Preemption laws can protect vulnerable communities
In her Sept. 6 Thursday Opinion essay, “A new breed of naked corporatism,” Kim Haddow depicted preemption laws as uniformly damaging. That was misleading and failed to address how such laws can protect vulnerable communities. The legislation passed in California she cited will ensure that the state’s most vulnerable communities are not saddled with an unfair and regressive tax. The reality is that beverage taxes target the people who can least afford them: working families, people of color and small businesses. Just look at what happened in Philadelphia, Cook County, Ill., and other localities when beverage taxes were imposed: Small businesses experienced huge drops in sales and were forced to cut employee hours or eliminate jobs.