Montana considers poor tax—er, cigarette tax

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 0 Comment

Cool teens

Did you know that smoking correlates directly to income? Thirty-four percent of Americans making between $6,000 and $12,000 a year smoke, compared to only 13% of those making $120,000 or more. The rate of tobacco use is also five times higher among people with GEDs than it is among college graduates. It’s almost like smoking is perfect for shift work, where you get 15-minute breaks every two hours to stand around with your coworkers. Or it’s like cigarettes are a treat, an indulgence for people whose pleasures are otherwise strictly limited. Whatever the reason, you see a lot more people smoking at the bus stop than you do standing around outside the opera.

I mention this phenomenon because the Montana legislature is thinking about raising taxes on tobacco products. Senate Bill 354, sponsored by Mary Caferro (D–Helena), would more than double the state tax on cigarettes, from $1.50 a pack to $3.20. It would also raise taxes on cigars and smokeless tobacco, plus introduce a tax on the liquid used in e-cigarettes. Caferro has described her proposal as “a tax you never have to pay,” which captures the popular attitude toward taxing cigarettes. It’s a great way for the government to get money without any of us having to pay it. And if you’re not one of us, it’s your fault, because you shouldn’t be smoking anyway.

Both of these arguments are probably true. Smoking sucks. Everyone knows it gives you cancer, and in the meantime it annoys people around you. But it is also true that poor people do it more than rich people. Maybe it’s because nicotine is addictive and their lives are hard, or maybe it’s because they’re lazy and dumb. But why people with less money smoke doesn’t matter so much as the simple fact that they do. When we propose a cigarette tax, we are operatively proposing a poor tax.

Maybe that’s a measure we’re willing to take. But let’s not pretend that it’s some high-minded project to get people to stop smoking. The legislature is looking for revenue and found it in poor people’s pockets.  From a political standpoint, the appeal of a cigarette tax is that most people don’t smoke. In a state famously averse to taxation of all kinds, SB 354 is a way to raise revenue without asking 78% of the population to pay anything for it. All you have to do is make life a little harder for people with less money and less education.

When you put it that way, cigarette taxes don’t sound like such a hot deal after all. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Billings man opens fire at mall during citizen’s arrest for shoplifting

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 3 Comments

James Newman of Billings

Last month, James Newman of Billings fired six shots across the parking lot of Rimrock Mall while trying to make a citizen’s arrest for shoplifting. Police questioned Newman and released him at the scene, apparently satisfied with his contention that he fired in self-defense. The former Marine had confronted two people he suspected of stealing from JC Penney, insisting they wait with him for the authorities to arrive. When they got in their car, Newman stood behind the parking space in an attempt to block their escape. He drew his weapon. “If you hit me now,” he shouted, “I will [expletive] open fire.”

He wound up opening fire anyway, firing six shots at the car as it drove away. None of these shots hit the mark, which is a sad coda to this story of valor. If only Newman had killed one of the people whom he was trying to arrest for a misdemeanor in his capacity as a private citizen, we would laud him as a hero. As it is, he is just one of Montana’s many responsible handgun owners, who happened to bring his gun to the mall on the same day circumstances happened to force him to take the law into his own hands. You can read my paean to this brave citizen and C-plus marksman in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow, perhaps, with Friday links.

Representative Commander Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, a career

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 0 Comment

Ryan Zinke accidentally wanders in front of a flag while wearing a cowboy hat.

Montana sends only one delegate to the United States House of Representatives, and for the last two years it was Republican and former Navy SEAL Commander Ryan Zinke. Zinke won re-election in November, but he vacated his seat last week after the Senate confirmed him as President Trump’s Secretary of the Interior. Until we pick a new one via special election in May, Montana will go without representation in the House. This situation turns out to be not so different from the one we enjoyed already.

Zinke ends his career as a congressman having sponsored no bills that actually became law. That’s not so unusual for a freshman representative. What set him apart was his flair for the dramatic—his ability to present a wild caricature of Montana values while, again, not actually expressing those values in the form of legislation. But who cares about influencing the US government when your representative used to be a Navy SEAL? Sure, he missed 80 of 99 House votes after he was nominated for Interior. But he also gave us this photograph:

God, I’m going to miss that. Remember when he said President Obama shouldn’t have attended the Paris Climate Summit because it did nothing to stop ISIS? And then a few weeks later opposed background checks at gun shows, also because it wouldn’t stop ISIS? Communications from his office consistently referred to him as Commander Zinke instead of Representative Zinke—part of a relentless branding strategy that even extended to his duties as a rep. He co-sponsored the Draft American Daughters Act, a satirical bill to register women for the draft that expressed his opposition to letting them take combat specializations. This bill also did not pass. Again, nothing Commander Zinke proposed to the House ever passed. But what fun we had!

Now he runs the Department of the Interior, a position that will make his gung-ho performance art more difficult. It’s hard to connect the Interior to foreign terrorism. I believe Commander Zinke can keep making politics more like pro wrestling, though. It was a heartening sign when he rode a horse to his first day of work last week. Seriously—you can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Montana has not lost much of a legislator, but we must bid farewell to one hell of a showman. I can’t say I agreed with his politics too often. But I love a character, and Commander Zinke has certainly been that. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Daines ducks constituents, complains too few in DC drive pickup trucks

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 0 Comment

US Senator from Montana and convicted goblin Steve Daines

Steve Daines’s first six weeks as a senator have not been easy. He happened to be presiding over the confirmation hearings for Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month, when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell instructed him to gavel down Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). That got him on the news. Then he cast the deciding vote to confirm Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, despite calls to recuse himself after she gave $48,000 to his campaign. Last week, he came home.

He was supposed to address the state legislature last Tuesday, but a crowd of protestors that gathered at the capitol caused him to reschedule at the last minute. He spoke to the legislature Wednesday, after protestors had safely gone home. The very next day, he went on Twitter. “Montanans can do a better job than D.C. bureaucrats who’ve never driven a pick-up and have a hard time finding Montana on a map,” he wrote.

Root toot ‘merca truck, you guys. This kind of pandering was my least favorite thing growing up in Iowa, where the performance of hick-ness was integral to public life. But the politicians of Montana take it to new heights. The day after Daines complained that the failure of bureaucrats to drive trucks left them unable to operate the US federal government, he posted a video from Big Sandy, in which he claimed to be “getting all over Montana” to talk to his constituents.

The senator didn’t have to drive the back roads to find constituents; they had come to him 48 hours earlier, and he contorted his schedule to avoid speaking to them. Daines has never been a dynamic public speaker. Although he gets +1 to night vision and can be dangerous in groups, his main political advantage is that he is a party man. If you need someone to do what his superiors in the GOP say, Daines is your boy. It is therefore distasteful for him to pretend that he is some salt-of-the-earth type fed up with Washington, DC. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which we speculate on his truck-drivin’ bona fides and his life as a freshman in the senate dorms. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Breaking: Columnist allowed to make Pinkerton joke

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 0 Comment

Pinkertons

One of my favorite things about writing for the local newspaper is how often strangers stop me on the street. “Do you know who fast you were going?” they ask. “Why are you drunk at 3pm?” Because I don’t need to contend with the red lights and flashing strollers of the eight or even the five hour workday. I write a column for the local newspaper! The plebes fall away like waves and then dock materials breaking across the prow of a ship.

Sometimes, though, they also ask me where I get my ideas. I say you don’t get ideas; you have to take them. They do not come from the touch of some temperamental muse, nor from some fanciful ethic of “hard work,” but rather from my psychotic determination to make Pinkerton jokes. I direct you to this week’s column in the Missoula Independent, which argues that a bill to grant liquor licenses to retirement homes is “great news for anyone who got 86’ed from Red’s after the Grizzlies won the conference championship against the Nevada Pinkertons in 1922.”

It’s the little things that make it worthwhile. No one could like this historical reference awkwardly crammed into a joke as much as I do, but Brad is a kind editor and lets me use the Indy’s ink to amuse myself. He also let me mansplain regulatory capture and use the word “dicks.” The whole Indy staff is pretty great. Why don’t you go to their website and read my column while absently clicking on all the ads? I’ll wait here until tomorrow, when we’ll be back with Friday links!