Thursday, August 29, 2019

More Taxation Via Ski Mask


















Borepatch takes a walk down memory lane regarding the Tobacco Settlement.
Governments love to tax. It's one of the few things they do well. Taxing cigarettes and booze is a historical specialty of governments local, state, and federal.  
Those taxes are collected for doing nothing. The government doesn't grow anything. It doesn't have a factory. It takes no business risks. It just collects money from the sale of tobacco on a state and federal average of $2.70 a pack. I know the tobacco companies are making a lot of money. I think smoking is terrible. It's the governments that are profiting the most off tobacco sales.

RTWT.

And now OK and others want to transfer that model to Big Pharma, because reasons.

Again, this isn't The War On (Some) Drugs.
They never even used that as a pretext.

It's a War On Business, with the real aim being solely to fund bigger government. Any pubic benefit is and was no part of either equation, except by way of excuse-making and straw-grasping.

Nota bene the aim of Okiehoma statists is to use the J&J settlement to fund government treatment programs, and local government entities, from the state down, not to actually compensate or make whole the alleged victims, let alone not being addressed from any rationale that the effect was caused by the defendants.

It's a naked tax grab from innocent parties, being shaken down solely because they had a fat wallet.
This differs from daylight armed robbery...how, exactly?

This is simply taxation (in fact, a bill of attainder specifically against J&J via judiciary, which is doubly illegal) without requiring a bill for it to go through the state legislature. Instead of requiring a bill that garnered the support of 99 members of the OK legislature (67 reps and 32 senators) and was then signed by the governor, all of them responsible directly to the people, they only had to bamboozle one lackwit judge (with which clearly Okiehoma, like every state, is oversupplied) and presto! they get a windfall with none of that icky public accountability.
It should be overturned for a host of reasons, but on that ground alone would be sufficient cause to do so.

The Clinton administration and 50 states' legislature did the same thing with tobacco, and got away with it because every hog had his nose in that trough. But cigarettes aren't the same thing at all, morally or financially, as prescription medication, except that costs for the latter will be passed on directly, and forever, exactly as cigarette taxes are, but this time on everyone.

And BTW, if you don't think those cigarette taxes got tacked on to your Chips Ahoy and Oreos from RJR/Nabisco too back then (eventually forcing the conglomerate to break apart because of that tobacco settlement), just like J&J's hit will go onto the price of every box of Band-Aids forever, I've got a bridge to sell you.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't need a bridge, thank you.
Damn blood pressure's out of spec and between this and the null pross on Comey it ain't goin well.
Trainer's inbound, may need to ask her to go extra-hard
Boat Guy

Badger said...

One should reflect that Claire Wolfe's fine quote RE whether it's time to just shoot the bastards was said 20 years ago. How we doin'?

Aesop said...

It's still not quite time to shoot the bastards yet, but if you aren't making lists and stacking loaded magazines, I think you're behind the curve.

Glen Filthie said...

I don’t know if I see it that way. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Big Pharma is a multi billion dollar a year business. They can (and have) bought politicians and petty officials out of pocket change. They are very big wheels in the Doner Class. They can make politicos turn white as a sheet with a dirty look. I think what will happen here is that once the heat is off, it will be appealed and overturned - and the judge will have the riot act read to him behind closed doors.

Unfortunately that is the way our country rolls these days.

MingDaMerciless said...

https://reut.rs/2ZmQApP

SiGraybeard said...

I think Michael Ramirez did a cartoon that nails it pretty good, too.

https://michaelpramirez.com/blaming-big-pharma-for-the-opioid-crisis.html

Pat H. said...

Back when I was living in North Carolina the Tobacco subsidy, funded by a direct tax on tobacco was ended along with the tobacco acreage allotment system. Tobacco farmers at first thought is was the end of tobacco farming. It ended up being the best thing that ever happened to tobacco farming because serious farmers could grow as many acres of the plant they wanted. They're making a lot of money today.

Wayne said...

Ok, Aesop. Do you favor prison time and or executions for the executives at Merck who covered up the problems with Vioxx and killed 100,000 people?

Aesop said...

@Wayne

Both. In any order.

But you don't get to spank another company twenty years later for something they didn't do, because somebody else once did something bad.

You only get to call strikes and balls on the pitcher on the mound now.

J&J didn't have anything to do with fueling OK's "opioid epidemic". China and Mexican drug cartels dii all of that.
All of that.

So after OK impeaches their AG, then shoots him in the head for cause, maybe they can find one that will bitch like hell to the feds to do something about the real cause of the problem.

See if you can figure out why I favor execution for drug dealing.

Anonymous said...

The biggest tax will be when the companies go out of business or the prices are so high no one can afford them so call for nationalization. I'm sure .gov will do a fine job of R&D.

For those who cry about the cost please look at what the minimum FDA requirements are for testing in the lab and the clinic. By far the most money is spent on clinical trials to ensure safe and effective drugs. The stuff you get from China and India.. er, Mexico and Canada wastes no such effort. Check out the high quality work that led to the massive valsartan and related drugs recall. Here is a hint.. in China 'saving face' is more important than getting it right/corrected.

As for the donor class being a problem... well. You got the same left wing MBA's out to make a buck for themselves are running pharma as all the other corporations. These fools actually supported Obamacare.. guess they didn't read it. They may donate but they are giving the money to those building the guillotine for them.

Boning up on natural/herbal medicine should be part of your SHTF plan because you just might need it even before the SHTF.