Somewhere in the afterlife’s screening room, Will Hays, architect of Hollywood’s old Production Code, and the stern Catholic bishops of the Legion of Decency are probably sharing a chuckle, maybe over Scotch and cigarettes. Why? The recent fuss over “Avatar,” the James Cameron film in which the latest in cinematic technology meets the oldest argument in the movies: whether vice on screen encourages vice in real life.

In “Avatar,” a character played by Sigourney Weaver smokes. Antitobacco advocates say on-screen smoking — even by a character we’re supposed to dislike, like Ms. Weaver’s — makes children pick up the habit. They have criticized the movie as a threat to public health.

Your initial response — for God’s sake — might be tempered by knowing that the advocates have persuasive scientific studies to support their warnings. Stanton A. Glantz, the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, points to several, in publications like the medical journal The Lancet, showing strong evidence that on-screen smoking increases teenage cigarette use.

The World Health Organization wants governments to “severely restrict smoking imagery in all film media.” Mr. Glantz doesn’t go that far. He is not urging government regulation but industry self-restraint and greater public awareness, like an R rating for smoking so families can go to the multiplex forewarned.

Does that strike you as nannyish and make you a little queasy? Us, too. But it’s hard to condemn the strategy of using information, not censorship, to confront a perceived public-health threat, especially when, as Mr. Glantz argues, big spending on movie product placement by tobacco companies tilts the field heavily in smoking’s favor.

Probably the only rational response is to let the artists and scolds flourish together, along with information. Protect our children as we must, but we should leave the moviemakers to do their thing.

German scientists have found evidence of a link between exposure to tobacco smoke during early development and abnormal behavioral symptoms (including conduct problems, hyperactivity and problems in peer relationships) that surface by age 10.

“Adverse effects of prenatal and postnatal tobacco exposure have been reported to be associated with behavioral problems” in the past, the study explains. But “the magnitude of the association with tobacco exposure at specific periods” was unclear before this new analysis.

The study used data from the GINI-plus Prospective Birth Cohort Study to assess the relative risk of behavioral problems in children who had been exposed to tobacco smoke in utero and after birth. The results indicated that exposure to tobacco smoke was especially detrimental in utero, but even those exposed to it only after birth had a higher risk of abnormal behavior than kids who weren’t exposed.

“Compared with children not exposed to tobacco smoke, children exposed both pre- and postnatally to tobacco smoke had twice the estimated risk of being classified as abnormal,” the study concludes. Children exposed only prenatally had a 90 percent higher relative risk and those exposed only postnatally had a 30 percent higher relative risk.

These results, the researchers say, could not be explained by parental education, father’s employment, child’s time spent in front of a computer or TV screen, being raised by a single parent or mother’s age.

The study, appearing in the online journal Environmental Health Perspectives, may serve as inspiration for parents or grandparents attempting to quit smoking.

While San Diego was Richard Nixon’s favorite city for political reasons, Copenhagen, may be Barack Obama’s worst. For it is the capital of Denmark where Obama’s last-minute pitch for Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics fell on deaf ears earlier this year. Today’s the “sky is falling” plea to 193 nations for a global climate warming pact most likely will suffer a similar fate.

Obama holds a poker hand the other players read. The joker is held by his own Senate which appears unlikely 1) to pass its own climate change bill any where near the one passed in the House, and 2) to ratify a treaty even if one is smoked out in Copenhagen.

In language a fifth grader can understand, poisons coughed into the air by carbon-producing fuels from vehicles and factories can only be reduced by universal cooperation. Doing it alone — or unilaterally in grown-up words — won’t accomplish anything.

The biggest stumbling block in Copenhagen has been resistance by China and some other rapidly-developing nations for reduction standard verification. No one trusts one another, especially the United States based on its record during the Bush administration.

The second hang-up is the cost. One proposal has wealthy nations paying $10 billion dollars annually until 2020 — about 20 to 30% of the total costs absorbed by the U.S. — to third world countries to help them achieve their goals in reducing pollution. From 2020 to 2050 the cost would be $100 billion annually.

The president is trying to take the lead but it is too late and not enough people and nation’s are following. At least the ones that matter: India, China and Brazil.

Obama in his speech to the world leaders today said their collective will to address global warming “hangs in the balance.”

“We are running short on time, and at this point the question is whether we will move forward together or split apart, whether we prefer posturing to action,” Obama said. “We are ready to get this done today, but there has to be movement on all sides.”

Whether it’s health care, rushing troops into Afghanistan when they’re not ready or climate change, Obama always is in a hurry-up crises mode, it seems. He’s right, of course, but in all cases the pushers and shovers outside his control are dragging their feet.

Before his arrival in Copenhagen, The Washington Post says it obtained a draft text of a basic agreement of general goals.

It provides a way for industrialized nations to commit “aggregate reductions of greenhouse gases” by 2020 and allows for this number to be judged based on both a 1990 baseline–which the European Union has insisted is the most meaningful date–and a 2005 baseline, which the United States, Japan and other developed countries have endorsed. The draft text includes all the near-term emission-cut pledges that industrial countries have made and would establish a 2050 target for reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions that would include all countries.

India, along with China the world’s second biggest polluter, is reluctant to even commit to emission reduction, according to French president Nicholas Sarkozy.

While it may make environmental advocates feel good, the Obama administration’s goal of reducing emissions unilaterally through the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory bureaucracies.not only will accomplish nothing on the global scope of things but politically dilute their bargaining power with other nations.

In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, two lawyers who both served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, write:

Unilateral action may well be the right option in cases in which the United States itself, given sufficient commitment and will, can achieve a particular goal. In the case of global climate change, however, the United States can do nothing that is in the least effective without the agreement and participation of all of the other major carbon-emitting economies, including Europe, India and China. Until all are on board, unilateral cuts will simply make the American people poorer, with no benefit to anyone but our foreign competitors.

The next time someone tells you “It’s all or nothing,” think global warming.

Seldom in the history of mankind has there been a proposal so altruistic for the common good and fraught with paranoia and parochial economic interests. It’s a green issue, all right, but in this case the color of money and not saving the rain forests nor taking a deep breath without choking nor watching Manhatten under 10 feet of water.
Posted by JERRY REMMERS, Columnist in At TMV, Breaking News, Economy, Politics, Science & Technology.
Dec 18th, 2009

Roger Cohen’s piece on “Climategate” (Herald, Dec. 9) miss-ed some key details. Serious scientists recognize the roles of both human-released atmospheric carbon dioxide and other natural phenomena on global temperatures.

Deniers who suggest the contrary, or who make uninformed claims over the recent decade’s temperatures, generate interesting sound bites and misinformation, but nothing more. Global temperatures result from a delicate balance between enormous heat radiated to Earth from the sun, counterbalanced with what Earth reflects back plus what it radiates into space.

CO2 reduces Earth’s radiation into space and disrupts that balance. Minute imbalances have profound long-term affects. The sun blasts Earth with, on average, 350 watts per square meter – pole-to-pole, day and night, summer and winter, 24/7. Without reflecting back 100 w/m2 and radiating 250 w/m2, average over the entire Earth, we would rapidly become a crematorium.

This precise balance controls our temperature.

Balance two 300-pound linebackers on a teeter-totter and nothing moves. Hand one a six-pack of beer, and he drops to the ground. Debating whether the 300-pound football player or the 5-pound six-pack caused the drop is ludicrous – which is the very logic used by deniers debating whether human-caused CO2 or natural phenomena cause global warming.

That humans increase atmospheric CO2 levels is beyond debate. At issue is the effect of CO2 on global temperatures. The correlation between global mean temperatures and atmospheric CO2 during the last 50 years is a stunning 79 percent. That means 79 percent of the variance in temperature is explained by CO2 level alone, the other 21 percent by all other causes combined.

It doesn’t matter if you use the temperature data from the much-maligned Hadley CRU, from NOAA or NASA. The relationship is 1 degree Celsius per 100 parts per million of CO2.

I wholly support Cohen’s suggestion to “follow the money.” Shell, BP and Exxon-Mobile most recently reported combined revenues of $1.2 trillion, with net earnings before taxes of $141 billion. Oil lobbyists received $125 million to discredit global warming science. It reminds one of big tobacco’s earlier denials of a link between smoking and lung cancer.

Gerald Baumann, Durango Editor’s note: Gerald Baumann holds a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering specializing in heat transfer and thermal science.

The MPAA has embarrassed itself an untold number of times over the years for its prudish attitude toward sex and its wildly permissive attitude toward violence. But what’s it’s done to Nancy Meyers’ upcoming comedy, “It’s Complicated,” is perhaps the ratings board’s biggest boneheaded move yet.

Its_complicated_ver2 According to a story by my colleague, Steven Zeitchik, the MPAA has given Meyers’ fluffy comedy about a middle-aged love triangle an R rating because Meryl Streep and Steve Martin’s (who star in the film along with Alec Baldwin) characters are seen sharing a joint while on a date.

The problem, according to people involved with the board’s hearing on the issue, isn’t that the actors are seen smoking pot — it’s that the scene “features pot-smoking with no bad consequences.” Apparently, everything would’ve been fine if only the characters had been killed in a gory car crash because their reflexes were slightly impaired after sharing the joint, which surely would’ve served as a stern warning to kids not to ever touch the evil weed.

In other words, you can score a tidy amount of pot at hundreds of marijuana clinics across Los Angeles, but it you take a puff on a joint in a Hollywood movie, you immediately get walloped with an R rating, whether you’re a gangsta’ rapper like Snoop Dogg or a genial white-haired Oscar host like Steve Martin.

It’s another outrageous example of the lunatic priorities of the MPAA, which claims to serve the interests of parents but actually dances to its crazy drummer, happily handing out PG-13 ratings to unbelievably violent movies like “Terminator: Salvation” while whipping out the R rating at the first sign of a few naked breasts or, God forbid, an unsheathed penis.

The R rating for “It’s Complicated,” which hits theaters Christmas Day, is especially ludicrous. It would be one thing if we saw Kristin Stewart smoking weed in “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” since the movie is right in the sweet spot for teens and tweeners. But if the MPAA is really sticking up for families everywhere, it hardly seems to be a parental concern that impressionable kids are going to be flocking to see a romantic comedy featuring actors who are — in the case of Streep and Martin — even older than some of their grandparents.

I’ve been ranting and raving about the MPAA’s nutty priorities for years without any discernible effect. I think it’s time that filmmakers and actors start sticking up for their peers, in this case Meyers, who is getting the shaft from the MPAA for a totally harmless comedy scene. Since George Clooney (and I mean this with no offense) seems to weigh in on every pressing foreign policy of the day, maybe he could spare a little interview time to take the MPAA to the woodshed, which might serve to embolden some of his more cautious brethren to speak out against an organization whose moral compass has clearly gone haywire.

Here’s the trailer for “It’s Complicated,” where you can actually see, toward the end, the giddy after-effects of Streep’s and Martin’s characters’ marijuana indulgence:

Farmers have slowly switched from sugarcane to tobacco farming in most parts of Nadi. In Sabeto, large areas that used to be sugarcane fields are now tobacco farms.

Akuila Nacegutuilagi is one of the many tobacco farmers at Balenakula in Sabeto. The 33-year-old farms his land during his leisure.
Nacegutuilagi said he started growing tobacco for British American Tobacco (Fiji) Limited this year.
He said the crop is harvested twice a year and looks like a healthy business to do.

“This is my first year to grow tobacco. Before I used to grow sugarcane but I cleared up the place and now grow tobacco for British American Tobacco,” Nacegutuilagi said. “I am an electrician but I work on my farm during my spare time and it also is my second means of income. Tobacco normally matures in three months that is when we start harvesting which would take up another three months. “Normally in a year I would grow tobacco twice.

“This is my first year so I want to see if it’s any good going into tobacco farming.”

British American Tobacco provides the seedlings, fertilizer, labour and ploughs the farms.

Mr Nacegutuilagi said all of this is deducted from their payment.

“We are paid according to the grade of tobacco. Grade one is 46 cents, grade two 44 cents and grade three 27 cents,” he said.

“On the farms we weed, hoe and take out the suckers everyday.”

With the sugar industry going through one of its toughest times in history, farmers are slowing switching to tobacco farming.

OSLO, – Prices of everyday goods such as clothing and food will barely rise if rich nations slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to a study on Wednesday that concludes green lifestyles are affordable.

The study, in New Scientist magazine based on data for Britain from consultancy Cambridge Econometrics, said prices of only a few consumer goods dependent on fossil fuels would rocket, such as fuel-guzzling air travel.

“These results show that the global project to fight climate change is doable,” the report quoted Alex Bowen, a climate policy expert at the London School of Economics, as saying. “It’s not such a big ask as people are making out.”

The model, assuming cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 80 percent by 2050 in line with goals by major developing states, projected that prices of food, clothing and cars would rise 1 percent by 2050 and tobacco, alcohol and electronics 2 percent. Phone bills would be unaffected.

But energy prices would jump, with a shift to renewable energies such as solar and wind power. Electricity prices would be up 15 percent and a return flight from London to New York would soar 140 percent.

“We can afford to go green,” New Scientist said of the findings. “Electricity and other forms of energy make up only a fraction of the price of most goods,” it said. “Other factors — raw materials, labour and taxes — are far more important.”

“The energy that goes into producing food, alcoholic drinks and tobacco, for instance, makes up just 2 percent of the consumer price,” it said, noting there were many uncertainties about the projection.

LONDON – Auction houses are banking on a recovery at next week’s series of big Russian art sales in London, at which they expect to show that the market dominated by new money is through the worst of the recession.

With most at stake are Sotheby’s and Russian specialist MacDougall’s, who together offer works worth between 27 and 39 million pounds ($45-64 million). Christie’s the world’s largest auction house, has pre-sale estimates of 6.5-9.3 million pounds.

The figures are sharply down on a year ago, reflecting how financial turmoil and falling stock and property values have hit super-wealthy collectors from Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and deterred owners from selling their best pieces.

Sotheby’s, for example, expected its 2008 winter sales to fetch between 29 and 41 million pounds. The actual result was 25 million, marking a significant drop in values which had soared during the previous five years or so.

This year Sotheby’s estimates have halved to 15-21 million pounds, reflecting a more selective pool of buyers and limited supply, as sellers hold out for a return to the heady days of 2007 and early 2008.

“There are less lots on offer,” Jo Vickery, Sotheby’s senior director, told Reuters. “We’ve been much more selective in the current economic climate, looking particularly for works with a very good provenance.

“There is considerable demand out there but at the moment, supply is less.”

William MacDougall, director of MacDougall Arts Ltd., said he expected prices to continue to recover from recent falls.

“The general theme since April last year is that sellers are reluctant to sell at these levels, unlike, say, holders of equities who have been forced into doing so.

“But the results in October in New York were very good and so we’re expecting a continued healthy market next week.”

TOP LOT SEREBRIAKOVA’S “NUDE”

He said over 90 percent of buyers were born in the former Soviet Union, and, although London has become the global capital for Russian art, the majority of them were based elsewhere.

His company is selling art valued at 12.4-17.6 million pounds. MacDougall’s also boasts the most valuable single lot of “Russian Week” in London, with an oil painting of a nude female by Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova expected to fetch 1.0-1.5 million pounds.

Close behind is Sotheby’s and another work by a leading 20th century female artist, Alexandra Exter, whose brightly-colored “Venice” is estimated at 0.9-1.2 million pounds.

The auction house is also offering a large collection of Faberge cigarette cases and cufflinks that had been hidden in a pair of pillowcases in a Swedish foreign office safe for over 90 years until their recent discovery.

The objects belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and her husband Grand Duke Vladimir, brother of Czar Alexander III.

The sale is expected to raise around one million pounds, and a handful of the bejeweled cigarette cases still contain matches and period cigarettes. Estimates range from 80 pounds to up to 90,000 pounds.

The week of Russian sales kicks off with Sotheby’s and Bonhams holding their main auctions on Monday and wind up at MacDougall’s on Thursday.

A senate inquiry will examine draft laws which would see plain cigarette packaging mandated in Australia, Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding said.

The laws would ban advertising logos or trademarks on any cigarette packets so tobacco products would only carry plain labelling dominated by health warnings.

“There is no case for allowing any glossy brand promotion for a product that is lethal and addictive,” Senator Fielding said.

“Smoking related diseases cost the Australian community over $30 billion each year.

“Family First’s plain tobacco packaging bill would take the polish off cigarette branding and the positive images the tobacco giants try to associate with their products.”

Chair of Cancer Council Australia’s tobacco issues committee, Kylie Lindorff, said Family First’s reforms to tobacco product packaging are essential to reducing the unacceptable level of cancer death and disability caused by smoking in Australia.

“It is incongruous enough that a poorly regulated product that is available from retailers almost anywhere kills more than half of its consumers,” Ms Lindorff said.

“For the products to also be marketed in glossy packets intended to convey the aspirations or sense of identity of the consumer is even more absurd.”

The Heart Foundation also strongly supports Senator Fielding’s laws because current cigarette packaging is a potent form of advertising and promotion for smoking.

“Generic plain packaging, with a clear graphic warning on the front and back of the pack, should be mandated to counter the allure of smoking and reduce the disease burden it causes,” National Heart Foundation’s tobacco control spokesperson, Maurice Swanson said

The Public Health Association of Australia says smoking is the largest single preventable cause of death and disease in Australia, with over 15,000 deaths each year.

Family First introduced its Plain Tobacco Packaging (Removing Branding from Cigarette Packs) Bill 2009 on 20 August 2009.

South Dakota’s smoking ban faces one burning question. Did the notaries who verified the petitions do enough to make them official?

A two-day trial started Thursday in Pierre. The opponents of the ban are only 18 signatures short of getting the issue on the ballot.

Several notaries took the witness stand Thursday and were questioned about how they signed and dated the petitions and if they did it legally.

Linda Wegman was one of the notaries questioned and always thought she had her ‘I’s’ dotted and ‘T’s’ crossed when it came to notarizing documents.

“It’s hard to remember the date so I had my date printed right on it, thought I had all my bases covered,” Wegman said.

Wegman had a customized stamp made to make sure all of her information could be seen clearly. But when she took the witness stand and was questioned about the stamp, she said she never had it registered with the state, and the six petition sheets she stamped were never officially notarized.

“I’ve notarized hundreds and hundreds of documents using that stamp and if anyone wanted to contest it, I guess they [the notarized documents] are all wrong,” Wegman said.

The Secretary of State and the American Cancer Society did contest Wegman’s notarized documents along with several others Thursday. Supporters of the smoking ban are pointing to those miscues as the reason to throw out thousands of signatures.

“The rules are there. Are they tough? That’s not really what we’re here today to argue. The rules are there, the laws are there, the time has past for that,” Darrin Smith with the American Heart Association said.

Notaries were also questioned about only putting the month and year of their expiration date on the petition. The state argues the month, day and year all should have been included.

Opponents say questions about those technicalities are why this issue is in court.

“What’s a complete date, what’s not a complete date? I don’t know. I thought when somebody signed and dated something, 11-09, as far as the year and the month, I thought that was a complete date. But evidently it needs a number too,” smoking ban opponent and Sioux Falls bar owner Don Rose said.

Judge Kathleen Trandahl will hear from more notaries and witnesses Friday. It will ultimately be her decision if the notaries did enough to authenticate the petitions.

By Ben Dunsmoor
© 2009 KELOLAND TV

The number of tobacco smokers currently in Thailand has reached 14.3 million, the latest Global Adult Tobacco Survey revealed yesterday.

Meanwhile, the Public Health Ministry is considering a proposal to the Finance Ministry to increase the tax level on hand-rolled cigarette products after finding over 7.4 million people smoke this style of cigarette. The remainder smoke manufactured cigarettes.

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey is a national household survey launched in February 2007.

Sixteen countries, home to more than half the world’s smokers and bearing the highest tobacco use, were involved in the study: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Russian Federation, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Vietnam.

Thailand was the first country to complete and release its survey – conducted this year as a household poll of persons 15 and older by the Ministry of Public Health, Mahidol University and the National Statistical Office.

Lakkhana Termsirikulchai, who led a survey team, said it found that of the 14.3 million people who smoked tobacco, 7.9 million chose manufactured cigarettes and the other half – 7.4 million – were hand-rolled cigarette smokers.

Only six out of every 10 smokers said they planned or are thinking about quitting, while five in 10 smokers had tried to quit in the last 12 months.

The survey found that 3.3 million workers are exposed to tobacco smoke at the workplace and 20.5 million adults to tobacco smoke in their homes.

The survey found that 74.4 per cent of adults noticed anti-cigarette smoking information on television. Only one in 10 adults were aware of cigarette marketing in stores where cigarettes are sold; seven in 10 smokers considered quitting because of warning labels; and 98.6 per cent of adults believed smoking causes serious illness.

Action Smoking and Health Foundation’s secretary-general, Dr Prakit Watheesathokkij has expressed concern over the consumption of hand-rolled cigarettes as most people mistakenly believe smoking them is less dangerous than manufactured cigarettes.

He said hand-rolled cigarettes also cause serious illness for smokers such as oral cancer and cancer of the oesophagus. In India, he added, about 100,000 died from smoking hand-rolled cigarettes each year.

He said most cigarette manufacturers are now producing more smokeless cigarettes after noting an increasing trend in smokeless tobacco use among teenagers worldwide.

To reduce the number of hand-rolled cigarette smokers, Prakit has asked the government to increase the tax level on hand-rolled cigarette products and collect tax excise to 70 per cent of product price from the current rate.

Deputy Minister of Public Health Manit Nopamornbodee said he will consult with the Finance Ministry about increasing the tax level on hand-rolled cigarette products and ya nat – traditional medicine that contains hand-rolled cigarette products.

“I will bring this issue to consultation with the Finance Ministry before implementing the regulation,” Deputy Minister Manit Nopamornbodee said.

“We have to study its impact carefully on whether an increased tax level would reduce the amount of hand- rolled tobacco smokers or not,” he added.

He also instructed the Department of Development of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine of Public Health and the Department of Medical Science to conduct research into medicinal plants that help smokers to quit.

Meanwhile, Thai Network Against Tabinfo Asia 2009, led by Dr Hatai Chitanont, has submitted an open letter to Deputy Finance Minister,Prasit Pattaraprasit asking him to withdraw from the tobacco industry event he is due to open on Wednesday at Impact Arena Moung Thontani Exhibition Centre.

“Pradit must think carefully whether to participate, talking about a product that kills millions every year,” he said. “Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has told Cabinet he will not allow government officials to be involved in the event.”

He added that any government support for an event organised by the tobacco industry would be a violation by the Thai government of the UN’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

By Pongphon Sarnsamak
The Nation
November 10, 2009

The New York State Senate hearing on the state’s non-collection of taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Native Americans on Indian Reservations brought representatives from Indian nations from all over New York State into a highly charged arena at the Borough of Manhattan Community College on Tuesday.

The hearing was chaired by state Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) and had several other senators on the committee in attendance throughout the day. Though the hearing was scheduled to end at 2:30 p.m., the full slate of witnesses and complexity of the testimony being given extended to just after 4:30 p.m., with only two brief breaks in between.

Johnson had to call for order on a couple of occasions during heated exchanges between Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) and JC Seneca of the Seneca Nation of Indians that prompted mocking rebukes from Indians in the auditorium. Golden implored the Seneca nation to help New York State given the $4 billion budget deficit the state is facing claiming that New York State will soon be in the same position as California and issuing IOU’s to contractors, vendors and employees. This was met with calls from the crowd, many of whom were yelling out “That’s not our problem” and taunting the senator as he walked out midway through the proceedings.

Early on in the testimony, the senators attempted to establish the amount of tax money that New York was theoretically missing by not collecting tax on tobacco sales on Indian territories when sold to non-natives from off reservation land. This proved more difficult than the panel probably hoped as the first three witnesses gave figures that ranged between $95 million annually to $1.6 billion annually. The latter figure being given during spirited testimony given by Steve Rosenthal, a former tobacco distributor turned industry consultant.

The $95 million estimate was proffered by Peter Kiernan, representing Governor Paterson’s office, which represented a portion of the more than $200 million missing tax revenue as reported by William Comiskey, the deputy commission or Taxation and Finance. Kiernan said the reduced figure assumed a high level of “non-compliance in collection” of the tax even if a mechanism was adopted to collect taxes on cigarettes and it was agreed to by the tribes.
The committee pursued Kiernan more aggressively than other witnesses, clearly indicating a fracture between the governor’s office and the state legislature. Kiernan made it clear that the governor’s office is less than hopeful that this money will be collected and cited discussion with the New York State police that efforts to collect taxes from merchants on reservation territory would likely be met with violence. Key to this assumption were the incidents in 1992 and 1997 where New York State troopers attempting to enter Seneca territory upstate New York were met with angry mobs resulting in a standoff on both occasions.

Kiernan represented that the governor was determined to come to a resolution with the tribes but as of now has followed the practice of “forbearance,” which was begun during the Cuomo administration and continued through the Pataki and Spitzer administrations as well. Kiernan noted that the lack of clarity in the law and precedent to collect taxes from Indian nations as well as the likelihood of violent confrontation made the situation more difficult even though the Paterson administration believed it had a right to collect taxes from the tribes.

He went on to explain that the state troopers indicated during their discussions that the cost to close down activity on reservation lands in New York in an attempt to enforce taxation would cost nearly $2 million per day with no clear idea of how long a standoff between the state and the nations would take. Senators Golden and George Winner (R-Elmira) took the greatest exception to Kiernan’s testimony prompting Winner to ask “Doesn’t that send a message that there are rewards for not following the law?”

Other senators, most notably Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) attempted to lay a foundation that Native Americans enjoy public resources from transportation to healthcare. But there was a noticeable shift in the room when JC Seneca of the Seneca Nation and Seneca counsel Rob Porter were sworn in and took their seats in the witness chairs in the front of the packed room. Johnson took an amicable and cautious approach with Seneca and Porter as the discussion turned toward the key issue of sovereignty. Seneca in turn spoke in measured tones about the definition of sovereignty and cited case law and a Federal treaty between the United States and the Seneca Nation establishing that all commerce conducted on reservation territory is exempt from all local, state and federal taxes.

The senate committee ran into a brick wall with the Seneca and Porter testimony. As counsel to the Seneca Nation, Porter quoted state and federal decisions with efficiency and closed down every angle the committee pursued to further its goal of taxing Indian nations. When Winner remarked that Mr. Seneca appeared to be a non-violent and peaceful person and suggested that conflict could be avoided, Seneca replied to the delight of the Native Americans in the room that “you obviously don’t know me very well.”

He went on to say that neither side wanted conflict but reminded the committee that it was New York State that “invaded Seneca land with a thousand state troopers” and asked what the committee would do if that happened on their land. At the end of the question and answer period, Seneca struck a conciliatory note that the Seneca Nation would continue to pursue all matters in a court of law and try to avoid violent confrontation.

In a brief interview after his testimony, Seneca was upbeat about the hearing saying that “dialogue is beneficial to both sides of our issues” and that he was very concerned for the “success of western New York.” He is one of the largest employers in its region, which has turned the economic tables in the past two decades.

Much of their success has been due to the revenues generated from three gaming operations controlled by the nation and the increased revenues from the sale of tobacco. Seneca Nation and Chief James Ransom, Chief of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, provided economic reports as part of their testimonies to illustrate the economic benefit that the tribes activities have on the regions they border.

Left unclear is what role the committee will play and whether or not any recommendations they make can be enacted or enforced. As a result of the taxes on cigarettes in New York—and Manhattan in particular—all Indian tribes have seen an explosion in sales on reservation territory.

Part this economic boon to the tribes is a war chest of funds to fight any legal battles that they deem to be en encroachment on their sovereign rights to engage in commerce on their lands. What does seem clear is that New York will have to look elsewhere to close its ever increasing budget gap.

By Jed Morey, Oct 28th, 2009