"The Georgia Republicans' 'Welfare and Strip Club Establishment Act'" by Dr. Joel McDurmon

[Theocrat]

A new child welfare services expansion and alleged sex-trafficking prevention bill is making its way rapidly through the Georgia State Assembly led by Republican, and some Christian, lawmakers. It is euphemistically titled the “Safe Harbor Act,” but it ought to be titled the “Welfare and Strip-Club Establishment Act,” for that is effectively what it will accomplish in the name of doing good. It is short-sighted, antibiblical, and constitutes an attack on the family and the church—all in the name of a righteous cause.

This bill is a classic example of why conservatives and Christians continue to lose in politics. They tinker with liberal tactics and leftist-statist institutions hoping to effect conservative values.

Christians, listen up: God will not honor this.

Under the guise “to protect a child from further victimization” (yes, this is a classic “it’s for the children!” pitch, from conservatives) the bill proposes to establish a new Fund and a new Commission to expand services through Child and Family Services. This expansion of the administrative-state complex is bad enough in itself. The expansion of the welfare state and its wealth-redistributing evils is bad enough in itself. The state has no business getting involved in matters the Bible leaves to the family, the church, and private agencies of charity and mercy. This is where the bill is simply anti-biblical. In fact, establishing and expanding the state’s power in these areas is to encroach further on the roles of family and church, and is thus an attack on those God-ordained institutions as well.

But the worst of the bill is how it intends to pay for this expansion of the state behemoth—and this is the most distorted part of it. The bill proposes a yearly fee on strip clubs: 1 percent of gross revenue, a minimum of $5,000.

What’s so bad about that? After all, the bill itself notes up front that both prostitution and sexual exploitation of children are among the “deleterious secondary effects . . . associated with” such adult institutions. So why not make them pay through the nose to maintain the state prevention and treatment of it?

Because instead of eliminating the problem of strip clubs, this bill actually virtually establishes the problem by giving the state an incentive in its income.

Read on here.

[Christian Liberty]

Joel McDurmon is amazing.

[presence]

Sin Tax Fail 101?

Opposition

• Sin taxes have historically triggered rampant smuggling and black markets, especially when they create large price differences in neighboring jurisdictions.^{[citation needed]}

• Critics of sin tax argue^[who?] that it is a regressive tax in nature and discriminates against the lower classes, since taxation of a product such as alcohol or cigarettes does not account for ability to pay, therefore poor people pay a greater amount of their income as tax.^[12][13]

• Sin taxes are not normally value added in nature meaning that expensive, high-quality products more likely to be purchased by the wealthy will have the tax comprise a much smaller proportion of its final purchase price, thus ensuring that the lower classes pay a much greater proportion of their lower income in tax.^{[citation needed]}

• Sin taxes fail to affect consumers' behaviors in the way that tax proponents suggest, for instance increasing smokers' propensity to smoke high-tar, high-nicotine cigarettes when the per-pack price is raised^[14] and increasing the rate of people mixing their own drinks rather than buying pre-mix alcoholic spirits.^[15]

• Critics^[who?] also argue that the behavior affected by sin taxes are strictly personal and of no social consequence, and therefore should not be moderated by government.^{[citation needed]}

• Not all research supports the idea that alcohol and tobacco consumers financially burden societies through health expenditures. One study used a mathematical model to compare estimated health costs of obese persons, tobacco smokers, and "healthy-living people". Until age 56, obese persons had the highest estimated annual health expenditure. Tobacco smokers older than this had the highest estimated health costs of all groups, but since life expectancy is shorter for smokers and the obese, the "lifetime health expenditure was highest among healthy-living people." The model for this study used input parameters based on data from the Netherlands.^[16]
• The government may become reliant on the revenue from the tax and has to encourage "sinful" behavior in order to maintain the revenue stream.^[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_tax