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Eric Garner and the Dog Who Didn’t Bark
Amid the contention over the Eric Garner case — whether the force used against him was justified, how much his criminal and medical histories should bear on the events, etc. — two points have emerged with what should be crystal clarity: that the cigarette taxes that make selling “loosies” so profitable are absurd, and that the crime Garner was being arrested for at the time of his death is almost wholly a creation of these taxes.
To give a sense of just how crazy cigarette taxes are in New York City, consider that each pack of 20 is subject to $4.35 in state taxes, plus an additional $1.50 in city taxes: in all, a little over $0.29 per cigarette. Given that cigarettes are legally available within a day’s drive for less than the cost of the taxes, it’s little wonder that an estimated 57% of the cigarettes sold in the state are smuggled in (the highest rate in the nation; Lord knows how much higher the figure is for NYC itself). It’s even less of a surprise that street vendors like Garner and this fellow can make a living selling individual cigarettes for $0.70 each or $1 for two.
Now, given this situation — and the supposed concern for people victimized by overzealous law enforcement — you would think that at least someone in the Empire State or Gotham would call for a reexamination of the tax policies that directly led to Garner’s arrest and, indirectly, to his death.
What have we gotten? Nary a whisper. If Andrew Cuomo or Mayor de Blasio have said anything to that effect, it has escaped Google’s notice. Indeed, as recently as this past July (the month Garner died) Cuomo was heralding the success of the state’s anti-cigarette smuggling task force. NYT columnist Gail Collins — who wrote a piece just last year praising President Obama’s call for increasing national cigarette taxes — hasn’t made a peep on the matter. Even the wonderful Heather Mac Donald at the equally wonderful City Journal hasn’t commented on New York’s cigarette taxes in the three pieces she’s written that touch on Garner’s death, other than to cite his violations of them as broken windows in need of policing; the idea that the taxes themselves lead to criminality by incentivizing smuggling has not appeared in any of her work that I can find.
Meanwhile, in Washington State, Governor Jay Inslee launched a call for increasing the Evergreen State’s cigarette taxes by $0.50/pack in just the last few weeks; if successful, this would make the Evergreen State the home of the second-highest cigarette taxes in the nation (it’s currently at #6). Curiously — though not surprisingly — Washington currently has the fourth-highest rate of cigarette smuggling. Anyone want to make a bet which way that number goes if Inslee is successful?
Broken Windows is a solid theory with a good deal of empirical data to support it; one can endorse it in general while criticizing its specific application in enforcing laws that aren’t merely minor, but profoundly stupid.
Published in General
The linked story here says the the New York Tax department was working with 12 federal and local law enforcement agencies. I was assuming that most of these “illegal” cigarettes were purchased in lower tax states and smuggled into New York, not hijacked delivery trucks. If that is the case then the Federal tobacco tax has been paid. Why is the Federal Government helping to collect New York taxes?
Forgotten history. Maybe some in New York should at least read the wikipedia entry on the Sugar Act.
Tom, I’ve mostly nodded along when people criticize the laws at the root of the Garner incident. However, I think it a good point to clearly state just what about the law is stupid. Is it sales, use, or excise taxes in general? Is it that tax avoidance is considered a crime? Is it the extent of the tax?
If it’s delivery trucks then it could still be an interstate thing. And taxes won’t necessarily have been paid if they were hijacked before delivery.
The real question is have we turned law enforcement into a tax collection service, or have we armed the tax collectors? I don’t think either is a good idea, but one or the other has occurred.
Sorry, should have made that clearer. I think it’s insane to have taxes on a product that are as high as exist on cigarettes in NYC, both in terms of the absolute amount and the relative amount compared to neighboring states.
If taxes were set at a more reasonable rate, the costs and risks of smuggling would be prohibitive compared to those of lawful commerce.
I think the stupidity comes from the inability of pro-taxers to realize that taxes cannot be endlessly raised without knock-on effects. There is also a lack of understanding that certain desires cannot be extinguished through taxation alone (although perhaps – perhaps – taxes have been one of the drivers behind the decrease in smoking rates).
Taxing “sinful” items has a long history, and not always an unsuccessful one. But it is exactly these successes which seem to lead many to believe that taxes can always be increased without adverse effects.
I think the hijacking statement was made sarcastically.
The cigarettes Garner (and other smugglers) sell are almost always bought legally in another state, and thus the Federal cigarette tax paid for. If it is not a Federal crime to transport cigarettes across state lines, why should Federal agencies be involved in prosecuting the smuggling?
I quit smoking for my blood pressure, but the fact that cigarettes were over $5/pack had something to do with it.
Blame the constitution.
There are virtually no constitutional limits to the jurisdiction of municipalities. Just because the federal and/or state governments have already ruled/regulated/taxed a particular area or activity, there is no constitutional limit to municipalities also ruling/regulating/taxing in that same area.
The Founders thought this would be mitigated by the fact that the Federal government’s jurisdiction was going to be limited to those area enumerated in the Constitution. They did not foresee how easy it would be for the Federal government to start acting in areas where it had no enumerated authority.
In Canada’s constitution, cities are subject to the authority of the Province. This creates its own problems, as elected municipal politicians are reduced to administrating provincial legislation with very little discretion of their own, and the provincial legislature can redraw a city’s borders and rewrite a city’s charter with virtually no input from the city of its residents. Still, if that’s the only way to limit the constitutional powers of municipal politicians (it shouldn’t be), I can grudgingly live with it (for the time being).
ON THE OTHER HAND: In many, many, many ways, New York City is SUCH a special case. It is a huge city in terms of population and economic activity, with a really huge government. It really should probably be a State in its own right.
Often when stories of idiotic governance come out of New York City, I wonder if it’s intellectually proper to apply them to the nation as a whole. How much does New York’s unique political circumstances contribute to its idiocy, and how much are other cities inoculated from similar idiocy thanks to their better-designed charters and better-drawn borders.
(Similarly, there’s a pretty good case to be made that much of Detroit’s misfortune stem from how it was physically and constitutionally designed. At 138 square miles, the city could accommodate Boston, San Francisco, and Manhattan all within its limits.)
First people like Bloomberg tell you that the high tax is aimed at discouraging people from smoking. Then, the city gets used to the revenue and are be really upset if people actually stopped smoking because that means less money the city to spend. Sin Tax always has more to do with Tax than Sin.
In NYC, the City and State tax amount is over $5 a pack and then you have to add to that the actual cost of the cigarettes. After that, you would have to find a place where you are actually allowed to smoke them.
Well stated. The purpose of Broken Windows is to maintain order through the enforcement of community laws. The purpose is not to pass more laws just so you have something to do Broken Windows enforcement on.
The success of Broken Windows relies in part on having a reasonable set of laws in the first place.
Vance Richards: #11 “Sin Tax always has more to do with Tax than Sin.”
Right on Vance. There is money in sin.
Wellllll…
One of the big reasons the tax on tea rankled the colonists so was that, in an age when safe drinking water wasn’t really a thing, tea was a staple pretty much required for human survival. They didn’t really know that boiling the water is what made it safe to drink. They simply knew that drinking tea instead of water wouldn’t kill them.
Tobacco is, pretty clearly I think, a luxury rather than a necessity.
That’s not to say that it should be ripe for outrageous taxation, but it’s not in the same league as taxing a necessity for human life.
I mean, it’s not like carbon dioxide, and/or carbohydrates, and/or vegetable oils. Only a maniac would think of taxing those substances!
;-)
I don’t know how it is in other states. Tennessee sets the limit on what sales tax cities and counties can collect.
In Illinois there is something called “home rule”. As I understand it, it allows local governments to add to or even contervene state laws if such is voted in by the local government.
However, there is also something called “pre-emption”, wherein if a law is passed by a 2/3 (?or maybe 3/4) majority, it will pre-empt any locality from writing anything either more restrictive or contervening. So, for instance, the new state Concealed Carry Law was passed with pre-emption, making it the controling law that no local government could overturn (locally). Indeed, that requirement was one of two requirements that the downstate democrats (who act an awful lot like republicans much of the time) gave Speaker Madigan if he was to get their support for a CCW law. (The other was SHALL ISSUE – also pre-empted as part of the CCW law.)
Oh that’s not fair. The police know that their primary job is tax collectors. Instapundit notes the obvious aspect of the NYPD “work slow-down” that’s currently under way:
The police know what their job is. They’re the enforcers for the protection racket that is NYC.
Mr. Garner had been arrested 30+ times and was out on bail when for reasons only known to Mr. Garner he decided to resist arrest on one particular day and that decision cost him his life.
Out of the millions of residents of NYC the NYPD did not find Mr. Garner selling “loosies” by accident. Merchants called police to complain that Mr. Garner was selling “loosies” outside the front doors of their stores.
Taxes on cigarettes in New York is a legislative problem as well as the penalties for selling loosies to avoid taxes on cigarettes.
I’m always amazed that conservative critics complain about President Hussein and Attorney-General Holder nullifying laws, and yet they complain because police do not nullify laws, or practice selective enforcement.
It’s not much different in the U.S. legally speaking, even if it’s not explicitly spelled out. All city charters (except Washington, D.C.) are issued under state laws. Unless prohibited in some way by New York’s state constitution, the legislature could break up New York City tomorrow.
Cities in our federalist system have no special rights under the U.S. Constitution, unlike the member states.
I read the NYT article linked above. Even though it’s black market, and it’s not easy for most people to do what he’s doing. He is working pretty hard for his living.
Still, when he mentions that he doesn’t allow drug dealers in his block, what does that mean, exactly? And he calls it his block. It’s his territory. It sounds like there’s an element of violence in what he’s doing to protect that territory from competitors (not drug dealers). It’s also possible he’s paying someone higher up the chain for the “rights” to that block.
Doug Watt #19 – wow! As I understand it, none of the police officers saw Mr. Garner selling anything – and he had NO cigarettes on him. While I haven’t heard directly anywhere, I would bet NONE of the store keepers was willing to sign a complaint against him. There has been NO MENTION anywhere that a warrant was being served.
?So just why were the cops arresting him.
?Why do the cops insist on defending EVERY action of other cops. It is much like the blacks defending Michael Brown in Ferguson.
And this thread isn’t about whether the actions were appropriate but whether that law or that collections of laws are righteous. Let us not forget that the concept of jury nullification IS still alive; the SCOTUS only ruled judges no longer had to inform juries of this fact. In the pre-revolution times the colony courts often found people arrested by the crownb to have been the vicitm of bogus laws and so found Not Guilty. So infuriated the crown that there was an (unsuccessful) attempt to take away the court system vis a vis the crown from the colonists.
The problem is precisely what Tom Meyer notes – there is little serious complaint about many laws that shouldn’t even exist. Cops in Chicago (amd NYC) have been arresting people for merely possessing a firearm, fully knowing that the Second Amendment exists but simply disregarding it. Cops in numerous states (Tennessee and Florida come to mind) have been shaking down motorists on RICO grounds with nothing but a larger amount of cash as “evidence”. Cops don’t care about people, the law, etc. They do what they are TOLD TO DO.
So the way to control cops, and to bring them into line with what citizens believe is proper is to increase the freedom of citizens, decrease the overall burden of the law, eliminate silly concepts of taxing people’s behaviors – and cops will be left with doing those things that cops properly should be doing. “Broken Windows” is appropriate item for cops to focus on – it’s destruction of property.
But government refuses to relinquish these laws, regardless of how silly they are. Jury nullification might be one way to start sending the government a message. But you would need a historically informed populace to carry that out.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that NYC had the death penalty for selling loose cigarettes, enforced by the police, not the courts.
The police’s job is to enforce the law, whether it’s the President, the DoJ, or the NYPD. The law they’re enforcing may be a good idea or a bad one. In this case, it was an idiotic law.
NYC decided to raise it’s taxes such that people doing what Garner does is an inevitability, like a natural law. Heck, Soviet Russia couldn’t stop people from smuggling cigarettes in, how could NYC do it?
Selling the cigarettes and resisting arrest are two different things. If the state of NY mandates a criminal penalty for selling cigarettes that have not been taxed by NY and the police had complainants that Mr. Garner was selling untaxed cigarettes (the merchants that called the police) then under the laws of NY Mr. Garner was subject to arrest. To say the police executed Mr. Garner because he sold illegal cigarettes is a false charge.
The rights or wrongs of selling untaxed cigarettes is a legislative problem as are state laws that mandate the police have a duty to act when a crime is committed. There is a difference between crimes and violations and those that comment on the law would be wise to take the time to learn the difference.
The reality of the idiotic taxes levied on cigarettes and the governmental agencies used to enforce the non-smoker nanny state of NYC is partially the issue but, ultimately, are beside the point. this was a guy who was willing to break the law to make his living. that cigarettes were more profitable than most illegal drugs in NYC, meant that was what he was dealing. but, had cigarette prices been reasonable, he would have been peddling something else.
he was a man who was willing to do what made the most profit. it is sad. but when government loses money, in any form, they get angry. with sin taxes, the liberals in charge of the city get to collect their money and tell themselves they are doing a service to the public in the process. Make no mistake, this was a man sending his son to UCONN. he needed money.
With the economy where it is and sin taxes all that keep governments floating, this is how many make their living. it is how the Kennedy family became wealthy and powerful. Breaking the law pays well. a small sampling of the NYC news articles bemoaning the breaking of the cigarette tax laws in the city inevitably focus on the revenue lost by the city and state as a result of smuggling, not of the number of people who may or may not have stopped smoking as a result. Meanwhile, the FDA is seeking to make the most effective smoking cessation aid in ages (electronic cigarettes) nearly impossible to find and taxed as much as a cigarette.
The saddest part of this and the most frightening, is that the police state in many places is such that police can and will take a man into custody for selling any contraband. had they not arrested him, had he and others like him been left unmolested to continue selling untaxed cigarettes, the general public who demanded these laws for the ‘public good’ would have demanded police be fired for not arresting him.
the long and short of all of this is simple. pay your taxes. property taxes, excise taxes, sales taxes. If I fail to pay my property taxes on my home, the city and the state will foreclose on my home for those taxes. the sheriff will come to my home and remove my belongings from the property and change the locks. if I resist, he will arrest me. if I resist that arrest, barricade myself in a home fully paid off (except the taxes) he will stand outside my home with his friends, fully armed, ‘negotiating’ with me until I come out and submit to arrest or ultimately, they WILL shoot me if I resist with every means I have. all in all, the government WILL kill you over taxes. Most people know this. Eric Garner was simply the most recent reminder.
So you are saying that the police actually had a signed complaint and were executing a warrant based upon that sworn statement. OR that they actually observed a criminal act being committed.
I don’t believe that until some actual evidence of that is presented.
Why doesn’t one of the endangered species Republicans on the city council propose an ordnance declaring selling “loosies” is not a crime 300 feet away from any other commercial establishment selling cigs? It might highlight the hypocrisy of the libs in the minds of many of the low information voters in NYC.
Once again, if the police have a named complainant(s) they do not have to personally witness Mr. Garner selling the cigarettes. If the police have reasonable belief that the complainant witnessed the crime that constitutes probable cause to make an arrest. If you find that offensive speak to your legislator.
Karon, there is a world of difference between shooting someone (intentionally using force likely to result in death) versus taking someone down (using force unlikely to result in death).
Also, the police will not kill you over taxes. They may arrest you over taxes, though. If you choose to escalate the situation by resisting attempted arrest by the duly authorized officers acting according to the duly enacted laws, then the resulting altercation will be over something other – more serious – than taxes.
Because that’s still creating a law that says some people must pay taxes and others needn’t bother. Either there is a tax to which all like activity is subject, or there is not. Let’s keep in mind what’s really objectionable about the existing law: it’s that it’s excessive and meddling, not that the tax exists at all.