Marijuana sales tax could swamp revenue dept. with cash

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 0 Comment

The Montana Department of Revenue (artist’s conception)

This spring, after Montana re-legalized medical marijuana, the legislature imposed a 4% sales tax. It is likely that much of the revenue from this tax will come in as cash. Because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, banks that operate across state lines are reluctant to do business with dispensaries. Many providers can’t accept credit cards, much less set up business accounts to wire money to Helena. The question of how they will transport quarterly cash payments to the Department of Revenue has exciting security ramifications. Perhaps more exciting is the question of what Revenue will do with that cash once it comes in.

Speaking to the Billings Gazette, Deputy Director Gene Walborn predicted business as usual. He said his agency would “maybe [get] some cash counters and that kind of thing.” Revenue anticipates bringing in about $750,000. That figure is based on an estimate of 11,877 medical marijuana cardholders across the state—the average number in 2016, under the old law, when providers were limited to three customers apiece and forbidden from turning a profit.

Since I-182 lifted those restrictions, the number of cardholders has risen to 15,564. That’s a 31% increase in six months, during a period when dispensaries were just beginning to open up again. After the state’s first attempt at medical marijuana legalization, before the patient and profit limits went into effect, the number of cardholders peaked at 30,000. It seems like the Department of Revenue could get a lot more cash than it expects. Its plan to do nothing might have more to do with what’s easiest than with what conditions suggest.

In this way, Revenue is continuing a tradition. From the legalization that triggered a statewide boom in the last decade to the restrictions that abruptly shut it down in 2011, Helena has consistently done what it would about medical marijuana and considered the consequences later. You can read all about our state government’s steadfast refusal to plan ahead in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

While you’re there, check out this piece about the final legal bill for acquiring Mountain Water. When it first embarked on this project in 2014, the City of Missoula estimated that the legal cost of purchasing the city’s water system through eminent domain would come to $400,000. The city took ownership last Thursday, and its final legal bill was $7.4 million. That’s 19 times the original estimate. But that kind of thing happens when you’re doing business. It’s like when you buy a car for 15 grand but, after taxes and fees, the final price comes to $285,000.

In other news, my mother is in town, so this is the last Combat! blog you’re going to see until Wednesday. That’s a long time, right? I sure hope nothing happens in the news between now and then.

Eric Trump, subject of photographs

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 1 Comment

Eric Trump realizes one of the hostages is still alive.

Last night, philanthropist and third-generation millionaire Eric Trump told Sean Hannity that Democrats were “not even people” to him, given the way they obstructed his father’s agenda. His Q factor remained about the same. Even if his father weren’t the most hated man in America, Eric would have a likability problem. I blame photography. For a man who has spent an inordinate amount of his life posing for pictures, Eric has a hard time looking likable on camera. For example, here he is threatening me in church:

When someone is about to take your picture, push your jaw forward and hold your lips as close together as you can without letting them touch. That conveys the most relatable human emotion, seething rage. But don’t forget to show your lighter side, too. Here’s Eric after filling his maid’s room with pigeons:

He got her good. You think this is a weird way for him to smile, but that’s because you haven’t seen the alternative. Here he is meeting you on your first day as his new maid:

I cannot overemphasize how important it is that you never be alone with two out of the three people in this picture. Here’s Eric telling a joke at your grandmother’s funeral:

He came with your cousin, even though they’ve broken up a couple of times in the last year. But what do you want her to do? He’s rich. Here he is after learning that you still have student loan debt.

That’s cool, if you don’t have the money to pay it off. He has the money to pay it off so, personally, if he had student loans, that would be bullshit. But whatever—it takes all kinds, right? Here he is just begging us to Photoshop a dick into his picture:

Even his dad is thinking about it. You don’t think Donald Trump realizes his second son is kind of gooney? The man values appearances above all else. He knows Eric is off-putting, but he loves him. He loves his giant, gummy, probably evil son. Here they are enjoying hot dogs together:

The best part is, they were free. You tell the guy you want two dogs, he passes them down, and when he asks for the money, you tell him you already paid. If he gets his manager or something, insist that he be fired. Who are they going to side with—the hot dog guy or Donald Trump and his son? The trick is to stay close to your dad. It only works if he’s rich.

When facts express identity, what happens to democracy?

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 2 Comments

You can advance two broad arguments in favor of democracy. The first is that it is morally right, either because people naturally deserve a say in what their governments do or because God likes it. The founders made such arguments in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere. The other argument is that democracy is the best way to solve problems. Sooner or later, this argument goes, aristocracy or a dictatorship will run into competence problems. With no mechanism to hold them accountable, aristocrats and despots will do a bad job.

I find both these arguments convincing, but the second one is probably more useful. The first one requires us to agree on values—either a supreme being that has ordained democracy as the best system of government, or a compassionate humanism that makes the rights of individuals inalienable. Those values can break down. The idea that we all face collective problems, and that the collective wisdom of the American people can solve them, seems more robust.

But in order for this construction of democracy to work, we have to agree on facts. We can argue about the best way to structure the tax code, but we have to agree that the government needs money and can collect it from people. Some people might argue that the government has no right to tax people at all, but they still agree that taxation is real. Its possibility is a kind of fact. Such agreements often seem so obvious that they are tacit, but it’s also possible for them to break down. Take climate change, for example.

The New York Times published a fascinating story Sunday about the difficulties of teaching biology at a high school in Ohio, where many students regard not believing in climate change as an element of their identiy. Although they don’t know much about many subjects, they know that people like them say global warming isn’t real. As a result, rejecting classroom teaching about how carbon works or what scientists agree on has become an expression of their identities. This poses a problem, not just in high school but in American society.

In order to participate in the democratic approach to solving problems, we have to agree on certain facts, e.g. our behavior is changing the climate. But agreeing with that premise makes some people feel like their democratic agency is being denied. Denying it has become their way of asserting themselves as free citizens.

That’s Republicans’ fault. The GOP has made itself the brand of cultural refusers. Even though it advocates for traditional social values and the economic agenda of the rich, it has come to represent defiance of the mainstream. It’s a reversal of the countercultural politics of the late sixties, and it probably came about because of them. Liberals won the culture war so completely that they made conservatism cool, at least among the people who buy into it. For that bloc, right-wing politics is defiance, and any act of defiance can be right-wing politics.

Call it the politicization of identity. Gun ownership is a political statement. Driving a big truck is a political statement. Working outside or having a goatee is a political statement. In the same way that capitalism steadily commodified the 19th century, turning previously homemade products like clothes and food into consumer goods, democracy has politicized the 21st century. This process is bad, because it’s a force for reification. It makes our problems more difficult to solve, because it makes people resistant to changing their minds.

It’s one thing to change your position on an issue. It’s another to change who you are. While many of us like to imagine ourselves as independents who are at least hypothetically open to changing our minds, nobody wants their identity to be flexible. We can see this phenomenon at work in the classroom from the Times story, where rejecting scientific consensus is not about policy or reasoning but rather a way for those kids to keep it real.

There are two promises of American democracy: that we’ll decide what to do together, and that outside those decisions each of us can do what we want. What happens when believing what we want short-circuits our ability to decide together? Does democracy retain its authority when substantial portions of us simply don’t believe in science? The system has always depended on an informed citizenry. What place can it make for people who define themselves by refusing to learn?

War Machine gets 36 to life

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 0 Comment

I stopped reading about War Machine after Sir Nigel Longstock, a character I play on the Co-Main Event Podcast, banned him from MasterTweet Theatre. His offense was that he nearly beat a woman to death. Up to that point, our funny mixed martial arts podcast had regarded him as a resource. For example, he legally changed his name from Jon Koppenhaver to War Machine approximately two weeks before he was cut from the UFC. Then he ventured into adult cinema. Finally he went to jail, where his use of Twitter skyrocketed. It also got less funny.

He was still an aggressively dumb person pronouncing on his own excellence, but in the context of an assault conviction, it didn’t strike the right tone. As his tweets went from defiant to self-pitying to Jesus, using him on the show started feel like hackery, at best. Then he did that thing to Christie Mack, and it was over. The guy named War Machine who loses prize fights is funny. The guy named War Machine who assaults and rapes people is not.

At first I typed that he did that thing to Christie Mack and we knew he was a bad person, but that’s not true. We knew before that. The time he spent in jail, Tweeting aggressively-capitalized critiques of Society, was for attacking ordinary people in parking lots and bars. He got blackballed from pornography because he stormed around a party punching strangers. Even before he assaulted Mack, he was a pro fighter who pressed his advantage outside the ring. He was evidently awful. He just hadn’t done anything life-defining yet.

Is this the salient difference between a comic figure and a sociopath? We care how the sociopath has hurt people? War Machine is going to spend the rest of his life in prison. The sentence he received today makes him eligible for parole in 36 years. He will be 71. The body he used to punch and rape people will be gone. The mind that chose to do those things will probably be gone, too. The man will be gone, and what comes out of prison in 2053, still legally known as War Machine, will be a relic of this world.

This world will be gone. Good, one is tempted to think, when considering the operation that produced this person and turned him loose to hurt other people until, collectively, we decided to hurt him forever. I could stand to let that one go. But first, show me what else you’ve got.

Friday links! Get confident, stupid edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

You know what the problem is with this country? No one has the courage of their convictions anymore. We’ve suffered a nationwide crisis of confidence, and now Americans are afraid to go their own way and live as devil-may-care visionaries. People are so concerned with fair play and rules of decorum that they aren’t willing to stand up for what they believe is right. We have all become hobbled by our sense of ethics and the way things ought to be done, afraid to act because we might be wrong. Also, the sun makes us colder each morning, and birds crawl silently along the ground. Today is Friday, and everyone in America is extraordinarily confident. Won’t you explore that classic mark of genius with me?

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