After a careful review of the effectiveness of cigarette taxes (in raising revenue, not changing negative behavior), Detroit’s mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wants to add to his city’s already ridiculous tax burden by sucking a few cents out of you every time you eat at a fast food joint.
Faced with a $300 million budget hole, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is hoping people in this already heavily taxed city won’t mind forking over a few extra cents for their Big Macs and Whoppers.
The overt hubris and greed displayed by petty bureaucrats in this nation has never been more overt than it is in the year of our Lord 2005. While I find Mr. Kilpatrick’s name to be an interesting conglomeration of Irish and African, I’m not impressed by his bio.
When you run one of the biggest cities in the nation and the best motto you can come up with is Kids, Cops, Clean – color this author unimpressed. I would be more impressed if Kwame Kilpatrick could find a way to streamline city services while reducing the tax burden and providing incentives for people to move into the city, instead of doing his best to help people flee.
This is not rocket science Mr. Kilpatrick. Raise taxes and people leave unless you’ve got something damn good to offer that outweighs the burden of economic slavery. Detroit is not such a place. Actually, America as a whole is increasingly becoming not such a place.
Yes, it is possible to kill the American dream. All it takes is a few villages full of people with the same mentality as Kwame Kilpatrick.
Good luck with your proposed cash cow Mr. Kilpatrick. Now that smokers across America are a pariah class, you might as well focus on fatasses. Eventually, we’ll have a special category of economic slavery for everyone.
A Dog Named Liberty has written on this topic in the past.