In other news…
- A large-scale strike in France this weekend, seemingly largely focused on opposition to government pension reform plans, coincides with a truck blockade across the country to protest diesel fuel tax increases. These blockades will snag highways, but related blockades also are specifically targeting fuel depots, with the result that hundreds of fuel stations in France have run out of gasoline.
- The Nouvelle Société Civile du Congo has called for a complete tax strike in North Kivu to protest the government’s failure to provide security in the region.
- The human war on traffic-ticket-generating robots continues, with the robot hordes taking casualties in Germany, Italy, and France in recent weeks. In France, according to a new government report, 17,886 photo radar devices have been attacked over the past two years.
- The Tax Foundation has run the numbers to show how increases in cigarette taxes cause increases in cigarette smuggling to match. For example, more than half of the cigarettes smoked in New York have been smuggled in from outside the state to evade taxes.
- Another hazmat scare — this one apparently an abandoned suitcase in a driveway — rattled the IRS office in Chamblee, Georgia.
