By John Seiler

With a name like Lance-Arm-Strong, Lance Armstrong should have kept fighting the anti-doping charges against him. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency just supposedly “stripped” him of his seven titles, although it’s not clear if they have the authority to do so, and he might still have the titles. Said Robert Luskin, his lawyer:

“I think Lance ultimately decided he’d rather be eaten alive by zombies than locked in a room with lawyers for the next five years of his life with no promise at the end of it that there would be any peace.”

That’s an understandable sentiment. But somebody has to fight these bureaucratic flesh eaters. Moreover, less than three months ago, Armstrong blew $1.5 million pushing Proposition 29, which would have raised taxes on cigarettes for $735 million in unaccountable cancer research. The initiative especially would have hit poor people, who smoke more than the rest of Californians. It would have put in jail more people for violating laws against black markets. And it would have given employment to hundreds more lawyers.

If he was willing that much dough to stick the state with thousands of legal actions, why didn’t he have the guts to keep fighting his own legal action? Maybe he’ll tell us.

Anyway, here’s what Wikipedia wrote about the tyrannical U.S. Anti-Doping Agency:

“The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is a non-profit, non-governmental^[1] organization and the national anti-doping organization (NADO) for the United States….

“In 2001 the agency was recognized by the U.S. Congress as ‘the official anti-doping agency for Olympic, Pan American and Paralympic sport in the United States.’^[4] USADA is not a government entity, however the agency is partly funded by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), with its remaining budget generated from contracts for anti-doping services with sport organizations, most notably the United States Olympic Committee.^[5]“

“non-governmental”? Actually, if it’s “recognized by Congress” and takes tax money, the USADA really is a part of the government, despite it’s alleged independence. And the legal system itself is run by the government.

Manic McCain

Moreover, the anti-doping mania has been given a boost by grandstanding congressmen, in particular Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who lost a presidential bid four years ago. Here’s what happened in July:

“Senator John McCain lent support Friday to the United States Anti-Doping Agency in its case against Lance Armstrong, saying the agency follows a fair process that has been authorized by Congress and that it has the right to investigate and bring charges against Armstrong.

“’This process is the proper forum to decide matters concerning individual cases of alleged doping violations,’ McCain said in a statement.”

Normally I don’t agree with Michael Hiltzik, the L.A. Times columnist. But yesterday he wrote a great column defending Armstrong:

“With the whole world atwitter over Tour de Francechamp Lance Armstrong‘s decision to drop his legal fight against anti-doping allegations, it’s the right moment to be appalled at the travesty in sports this case represents.

“It’s not that the case will be seen as a major victory for sports anti-doping authorities. It’s that the anti-doping system claiming its highest-profile quarry ever is the most thoroughly one-sided and dishonest legal regime anywhere in the world this side of Beijing.

“It’s a system deliberately designed to place almost insurmountable hurdles in the way of athletes defending themselves or appealing adverse findings. Evidence has emerged over the years that laboratories certified by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, have been incompetent at analyzing athletes’ samples or fabricated results when they didn’t get the numbers they were hoping to see.

“Athletes’ defense attorneys harbored some hope that by picking a fight with Lance Armstrong, the anti-doping system might have sowed the seeds for its own reform. Finally, it was thought, here was an athlete with the money and motivation to expose the legal sophistry, the pseudoscience, the sheer sloppiness that underlies sports anti-doping prosecutions all over the world.

“Instead, the outcome shows that the system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn’t see a point in fighting it.”

Who will fight?

Actually, someone who has the stamina to fight would be someone who won seven Tour de France titles.

I also wish Hiltzik would be more consistent in opposing government encroachments on our lives, instead of so often wanting to give our oppressors more of our tax money. Hiltzik did oppose Armstrong’s Prop. 29 tax increase, but only because he wanted the taxes for other government waste.

It’s the government itself that’s not only run by dopes, but is doped up on steroids that have ballooned government powers to monstrous proportions. And like a junkie, the government supports its habit by stealing, which the government calls “taxation.”

We need to take the steroid syringes from the government by cutting off the tax dollars — all of them. Without our money, government would have to go cold turkey:

By John Seiler

The backers of the Proposition 29 cigarette tax increase finally snubbed out the butt of their vigil over the June 5 vote. It lost by just 28,000 votes.

Proponents blamed the $47 million spent by the Big Tobacco companies to defeat the measure. Lance Armstrong, the bicycle champion still fighting doping allegations from his racing days, said, “Big Tobacco lied to voters to protect its profits and spent $50 million to ensure it can continue peddling its deadly products to California kids.”

Actually, what really defeated the measure was the state’s political Establishment, led by the Los Angeles Times and the California Budget Project. The Establishment realized that jacking up cig taxes $1 a pack to raise $735 million a year and give it to an new unaccountable cancer research bureaucracy only would worsen the state’s fiscal mess.

The Establishment understands that California is paddling toward Greek fiscal territory and any extra tax money that can be scrounged up has to go to solving the budget mess. Indeed, on June 8, the Times even ran an extra editorial, “The wrong cigarette tax,” reiterating its opposition to Prop. 29 but calling for a new cigarette tax dedicated just to the budget:

“We urged voters to cast ballots against Proposition 29 because at a time when the state cannot afford to fulfill its most basic responsibilities, the initiative would have put most of the new revenue — more than $500 million a year — toward an entirely new agency and a new state function: the funding of disease research that already is relatively well funded by the federal government….

“But our objections to the specifics of Proposition 29 do not mean that we don’t support a new cigarette tax. We do….

“As Proposition 29 would do, part of the money should go toward smoking prevention programs, as well as for smoking cessation treatments. The rest could productively be spent on treatment for smoking-related diseases, so the people who pay the tax receive the direct benefit and the state budget gets some relief.” 

The value of Establishment support or opposition, especially a Times editorial, is worth an unknowable exact amount, but probably many tens of millions of dollars. So expect a new initiative, as the Times suggested, on the November 2014 ballot along the lines indicated. It might raise taxes $1 a pack to fund lung cancer and other smoking-related treatments, relieving the general fund of spending on such treatments through Medi-Cal.

California Budget Project

Another major Lucky Strike against Prop. 29 was a study by the influential liberal think tank, the California Budget Project. Its longtime executive director, Jean Ross, recently became the head of the Ford Foundation, a pillar of the Eastern Establishment. Usually the CBP looks favorably on tax increases. But a May Budget Brief found, in particular, that Prop. 29 would slam poor people:

“Increasing the cigarette tax would have a disproportionate impact on low-income Californians because they spend a larger share of their incomes on tobacco products. National data show that in 2009, individuals with incomes in the bottom fifth of the distribution spent an average of 0.9 percent of their incomes on cigarette taxes, compared to an average of less than 0.1 percent for those in the top 1 percent. In part, this disparity stems from the fact that the cost of a single pack of cigarettes makes up a larger share of the incomes of low-income individuals.

“It also reflects the fact that low-income individuals are more likely than others to smoke. In 2008, for example, nearly 20 percent of California adults with household incomes of $20,000 or less were smokers, compared to fewer than 10 percent of those with household incomes of more than $100,000 (Figure 4).”

The implication is clear: Poor people will have less money because of the cigarette tax. They then will have to depend more on state services. Which will put even more pressure on the general-fund budget. The state’s deficit will get even worse.

The Budget Project looked at the big budget picture:

“Programs funded by Proposition 29 would be “locked in,’’ limiting the ability of the Legislature to modify spending in response to economic, budget, and demographic changes or other health-related research needs that may emerge in the future. In addition, these revenues would not be available to support other programs or to help close future budget gaps. 

“Finally, to the extent that voters approve new revenues for a specific purpose through an initiative, such as Proposition 29, lawmakers or voters may feel less inclined to subsequently approve additional revenues regardless of the purpose.”

That’s a key concept. The Establishment’s push now is for Gov. Jerry Brown’s $8.5 billion tax increase on the November ballot. Had Prop. 29 passed, voters might consider that they already had performed their socialist duty for 2012 in June, and didn’t need to do so again in November.

Black market

There’s also strong evidence that a hefty tax increase, such as Prop. 29’s $1 a pack, would make much worse already worrisome black market activity. When New York was boosting smoke taxes a couple of years back, the Huffington Post reported:

“NEW YORK — The big cigarette tax increases that many states are instituting to balance their out-of-whack budgets are raising fears that the trend will make black-market smokes more profitable and lead to more cigarette smuggling.

“Cigarette smuggling has been going on for generations and already costs states untold billions in lost tax revenue.

“Criminal gangs stock up in low-tax states like Virginia and Missouri, truck the cigarettes north and illegally resell them in high-tax states like Michigan and New Jersey. Other buy cartons and cartons of tax-free smokes on Indian reservations and sell them elsewhere. Buyers order untaxed cartons of murky origin on the Internet. And ships arrive from China carrying cargo containers filled with counterfeit cigarettes.

“Law enforcement officials and others worry that the widening price spread between taxed and untaxed cigarettes will only make the situation worse.”

California is too far from Virginia and other states in the Tobacco Belt to worry much about smuggling from there. But there are many local Indian reservations with low-tax cigs. And our Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego and San Francisco ports are among the largest in the world, daily unloading billions of dollars of goods.

Those born in America generally don’t have much of a taste for foreign cig brands. But they might acquire such a taste if the price of U.S.-made smokes is high. And California, of course, has a large immigrant population, whose smokers picked up the habit puffing brands from other lands.

For now, at least, a new cigarette tax has been defeated. But the demise of Prop. 29 clears the ash tray for the big push for Brown’s tax increase in November.

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em” was a saying back when I as in the U.S. Army 30 years ago. Now it’s “Tax ’em if you got ’em.”

Lance Armstrong, the famed bicyclist, is obsessed with raising California taxes $850 million a year to spend on his pet project, cancer research. Hasn’t he heard that the state budget is $25 billion in the red, and last thing we need is more spending?

He wants to do it with a $1-a-pack new tax on cigarettes. That would be on top of 85 cents the state already taxes smokes. And the $1 the U.S. government recently imposed. And numerous other taxes, including sales taxes.

Reports Bloomberg, the new tax would…

raise the average retail cost to $5.40. That would still be well behind New York City, where state and local taxes add $6.46 a pack, according to the city Finance Department website.

Actually, from what I see on grocery store shelves, a pack of coffin nails costs more like  $6, plus 9% sales tax — equals almost $7 a pack. So the Lance Tax make that almost $8.

The tax would be on the ballot should Gov. Jerry Brown succeed in getting the Legislature to put his $25 billion tax increase on a special June ballot. Which is another reason Republicans in the Legislature should stick to their guns in preventing a wasteful new election.

Backing the Lance Tax are such longtime political hacks as L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and ex-state Sen. Don Perata.

Actually, it’s unlikely the Lance Tax would get the expected $850 million. At nearly $8 a pack, the black market in cigs just would grow much bigger.

This also is another example of “ballot-box budgeting,” the kind of nonsense that has gotten the state into trouble. Dumb initiatives, backed by venal politicians such as Rob “Meathead” Reiner and ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, dedicate a certain amount of state spending to boutique initiatives, as I call them. Dumb voters then are tricked into voting yea.

Taxes money is funneled to the new spending, which by law can’t be cut. Then when a budget crunch comes, instead of cutting this waste, tax increases are imposed.

Here’s a better idea: Pass an initiative that 1) cancels all current spending mandated by past initiatives and 2) prevents any new spending mandated by initiatives.

I’m also tired of celebrities using the taxing powers to rob us, even if sometimes for good causes. Get back on your bike, Lance, and leave us alone!

March 1, 2011