The Great (Police) State of Tennessee

My home state of Tennessee is demonstrating that freedom there is a thing of the past. According to the Knoxville News-Sentinel:

NASHVILLE — Starting today, state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars.

Critics say the new “cigarette surveillance program” amounts to the use of “police state” tactics and wrongfully interferes with interstate commerce. But state Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr says his department is simply doing its job, enforcing a valid state law while protecting Tennessee retailers who properly pay state taxes.

Agents have already been watching out-of-state stores that sell cigarettes near the Tennessee border to “get a feel where problem areas are,” Farr said.

As you can see, they are determined there to force people to buy cigarettes in Tennessee — or have their cars stolen by state authorities. We are dealing with theft, pure and simple. Now, I could see the states of Maryland or New York doing something like this, but now that Cigarette Totalitarianism has infected Tennessee, I guess that Fascism is becoming more acceptable across the country.

(Tom DiLorenzo has told me that Maryland did have a program like this — and the governor of Maryland, Thomas O’Mally, is proposing raising the cigarette tax by another dollar.)

As John Sophocleus once asked me, “Did you ever think we would go commie so quickly in this country?”

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12:37 pm on September 27, 2007