It is to laugh.
First Gov. Spitzer proposes “tax stamps” for illegal drugs – to make it easier for drug dealers to pay sales taxes on their their ill-gotten gains.
Then comes Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry (D-Queens) – who not only takes Spitzer’s idea seriously, but says he’s against it because it would create a “financial hardship” for those very same drug dealers.
Spitzer’s “crack tax” seems a variation on what the feds did to Al Capone and others in the ’30s – go after crooks using the tax code. (Or, maybe the governor is so desperate for money to spend that he’ll take it from anywhere.)
But Aubry, who chairs the Assembly Corrections Committee and is a long-time foe of tough drug laws, is taking the matter totally at face value.
At a recent hearing, he told Spitzer’s tax commissioner about (of course) the undue burden that the tax would place on drug dealers and users. “This component adds another financial hardship on people who don’t have a lot of money,” said Aubry.
He’s worried that the tax would “create another class of individual who can’t escape the process and has to go back out and sell drugs.”
So, the rare time that an Assembly member speaks out on the adverse impact of taxes, it’s on behalf of lowlife drug-dealers.
Given Aubry’s newfound economic insight, surely he’ll now champion broad-based tax relief for all hard-working, law-abiding New Yorkers, right?
Don’t hold your breath.