Michael Brown lost his life after
pursuing his unrestrained, but not unrequited, love for Swisher Sweets, which
he heisted from a Ferguson, Missouri, shopkeeper without even the pretense of
subterfuge. I despise his by-any-means-necessary passion for smoking Swishers.
But who can gainsay the tobacco martyr’s tastes? Like Ulysses S. Grant, he died
for the love of cigars.
Often stale, always sweet,
Swishers smoke as the Cadillac of cheap cigars. Before such tobacco promotions
became outlawed, I eagerly exchanged multiple proofs of purchase seals for a
black T-shirt—worn proudly—with a red Swisher insignia and an uplifting message
conveyed in smoky lettering: “Roll out the sweet times.” Say what you will of
the decedent’s ethics. Michael Brown knew stogies. He could have stolen Dutch
Masters or Phillies. He swiped Swishers. He chose right after choosing wrong.
As far as thieves go, Brown
occupies the next-to-lowest rung on the ladder of larceny, right above the
cowardly-in-the-crowd looters inspired by him. There is something basely
admirable about the safe cracker, the swindler, and the museum burglar. They
work hard for your money.
Brown’s brazen theft of the cigar
box lazily relied on brawn but not brains. Surely the thieves who use guts,
smarts, and strategy to bag their ill-gotten gains look down upon such bully
burglars as low-to-no-skilled workers making a bad name worse for modern-day
Fagins, Tigg Montagues, and even Montague Tiggs.
But young Mr. Brown, and
certainly old Mr. Fagin, acted as mere two-bit criminals, especially in
comparison to America’s greatest serial plunderer. Most of the profit from a
box of Swisher Sweets doesn’t go to the company that manufactures them or the
store owner who sells them. The bulk of profit goes to the government that
aggressively taxes them. That’s quite a racket.
President Obama signed the
largest tobacco tax increase in history in one of his first acts in office. The
feds took about a nickel per cigar when the president took his oath. They now
take 52.75 percent of the sale up to $402 per 1,000 cigars. “More lower-income
people than higher-income people will quit,” Eric Lindblom of the Campaign for
Tobacco-Free Kids paternalistically reasoned to USA Today in 2009. Instead of a
tobacco-free kid, Michael Brown became a free-tobacco kid.
Do-gooders hoped to tax tobacco
out of existence, at least for denizens of “lower-income” neighborhoods — like
Michael Brown. Instead, they incentivized crime. It’s telling that the two
instances of alleged police overreach provoking the most national outrage this
summer involved neither drugs nor guns but tobacco. In New York City, where
state and city taxes total $5.85 per pack of cigarettes, cops manhandled
“loosie” salesman Eric Garner to his death last month. In Missouri, where the
“gentle giant” Michael Brown’s pattern of violently disobeying authority led
more directly to his demise, cheap cigars made expensive by government edict
may have acted as a catalyst for the tragedy.
Perhaps Michael Brown would have
lifted the cigars had they been priced at anything above free. And perhaps the
one-man tax revolt didn’t view himself in the spirit of the Boston Tea Partiers
when he snatched the stogies. Surely the legislators passing the astronomical
spike in cigar taxes in 2009 saw themselves as liberators rather than
oppressors of poor people like Michael Brown. But if the looters inspired by a
dead teen can attach lofty political motives to their acts of petty theft and
vandalism, then perhaps one can do the same for Michael Brown.
Unfortunately, whether one
discusses the politicians imposing draconian tobacco taxes or the ransackers
pillaging Ferguson businesses, the conversation demands a granting of noble
motives to malefactors. Can’t I play along with Mr. Brown?
Even in Missouri, which enforces
the lowest state tobacco taxes in the nation, cigar aficionados can’t escape
the tax man. Before Michael Brown rebelled against the police, before he
disobeyed the shopkeeper, before he defied the eighth (seventh for Catholics)
commandment, he revolted against the tax man. A dead kid, looted stores, a torn
community—all for the want of a good five-cent cigar.
Source: http://spectator.org
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