Posted on 12/05/2014 7:45:12 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him.
And even though lots of people don’t want to hear it, reasonable people can disagree on whether illegally excessive force was to blame. Personally, watching the ubiquitous video of Garner’s arrest, it looks like excessive force to me. But the simple fact is that a Staten Island grand jury saw evidence that led it to conclude otherwise. People should at least entertain the possibility that it might have gotten the ruling right.
But you know what reasonable people can’t dispute? New York’s cigarette taxes are partly to blame for Eric Garner’s death.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky made this point Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, and liberals have been freaking out about it ever since.
“I think it’s hard not to watch that video of him saying, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ and not be horrified by it,” Paul said. “But I think there’s something bigger than the individual circumstances. . . . I think it’s also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so that’s driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, ‘Hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.’ . . . For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws.”
Now, Paul probably shouldn’t have used the word “bigger.” He clearly meant cigarette taxes are an issue that transcends the individual circumstances of Garner’s death. But it was chum for critics who wanted to misunderstand him. For instance, a column by Salon’s Joan Walsh suggested that Paul’s answer “wrecked” his presidential prospects.
“What kind of callousness is required to say the ‘bigger’ issue in Garner’s death isn’t excessive police use of force, or police practice toward African-Americans generally, but . . . taxes?” Walsh wrote. “What kind of heart do you have to have to use the Eric Garner tragedy to rail against . . . cigarette taxes?”
Well, I don’t know what kind of heart it requires, but I do know that anyone with a level head should understand — and agree with — Paul’s point. When you pass a law, you authorize law enforcement to enforce it. That’s actually why they’re called “law enforcement.” Google it.
New York City declared war on tobacco a long time ago, and in the process City Hall has become addicted to Brobdingnagian cigarette taxes. That’s why law enforcement is enforcing the laws against bootleg smokes.
Of course, reasonable people can debate the wisdom of such laws. But only unreasonable people can deny that those laws are partly to blame. Without laws making cigarettes more expensive, Eric Garner would be alive today, period.
What’s so strange about the outrage over Paul’s remarks is that Paul’s point is perfectly consistent with his — and the Left’s — opposition to the drug war.
I ultimately disagree with Paul about that, but it’s a morally serious argument. Even outright legalizers (Paul says he isn’t one) aren’t necessarily in favor of, say, heroin use. Rather, they argue that the costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits. Too many are imprisoned, too many are arrested, and too many die accidentally while being arrested. Well what’s true of low-level heroin pushers is also true of low-level cigarette pushers. In the war on tobacco, like the war on drugs, if politicians will the ends, they must will the means.
This is something that libertarians understand better than everyone else: The state is about violence. You can talk all day about how “government is just another word for those things we do together,” but what makes government work is force, not hugs.
If you sell raw-milk cheese even after the state tells you to stop, eventually people with guns will show up at your home or office and arrest you. If you resist arrest, something very bad might happen. You might even die for selling bootleg cheese.
Everyone agrees: No one should die for selling bootleg cigarettes. But if you pass and enforce a law against such things, you increase the chances things might go wrong. That’s a fact, whether it sounds callous to delicate ears or not.
— Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Agreed. Too much government and too many laws.
Ive been saying it since it happened. I even wrote to my state senator about it because the legislature was raising penalties for selling Loosies in Michigan.
Oh I don’t know. The cigarette taxes are ridiculous and I remember being able to buy “loosies” in stores years ago (only in the ghetto though, that was not a thing in middle or upper class areas), but this really seems a stretch.
There’s plenty of petty crimes the guy could have been committing that would have attracted police attention and it would have ended in the same sad way.
Don’t resist arrest, ESPECIALLY if you are just doing a bs “crime”.
Rand Paul Is Right about Eric Garner: NY cigarette taxes are partly to blame for his death.
______________________________________________________
Rand Paul is not right. He’s wrong.
Blaming cigarette taxes for Garner’s death is like blaming jaywalking laws for Brown’s death.
Taxes made him morbidly obese? I don’t get it.
“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
“Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”
~ Ayn Rand
The protestors want a boogeyman, look at government greed.
It’s now been reported that Garner was a member of organized crime. If it hadn’t been selling “loosies” illegally it would have just been something else. This event was tragic, but if one lives a life of crime, whether deemed petty or not, there is the likelihood of facing the consequence for it, possibly dealt out by over zealous police. It’s kind of along the lines of “live by the sword, die by the sword.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3234089/posts
Last Saturday, I brought my son to his activities at Flushing, NY ( Queens Borough ).
My car is a White Tooyta Camry and it was parked in a side street.
We went to a Food Court to have dinner and were just about to leave when I told my son to sit at the back of the car because we had lots of shopping baskets I placed in the front passenger seat.
Guess what? Two cops came over and blocked my car from leaving.
They asked who the person on the back seat was ( I responded very politely that he is my son ), and asked for my driver’s license.
After double checking with HQ, they let me go and told me politely to have a safe drive home. I asked them what on earth was wrong.
They told me they were looking for illegal Livery Cab drivers and my car fit the profile.
I left thinking to myself, why is there a law preventing someone from making money by providing a personal service to someone else simply because the city wants to protect the Taxi franchise?
These cops are being diverted towards harassing law abiding folks like me when they should be looking for criminals.
Now people like me are potential criminals.
In my hometown the cops use night vision goggles to arrest kids who are illegally making out at the beach.
>Food Court
Judge Anthony Bourdain presiding?
OH, I agree.
Years ago when I live in Jersey City, we would often shop at this one supermarket. You’d take the bus there, but coming home there were always guys waiting to drive you home with your groceries. Sure, it was illegal livery work (although I don’t actually know if it was illegal in Jersey City or not) and once in a while it gave me pause to be getting into unmarked cars with strange black guys.
But, nothing bad ever happened and it was very helpful.
My mother was a big libertarian type and all in favor of that sort of thing.
It’s disgusting how well this kind of ploy works for Liberals. Blame anything or anyone except their icon. Morbidly obese, confirmed criminal Garner shouldn’t have been blatantly breaking even a minor law. Garner didn’t die because of taxes. He died because he was in ill health and because he refused to be handcuffed after being discovered breaking the law. These were all his own decisions.
I said this from the beginning, but I referred to the taxes as part of the Democrat war on tobacco.
Democrats are going to be sorry that they took the war on tobacco as far as they did, though, because the same restraints and regulations that applied to cigarette smokers will be applied to marijuana. The second hand smoke law suits have already started in states with legalized marijuana.
Yep.
Democrats pass stupid nanny state laws/taxes.
Democrats protect bad cops with unions.
Victims of bad Democrat laws and Democrat cops need to stop voting for Democrats.
The Taxman killed Eric Garner
The bigger the government the smaller the citizen.
We’re becoming microscopic.
Americans like the Nanny State. Just ask the DEA.
Nonsense, this wasn’t a special arrest method taught to cops to use if the arrest is cigarette based.
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