and were stolen or smuggled to make them “tax free.”

Of course, he sold them outside the door of a legal business owner who actually paid the taxes and fees, not only on tobacco but on his other goods, and if the convenience store prices were higher, it was because of the need to compensate for crime. Neither cigarettes nor anything else is taxed higher in a ghetto neighborhood, but store owners have to charge more because of the costs of doing business.

Also, Garner and all of the others like him would shake down the local business owners and would also threaten them if they complained about the “tax free” cigarette selling activities in front of the doors of their store, and Garner had already been arrested many times for that (and emerged unharmed and barely punished, which shows you why he wasn’t afraid to attack an officer this time around).

Even the neighbors had complained, because having somebody standing outside the local store (where you and your kids go for milk or detergent) saying “Smoke, smoke” is the sure sign of an out of control ghetto neighborhood, and attracts all the lowlifes, bums, underage thugs, and, in fact, drug dealers around.

Taxes are a separate issue...btw, the Mafia and jihadi groups have made a huge fortune off of selling or forcing small gas station owners to sell “untaxed” gasoline. This means gas from stolen tanker trucks, where they have occasionally found that they needed to kill the driver to get the shipment. I believe a couple of years ago, one driver of a cigarette shipper was killed when they stole his truck, but I can’t find the exact incident.

This whole event and story around it is typical new world order trickery, a conundrum for the sheeple to solve.

The evil rotten scum elites think the sheeple are so dumb they will never solve the conundrum. The elites think they are geniuses because they’ve come up with this.

It’s a false choice.

We are told by this story that there are two sides and we have to choose one or the other: either we support the arrest or we are against the arrest.

But there are two separate issues, with sub-issues:

1) the arrest - you either support or oppose HOW the arrest was effected

2) oppressive laws and taxes - you either think the arrest was warranted or you think the arrest should not have even happened in the first place

a) is the high cigarette tax unjust, should we get rid of tobacco laws
b) mixed in with conversation about legalizing marijuana

The trick:

If you SUPPORT the ARREST, you’re being a “good conservative” and supporting the idea of upholding the LAW, even if you disagree with it. Go change it at the ballot box (they neglect to mention that the choices on the ballot are controlled by the elites) ! But by saying this, you are implicitly supporting the idea that it’s acceptable that for minor infractions of the law - sometimes suspects will accidentally be killed by police. Real smart sheeple - wait until that turns against YOU.

If you OPPOSE the ARREST, you’re being a “good libertarian” and saying you do not support excessive use of force - especially for minor infractions of the law. But guess what the banker minions have set up for you - you’ve implicitly agreed that the arrest was for a minor infraction - and then Mr. Liar Bankster then welcomes your opposition to the “excessive” cigarette tax (which it certainly is) then trips on down Liar’s Lane a few more steps and has you agreeing that you think MARIJUANA is also a similar small infraction.

You can see the trolling here on FR. For WEEKS, thousands of posts.

Agree with some, bash others. Keep inching step by step - in EITHER OF TWO directions:

You’re either supporting the movement towards a Gestapo

or you’re supporting legalizing drugs.

To the scumbag elites:

no, we don’t support a totalitarian police state with it’s excessive police force, and

no, we don’t support legalizing drugs to complete the destruction of the minds of ourselves and our progeny, and

no, we don’t support the idea of our government overlords will tax or declare illegal, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea or anything else that we’ve enjoyed as one of life’s simple pleasures for centuries, and

no, we don’t support public drunkenness.

We will continue to speak out on issues independent of each other if they are combined in little conundrums, and we will speak the truth about Christian liberty as far and wide as possible.

That concludes today’s lesson on “An example of how various elite-backed NGOs foment movements so the sheeple will accept the destruction of their own nation and not realize that a few wealthy globalist elite families/organizations are the ones step-by-step marching them towards a horrific wasteland police state where the sheeple are attacked constantly by both criminals and police”.

Sorry for the rant, but I hate the evil that is totalitarianism backed by financial elites.

The people of the UK and Europe should have cleaned house of these elites a long time ago - the American people need to clean house as well.

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COULTER ON GARNER INCIDENT: ‘DO NOT STAND BETWEEN A LIBERAL AND HIS TAXES’

Killed By Big Government