So I hear (as did our own Dan McLaughlin, last week) that New York is the place to go for an exciting and remunerative career in the cigarette-smuggling trade:
Last week, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy released a report chronicling the rate of cigarette smuggling in the United States, revealing what retailers in New York have long known: state-to-state smuggling has become a big problem. This especially true for higher taxed states like New York, which boasts both the highest state excise taxes in the country ($4.35 per pack) and the highest rate of smuggling (with 60.9% of all New York’s cigarettes entering the state illegally).
Do you know what the real problem is, with our modern Left? It’s not their anti-science crazies*, or their general blind spot when it comes to anti-Semitism, or even the way that some of them tend to project the voices in their heads into our mouths. No, the real problem is that most of ’em don’t seem to recognize that history started prior to the mid-Nineties. Because anybody could have told New York what happens when you combine high excise taxes and unsecured borders. Take it away, Rudyard Kipling and Michael Longcor: Continue reading The Smugglers of Old New York.
