"Pole Tax" on Strip Clubs

Once again we find more attacks on the booty parlor capitalists (Thanks Hambo). This time the slack jawed - stump jumper's, running the Texas legislature have placed an extra $5 "Pole Tax" on all patrons entering only strip clubs. The tax goes into effect Jan. 1, 2008 and does not affect other adult-oriented businesses. Varying reports have the "pole tax" generating from $18 - $40 million a year.

Gov. Rick Perry tried this once before calling it a "tassel tax," stating the money would be used to help school funding. This went over with the public like a 300lb toothless, Texan trailer park heifer spinning on a pole at a bachelor party!

But it appears two other Texas Tumbleheads, Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, and Representative Ellen Cohen, D-Houston, will try it again. These T-Back Tax Tsar's passed this tax with the intent that money raised can be used to fund women crisis shelters, sexual assault programs & health care for the uninsured or better known as illegal immigrants....

West will sponsor the bill in part because he was "looking for some impediments" -- and because, he hopes, the bill would generate revenue for uncompensated indigent health care and sexual assault programs in Texas.

Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, is sponsoring similar legislation in the Senate. His bill also would require sexually oriented businesses to pay an annual $5,000 registration fee.

"There's broad-based support for it in the Senate," West said. "It will be interesting to hear the argument against it. I would think that a fee charged to see women exhibit their bodies would be welcomed by those that frequent those establishments. A portion of the money they spend would go to worthwhile cause." More...

Feeling people that go to these "strip clubs" should help fund programs for sexually oriented crimes; Cohen ignores how the last time they tried to tax booty parlors bombed....

Rep. Ellen Cohen, a Houston Democrat who supported the fee, said the strip club owners didn't speak up when the bill was designed.

"I didn't hear from them then," she said. "If this money gets held up, it's very detrimental to what we're trying to do."

"I am simply thrilled that this bill will help provide much-needed services for sexual assault survivors," Cohen said. "To me, this victory was in honor of the over 1.9 million sexual assault survivors in Texas today and in memory of those who did not survive." More...

Makes me wonder how many of the sexual assault survivors were victims of illegal immigrants that West wants to provide free health care for?

Club owners have filed suit on the grounds of infringement on their First Amendment rights.