… with extortion. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You’ve probably heard by now that Danville’s city manager, Joe King, is again proposing a 30 cent tax on a pack of cigarettes. Some people have howled that a city with a deep tobacco heritage like Danville should never even consider taxing such a product that made Danville what it is today. (Those people are idiots, by the way.) Face it, there are very few ways for Virginia cities to raise revenue and Joe King is doing what can do to try and get some money into the city’s treasury. It ain’t gonna happen this year either. <\/p>\n
Thanks to representatives from the two tobacco stores threatening their (quite-justified) plans to close their city locations and move to the county if the tax passed, the council is not going to be blamed for the loss of businesses. <\/p>\n
Who knew that threats to move your business out of town if things don’t go your way actually works? Well, John Cannon does. That’s why CCI was shockingly carved out when South Boston annexed most of Riverdale. <\/p>\n
Councilman Fred Shanks was also smart enough to call bullshit on the projected revenue that the tax would bring in. Shanks understood that higher prices lead to lower sales… but who needs business principles when the power of business extortion exists?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
… with extortion. <\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,58,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-businesscentral","category-danville","category-politicscentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-1Xa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6566,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/16\/danville-city-council-meeting-316-live\/","url_meta":{"origin":7512,"position":0},"title":"Danville City Council Meeting – (3\/16) – LIVE! (Recap)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"March 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's take a look at what happened at tonight's Danville City Council meeting... Tonight, Danville City Council authorized the money needed to buy land for a new downtown fire station which would house the 911 Emergency Operations & Dispatch center. They also appropriated $5,200,000 for mandated social services funds. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12522,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/04\/30\/time-machine-hows-it-going-zeyuan-flooring\/","url_meta":{"origin":7512,"position":1},"title":"Time Machine: How’s It Going, Zeyuan Flooring?","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Not Too Good. Let's hop in the SouthsideCentral Time Machine and go back to October 17th, 2013 where this story began. And here we are out at the Institute on October 17th, 2013 where this announcement is made... The Regional Industrial Facility Authority and the Industrial Development Authority of Danville\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Time Machine"","block_context":{"text":"Time Machine","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/time-machine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/LSKDQcS.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/LSKDQcS.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/LSKDQcS.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/LSKDQcS.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14842,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2016\/01\/05\/danville-city-council-live-1516\/","url_meta":{"origin":7512,"position":2},"title":"Danville City Council – LIVE! (1\/5\/16)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"SouthsideCentral was LIVE! at the January 5th Danville City Council meeting and we finally got around to adding the bonus content and finalizing the article. Whoops! Enjoy the recap! We're underway! Sherman Saunders leads the prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Alonzo Jones is out tonight. The public comment section\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/koUuluD.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/koUuluD.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/koUuluD.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/koUuluD.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5536,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/08\/japan-tobacco-international-to-open-plant-in-danville\/","url_meta":{"origin":7512,"position":3},"title":"Japan Tobacco International to open plant in Danville","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Who says that the tobacco economy is dead? Local and state officials just announced thar Japan Tobacco International will open a processing plant in the former location of the Dan River Distribution Center. More to come...","rel":"","context":"In "Breaking News"","block_context":{"text":"Breaking News","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/breaking-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6878,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/06\/breaking-joe-king-named-danville-city-manager\/","url_meta":{"origin":7512,"position":4},"title":"BREAKING: Joe King named Danville City Manager","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"May 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight, Danville City Council named Joe King as City Manager. After a dinner meeting in closed session, the Danville City Council named Joe King as Danville City Manager. King was serving as Interim City Manager following the death of then-City Manager Lyle Lacy. King was previously Deputy City Manager under\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Breaking News"","block_context":{"text":"Breaking News","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/breaking-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14815,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/12\/28\/the-citys-statement-on-joe-kings-death\/","url_meta":{"origin":7512,"position":5},"title":"The City’s Statement on Joe King’s Death","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"December 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently retired Danville City Manager Joe King died at the age of 65 on Saturday. Today, the City of Danville issued a statement about his death and SouthsideCentral is glad to publish it for you to read in its entirety. Former city manager Joe King died on Saturday afternoon at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/6dVZX4b.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7513,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions\/7513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}