New York is losing population, property taxes continue to escalate, job creation is damaged by the overall burden of taxation and the upstate economy has become so unrecognizable and separate from the downstate economy it may as well be Maine.
Yet, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and his party have other priorities. He's suing R.J. Reynolds because the company allegedly violated the 1998 national Tobacco Master Settlement by marketing Joe Camel in a different form.
"R.J. Reynolds is trying to use cartoons and popular music to lure young people into a lifelong addiction to smoking,” Cuomo huffed in a news release. “We will not allow this corporation’s clear and continuous disregard for the law and for the health of young people to go unchecked.”
Government Nanny Cuomo must think New York's parents are too stupid and irresponsible to raise their children without a cartoon talking them into being a lifelong smoker. And Government Nanny Cuomo is also unfamiliar with the concepts of personal responsibility and free will.
The Empire State is now an enfeebled state, and the Attorney General decides it's time to sue an advertising cartoon that existed from 1987 to 1997. It's so absurd it should be an Onion story.
