May 18, 2006

Jeremy Bulow, the Stanford economics prof who's done more than almost anyone to expose the shoddy workings of the AGs' multistate tobacco deal, says it not only violates antitrust law but violates constitutional prohibitions on states' taxing each others' citizens:

Smokers buy as many cigarettes in Virginia as in New York, but New York makes six times as much as Virginia in the deal between states and cigarette makers....

New York made $510,597,469 more than it would have made through a straight tax and Virginia made $132,913,578 less, Bulow calculated in a report last year.