Don't Mess With Taxes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:10 PM

Remember Texas's "pole tax," the $5 per customer fee applied to strip clubs in January? Turns out that a state judge has ruled the tax to be a violation of the First Amendment. The Attorney General intends to devote more public funds to appealing the ruling, while other supporters of the tax are investigating reforms to the legislation that would help it pass constitutional muster. (Incidentally, I haven't read the court opinion, but I am surprised that a case decided on free speech grounds also seems to hinge (if the published reports are correct) on the earmarking of the revenues from the tax.)

In unrelated news, via Pete at Drug WarRant we learn of a wonderful series of videos concerning heroin. The presenter is Michael Jourdan, a leading Danish drug researcher. Heroin (like methamphetamine) is a word that for many people is so evocative of danger as to preclude marshaling facts or reasoning about policy. Jourdan provides the facts, and some fine reasoning along the way, too.

Labels: dancing, Drug WarRant, heroin, taxes, Texas

 
Taxing Live Erotic Shows [Updated]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:06 PM

Vice Squad was out of town in late December when (links in this post are not safe for work) an Illinois appeals court ruled that Chicago could not exempt small live entertainment venues, except for strip clubs, from a tax on ticket sales. Such a provision discriminates against erotic businesses based on the content of their expression, the court ruled, and that sort of discrimination has to jump through high and multiple hoops to be constitutional. On New Year's day, a $5 per customer tax went into effect for Texas strip clubs. The first constitutional challenge to the tax was brushed aside in mid-December, before the Chicago ruling. The Texas law looks for Constitutional cover from the "secondary effects" doctrine, which did not seem to come into play in the Chicago tax.

Update: This week's Economist also has an article on Texas's "pole tax". The article mentions the recent popularity of earmarking the proceeds for new taxes. (Part of the controversy surrounding the Texas strip club tax is that the proceeds are directed to programs aiding sexual violence victims, despite there being little in the way of hard evidence that strip clubs increase sexual violence.) Beyond the Texas case, all of the earmarked taxes that are mentioned are vice-related: (non-diet) sodas, tobacco, and video games have all recently been singled out for taxes with earmarked revenues -- an approach frequently used for gambling taxes, too. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania state senator is looking at an earmarked tax on adult businesses (link not safe for work).

Labels: Chicago, dancing, Illinois, tax, Texas

 
New York Times on Vice Policy
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:23 AM

A friend of Vice Squad brings our attention to yesterday's and today's business sections in the New York Times. Yesterday, Times economics writer David Leonhardt called for higher taxes on beer and wine. Today, we learn about the state of Texas's intention to introduce a $50 scratch-off lottery ticket, on the heels of other high-priced varieties that cost up to $30 each. The articles share a certain affinity for Vice Squad-style policy directions -- higher alcohol taxes and concerns about the under-regulation of gambling being venerable Vice Squad topics -- but more importantly, they share a reliance upon the ideas of friend of Vice Squad Phil Cook. Phil is both source and part-subject for the alcohol tax article, and his recent alcohol-policy tome, Paying the Tab, is described as "a wonderful little book". (Little? OK, the text per se is "only" about 200 pages, but I never viewed the book as little in terms of length or depth.) For the lottery article, Phil gets a reduced role of providing a short quote.

The lottery article notes that "traditional" lotto has been declining in popularity in Texas -- a "problem" that besets many state lotteries. Further, it provides some demographic statistics on lottery players, with yet more evidence that poorer people tend to spend more money, in absolute terms, on the lottery than do richer individuals:

In 2006, according to a University of North Texas survey commissioned by
state lottery officials, the typical black player spent $70 a month on the
lottery, compared with $47 for Hispanics and $20 for whites.

The demographic differences were especially sharp when it came to
scratch-offs. Players with a high school degree or less typically buy $20 a
month worth of scratch-off tickets, compared with $10 for college graduates. Similarly, players with an annual income of less than $12,000 spent 33 percent more a month than those with incomes above $100,000.

Labels: alcohol, Cook, lottery, taxes, Texas

 
The Unicard
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:46 PM

Today's Fort Worth Star Telegram features this interesting AP story on alcohol regulation in Texas. Towards the end of the story we are told of the Unicard. In dry areas of Texas - of which there are many -- public restaurants cannot sell alcohol, but alcohol typically is allowed in private clubs. As a result, restaurants have an incentive to minimally reconstitute themselves (or parts of themselves) as private clubs. Where the Unicard comes in, it seems, is that a person who procures one of these cards qualifies for alcohol in all sorts of restaurants/private clubs. That is, the restaurants apparently operate as different "branches" of the same club, so that a person with a Unicard can buy alcohol at all the participating restaurants.

Labels: alcohol, Texas

 
Combating Prostitution Phone-Booth Cards in London
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:41 PM

The Westminster City Council in London would like to see fewer of those risque' cards popping up in their otherwise charming red phone boxes. One way to accomplish this, presumably, is to make sure that the phone numbers that are advertised on the cards are inoperable. Landline telephone companies have generally complied with requests to disable such numbers, but cell phone providers have proven less willing. So staff members of the Westminster City Council had no choice but to distribute "20,000 mock prostitute cards with the names and phone numbers of cell phone chief executives on them."

The article linked above is from the Houston Chronicle. Houston had its own prostitution-enforcement-related event recently. Seems a fellow tried to solicit a female undercover police officer who was part of a sting operation. When other officers moved in to arrest him, he struggled and fled. The police fired at him but the shots did not hit the suspect or others, thank goodness. But they easily could have. Is stopping consensual activity between adults so important that it is worth killing people over?

Labels: Britain, marketing, policing, prostitution, Texas

 
More Obscenity Ridiculousness
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:15 PM

In Texas, a couple has been jailed (in lieu of $40,000 bail) because of dirty pictures of adults on a laptop computer.

Labels: obscenity, policing, Texas

 
Misplaced Suspicion
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:47 PM

Here's a story out of Dallas, Texas, of an arrest for solicitation of prostitution that went bad, way bad. On October 10, after 3 in the morning, a Rapid Transit officer sees a woman strike up a conversation with a man; the conversing couple get in the man's car and drive off together. The officer stops the car, and arrests the woman for suspicion of solicitation. Before she is booked at the station, she goes into a restroom, the officer follows, he allegedly offers the woman immunity from the pending arrest in exchange for sex, and they have sex. Yesterday, the officer is arrested and charged with a sex offense. Further, it turns out he does not have the authority to make a solicitation arrest for activity that takes place away from a rapid transit site. Further still, the woman had approached the original man in the convenience store for a ride, not for sex, apparently.

For reams of information on, among other topics, Texas law enforcement shortcomings, be sure to check in with Grits for Breakfast.

Labels: police brutality, policing, prostitution, sex, Texas

 
The Crack Dealers of Anderson County
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:13 PM

Scott Henson of Grits For Breakfast has been tracking a recent episode in which 72 people, all of them black, have been charged with dealing in crack cocaine in a rural Texas county. (Here's one of Scott's previous posts; Pete at Drug WarRant explained the absurdity/tragedy of it all, too.) Yesterday Scott brought word of an article about the Anderson County case in The Texas Observer. When reading the article, it might be useful to keep in mind the Vice Squad mantra, that the high and mighty purpose served by our war on drugs is to make it a little bit harder for some of our friends and neighbors to consume a substance that they want to consume.

Does this Anderson County case sound familiar?

Labels: cocaine, sentencing, Texas

 
Texan Sex Toy Seller Beats the Rap
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:39 PM

Yes, the Passion Parties perpetrator got to walk when some liberal county prosecutor didn't have the guts to go to the mat with the perversion purveyor. Here's the CNN.com story, sent our way by a loyal Vice Squad reader and blogger. The end of the article provides an interesting nugget about the relevant statute: "Texas law allows for the sale of sexual toys as long as they are billed as novelties. But when a person markets the items in a direct manner that shows how they are used in sex, it is considered criminal obscenity." (Or to quote our blogger/informant, "Apparently, 'sex as joke' is OK in Texas. But anything else is a crime.")

Vice Squad has been following this attempt to rein in the forces of evil, most recently, here.

Labels: obscenity, sex, Texas

 
Vice Squad Knows Not How Far Its Influence Extends
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:51 PM

Why just yesterday Vice Squad suggested to Texas Governor Rick Perry that instead of taxing strip clubs to pay for education, he should ban them, based simply on the general notion that prohibiting other people's vices is always good policy. Today, primo research assistant Ryan Monarch brings us word that Texas's state comptroller, Carole Keeton Strayhorn (like the governor, a Republican) is thinking along the same lines:

"On Wednesday, she [Strayhorn] attacked Perry for the strip club proposal and called for banning alcohol sales at such places to force them out of business.

'Today, this state says you can't drink and drive and you cannot walk into a convenience store with an alcoholic drink in your hand. Certainly we can say you can't get drunk while watching people take off their clothes in public to pay for education,' Strayhorn said." So while the tie to education has earned her opposition, it is unclear from the CNN.com report from which the quote is taken exactly what sort of strip club tax earmarking would pass muster with the comptroller. Maybe we could use the funds to pay for methadone clinics?

Labels: alcohol, dancing, taxes, Texas

 
Texas Drug Leniency
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:40 AM

The state of Texas is practically begging its residents to take up illicit drugs, given the ridiculously light sentences being dispensed by state court judges. A man was recently convicted of possession of between 4 and 200 grams of a controlled substance. This week, the judge, perhaps being oversensitive to criticism of the frequent use of the death penalty in Texas, decided to let the malefactor live, and furthermore, only sentenced him to 35 years in prison! This felon could be out of jail in 2039, poised to possess again.

A new book, Life on the Outside, by Jennifer Gonnerman, chronicles the life of one woman who spent 16 years in prison for a cocaine sale under New York's insane Rockefeller drug laws. Here's a brief review of the book from the Village Voice, the publication for which the author (Gonnerman) works.

Labels: drugs, sentencing, Texas

 
Update on Texas Sex Toys Trial
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:35 PM

In a move sure to provoke a slew of double entendre headlines, the judge in the trial of a Texas sex toys saleswoman has imposed a gag order. Until February 12, folks directly involved in the proceedings are not permitted to discuss the facts of the case outside of court. We are under no such restraint, for the time being.

The loyal Vice Squad reader will recall that the case stems from charges filed against the notorious, dangerous (alleged) criminal, a married mother of three teenagers who was nabbed openly selling sex toys to adult women! The Dallas Star-Telegram article linked above reports that the defendant "is charged with selling two sexual devices, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. [She] is a distributor for Passion Parties, which sells the products to women 18 and older at gatherings similar to Tupperware parties." Her lawyer is bringing a case in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the Texas statute.

Labels: obscenity, sex, Texas