In their defense, this is the logical progression of a system that allows its agents to commit armed robbery of private citizens. It's only a matter of time before other agencies expand the program further, like pimping out their female agents to catch Johns. Oh wait, they already kinda do that already...Undercover ATF agents in Virginia have funneled more than 250 million cigarettes onto the nation's streets in the past three years through black market sales targeting smugglers, an Associated Press review has found.
Authorities say the flood of government-provided smokes - a pack and a half for every man, woman and child in New York City, the smugglers' main destination - leads them to organized crime rings and can even cut off financing for terrorists. The stings by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have yielded about five dozen federal arrests, albeit none on terror charges.
Many of those cigarettes undoubtedly wind up in the mouths of minors, since black market vendors have no reason to turn away teenage purchasers.
Despite that, government auditors and anti-tobacco groups want the ATF to do even more.
Ok for me, not for thee
It's ok when the government does it:
Yet another example that professionalized law should be largely abolished, to be replaced with us "amateurs" who can do a better job, aren't restrained by Constitutional restrictions (not like the gummint is, either these days), but are civilly liable for their actions.
The ATF and DEA really need to be abolished. If conservatism of the Reagan variety still held political capital in the Republican Party, I would say that it should run on a plan to at least abolish the ATF, DEA and TSA.
Forget it. Not even Reagan could abolish the National Endowment for the Arts or the Department of Education. No way anyone is going to take on LEA agencies.
Reagan couldn't get those abolished because he had a Democratic Congress and needed their votes on defense issues. If he were in office today, he could get TSA abolished in a New York second, and the ATF and DEA would also be easy targets if he forcefully denounced their tactics, culture and all that.
An amazing story. the feds are participating in a sting ont eh sale of products that are legally bought, sold, possessed, and used in every state and the District of Columbia, without federal law restrictions.
It seems the entirety of the federal action is revenue enforcement for the state of NY, which has an abnormally high tax of cigarettes. So the Feds, are restricting interstate commerce in order to deny the benefits of federalism tot he citizens of the several states.
Compare this to people who top off their gas tanks before entering states with high fuel taxes, and gas stations that advertize on billboards to remind you to do it. Interstate shopping trips to low sales tax states. Those fireworks mega-stores in North Carolina coincedentally along the interstate highways near the South carolina and Virginia boarders. Just a coincedence. And all the thousands of liquor stores just accros the county lines from dry counties.
The value of federalism is that free citizens can thunb their noses at the most draconian measures of local governments by crossing a border and doing whatever they like. The Feds seem hell bent on stopping this, even though they don't have a dog in that fight.