Council approves $5-per-head strip club fee The Houston City Council has passed a $5-per-customer fee on strip clubs to raise money to reduce its backlog of rape kits. The vote was 14-1, with Councilwoman Helena Brown voting no. “We have to do something to help the 4,000-plus women, children and men who have been sexually assaulted,” said Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, the author of the ordinance, which she modeled on a similar law she got passed as a state legislator. “I think we’ve waited long enough.” Cohen is the former CEO of an organization that runs a women’s shelter. The city actually has more than 6,600 unprocessed kits containing swabs and other DNA evidence collected in cases of sexual assault. The backlog has existed for years as police have said they do not have the resources to process the evidence as fast as it comes in. Councilman Oliver Pennington said he supported Cohen’s measure in the interest of the administration of justice. It could well be, Pennington said, that testing rape evidence will exonerate the falsely accused as well as bring the guilty to justice. Representatives of the strip club industry spoke against the measure in part because they believe it unfairly links their businesses with sexual assaults. A study Cohen relies upon to make the link states: “Are sexually-oriented-businesses, alcohol, and the victimization and perpetration of sexual violence against women connected? An exhaustive review of the literature says yes.” Several paragraphs later, though, the same study states: “However, no study has authoritatively linked alcohol, sexually-oriented-businesses, and the perpetration of sexual violence.” Councilman C.O. Bradford also called the nexus into question. He said that according to Houston Police Department, apartment complexes are the most common location for sexual assaults, and that sexually oriented businesses are 10th. Still, said Bradford, a former police chief: “Victims have waited too long.” http://blog.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2012/06/council-approves-5-per-head-strip-club-fee/
What is the causation between strip clubs and rape, and why tax the strip clubs for rape? Dumb, dumb tax, and I haven' been to a strip club in years, so it wouldn't affect me, even if it happened in Oregon.
What does video poker have to do with schools? The stripper tax is just one more sin tax that the majority of people don't care gets taxed. Since the city of Portland insists on using the gas tax it collects on making new bike paths maybe a stripper could used to fix roads and pot holes. But I agree, strippers don't have anything to do with pot holes so I guess that's a bad idea.
Wasn't the title of this thread "Best New Tax Ever"? Those other taxes are dumb too, IMO, but I'm not the one celebrating it. Unless the "Pole Tax" thing was supposed to be clever?
It would make sense to tax alcohol drinkers, or football players, or mysoginist businessmen or mormons or policemen or city councilmen, because they quite often rape and abuse women. Patrons of strip clubs do not. In fact, patrons of pornography in general are far less likely to commit rape than your average joe. But, they're Texas politicians so it's not surprising that 14 out of 15 of them are absolute morons.
BWAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! But wait, it's only a tax "per head".
There's no such thing as a good tax. And Sin taxes are regressive taxes, ones that bother poor people.
We have no sales tax in Oregon so we use some of the money from video poker and slots to fund our schools. And a gas tax? I have no problem with a gas tax. I have a problem with how it's used but the tax itself is fine.
Did you know that gas taxes statewide pay towards Max? When I lived in K Falls, a percentage of the gas tax that used to be used for local roads were redirected to Portland for light rail. We hated that.
