Our state government, always looking for schemes to grab money from our pockets, has recently also become subservient to political correctness. This year, the hysteria to punish everything tobacco-industry related, shows how the progressive world of make believe can  wreak havoc on Rhode Island’s economy. Article 4 of the Governor’s proposed fiscal-year 2019 budget calls for yet another excise tobacco tax increase on cigarettes, to $4.50 per pack; a 534% increase since 2001, while pretending that there will be no adverse impact on low-income families or our state’s economy.

In the progressive-left fantasy world, all tobacco and vaping products would be abolished. But the reality is that tobacco products are legal, and tobacco users will continue to purchase related products at the lowest prices they can find.

Progressives pretend that poor Rhode Islanders would not disproportionately bear the burden of this regressive tobacco tax. In fact, low-income individuals use tobacco more often and spend more of their incomes on such products. This means less money for more-healthy items such as groceries, home heating, and other household goods.

Anti-tobacco fanatics also pretend that taxes on cigarettes are NOT a driving factor in determining retail store patronage, where smokers will also buy gasoline and other convenience items. It’s true, that to avoid high cigarette taxes, smokers will simply drive a few miles across state-lines and spend their money elsewhere. Many small business retailers, with almost one-third of their revenue derived from tobacco-related products, could be severely harmed.

Further, in their land of make believe, progressives fail to recognize the unintended consequence that high tobacco tax will also fuel an underground market of illegally smuggled and sold products. This real-life underground economy not only reduces state tax receipts, but leads to more illegal activity … with all of the associated costs of increased prosecutions and incarcerations.

Progressives also pretend that proven economic principles will not come into play; that the loss of disposable income, the retail sales losses, and the increased criminal justice costs would NOT further weaken our already fragile state economy.

They also pretend this added tax will give them more money to spend in the state’s budget. However, in the real world, the law of diminishing returns means that higher revenues from higher cigarette taxes are uncertain and unlikely. The total state intake from its 2005 cigarette tax of $2.46 per pack is virtually identical to its 2017 intake at $3.75 per pack, around $137 million per year. In reality, receipts actually decreased when the tax was raised, in many years.

Other related legislation this year is similarly based on make believe assumptions. Plans to increase taxes on vaping products, which are up to 95% less harmful than cigarettes for those who switch will not improve public health. Real-world research shows that high vaping taxes would disincentive use of “harm reduction” products that could dramatically improve societal health and decrease medical costs, including state Medicaid spending.

Dozens of such politically-correct inspired tax and regulatory policies, based on fantasy assumptions, have resulted in bottom 10 national rankings for our state when it comes to overall business climate, family prosperity, and population growth. Rankings that mean real Rhode Islanders are not realizing their potential. But the politically correct left cares to pretend such harms do not exist. Instead, they dismissively and exclusively care only about their own pretend agenda, while looking to punish anyone they don’t approve of.

It is our hope that state lawmakers, who still have time to think about the actual harm that higher tobacco and vaping taxes would cause, will make reality-based decisions later this spring. The real benefits of not increasing these taxes include; no new burdens imposed on the poor; the jobs and economic advantages of keeping RI retailers more competitive; the reduced criminal justice costs; a budget that does not rely on uncertain receipts; a society with fewer health problems; and the increased overall competitiveness of our state.

We do not live in a fantasy world. And the consequences of limiting or taxing free-choice … because some think they think they know better … mean that many others in the real world will be made to suffer.

This year, let’s stop making these same pretend and emotionally driven mistakes. When it comes to pretend thinking that it is a good thing to increase taxes on politically incorrect products, let’s put some reality-based thought into it for once.

RhodeMapRI is Back!

Once again the social equity extremists are back, those who believe that their views of society should prohibit the free-choice and rights of property owners to make business decisions that are in their own best interests. Once again, RhodeMap Rhode Island and HUD (the federal department of Housing and Urban Development), and its local surrogate, the RI Housing authority, are at it again.

Co-sponsored by multiple progressives House bill #7258 and Senate bill #2301, these so-called Fair Housing Practices which mirrors leftist-inspired legislation introduced in other states, have already been heard in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees this year. The legislation claims it seeks to end discriminatory housing practices by certain landlords. In the progressives’ social-equity land of make believe, any Section-8 lessee applicant (those whose rents are subsidized by the federal government) who are not accepted as a tenant, must have been discriminated against.

According to their progressive fantasyland logic, since people receiving Section-8 vouchers are typically low-income; and because many low-income individuals and families are minorities, then saying ‘no’ to a Section-8 applicant must be because of racism, and therefore must be discriminatory. The actual effect of this legislation, which seeks to extend government control into even more aspects of our personal and business lives, would be to subject landlords to lawsuits or other penalties by automatically assuming that discrimination was the motivating factor.

According to federal guidelines, acceptance of Section-8 vouchers are supposed be voluntary. Yet these Fair Housing Practices would impose a defacto state mandate on landlords to accept any Section-8 application they receive. Even if the landlord makes a legitimate and nondiscriminatory business decision otherwise, they would be at legal risk of being prosecuted for discriminatory actions … or, for being a racist.

We can all agree that any such genuine discrimination is wrong, but there already exists multiple state and federal laws that protect against discrimination. Additionally, there are multiple other reasons for making alternative business decisions.

This legislation is a back-door RhodeMap RI type scheme to advance a social equity agenda that will only tear at the fabric of our society … by making innocent private property owners appear to be bigots.

Based on conversations with landlords and with home and facility based child-care business owners I know, there is a major, legitimate, and non-racial reason why some business prefer not to accept clients subsidized by public money and all the red-tape they would have to go through. In this case, once a landlord accepts a federally subsidized Section-8 tenant, that business is now subject to a whole new array of mandates, red tape, and risks that otherwise, it would not have to worry about.

Under this legislative mandate, landlords would be subject to unfair rules by HUD, which we know from the RhodeMap RI debate years ago, does not care about private property rights. HUD has corrupted its mission of putting low-income people into appropriate housing to the point where it routinely tramples on the rights of other private property owners.

Landlords would be forced to endure annual state inspections, they otherwise would not be subject to, and could even be at potential criminal risk if they did not appropriately “police” their own tenants and report to the state any potential violations Section-8 eligibility guidelines.

This legislation, avidly supported by Rhode Island Housing is a clear extension of the HUD and RhodeMap RI anti property-owner agenda.

Consider that this legislation automatically presumes that our neighborhood brothers and sisters are guilty of discrimination. Our Center recently hosted a luncheon where the nationally acclaimed Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, spoke of the “solidarity of brotherhood”, where we should work together to help “start up” the lives of those in our community. But how can it possibly be “solidarity” to automatically and divisively claim that legitimate business decisions by business owners in our community are based on bigotry?

Private business owners should be free to make the business decisions that they feel are best for them. Just because some on the progressive-left see inequities in every aspect of our society, does not mean that government should be stepping-in to tell people how to run their businesses.

Already suffering from one of the most hostile business and legal climates in the country, and with a known affordable housing shortage, Rhode Island would become an even more dangerous place to operate as a landlord. Small ‘rental property’ business owners could be forced to spend money unnecessarily to become lawyered-up like a major corporation if they were to be sued … an expense and time most cannot possibly afford. In other states where similar legislation has already been enacted, property owners are indeed being sued, and they are routinely losing in court battles, even though they may have committed no wrong.

Our state would suffer greatly if this unintended consequences of this legislation might drive some landlords out of business, or out of state, and lead to fewer available housing units.

Once again, we ask lawmakers to consider the real-world impacts of such presumptive and intrusive legislation, and to understand that the left’s land of make believe scenario.