Originally Posted by
FlyingBeanCounter
This is classic! So a few legislators said they would vote one way or another and suddenly they are squelching free speech by imposing a tax that should rightly be imposed. I am sure all those upset about this were all up in arms when the IRS was squelching free speech a few years ago.
Once again,
this is not about tax policy (or gun policy for that matter).
I don't have an opinion on whether or not the tax policy proposal was good policy. I don't know about, or really care about, the economic policy of the state of Georgia.
What I care a whole lot about is the state taking what I see as
unconstitutional punitive action in response to any person or entity making a political statement or taking political action that the government leadership disagrees with.
DL is free to take a position against or for the NRA, and in a democracy where free speech and nonviolent political expression are firmly protected rights
, the government is explicitly not free to respond to this political expression with any type of punishment. Citizens, on the other hand, are free to respond. This is really important for all of us, conservative and liberal alike.
When Cagle tweeted that "
corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back” as
the reason for dumping the tax break, it suddenly became a very real free speech issue. In this case Cagle was not responding as an individual using his own rights to free speech, rather, he was (and remains) a representative of the state, and proposing that
the state unconstitutionally punish Delta for Delta's constitutionally protected political expression. He proposed doing this through one of the most powerful tools that the state has: taxation.