Whose ox is gored?

We keep criticizing New Brunswick for collecting sales tax at the border when its citizens return from shopping in Maine. But Maine is not so friendly to out-of-state business either. Maine is collecting sales tax from Mainers when they are shopping by mail outside our state! Maine is keeping gumshoes in New Hampshire so that we can confiscate “imported” liquor, all of it, if the amount exceeds one gallon per car, not per person. Maine then proceeds to collect heavy liquor taxes in the form of fines to protect what was formerly a state liquor monopoly.

The framers of our Constitution were eager to prevent us from sinking into the toll-craze quagmire of Central Europe 200 years ago when the numerous principalities and cities harassed and repressed commerce by collecting dues at the gate. They wrote: “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” And: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports. …”

Those rules were upheld by the Supreme Court in the past when states violated them but some states, including Maine, are trying to circumvent and obstruct the free-market idea. Maine is showing New Brunswick the wrong way. Bo Thott Cutler