Taxation Abuse

The state of Tennessee is using part of its $1 billion surplus to pay for state revenue agents to perform surveillance on TN citizens who purchase cigarettes across state line and return to TN. They are then authorized to stop, search, and seize the vehicle and arrest citizens who are in procession of excessive amounts of cigarettes. I can think of better ways to spend "surplus" money. More importantly, are we not constitutionally protected from undue government scrutiny? And what is next? "How much of that Georgia carpet you got there, boy?" Or North Carolina furniture, or whatever else the state chooses to restrict. We are not pushing the limits of government intrusiveness; we have leapt across the line feet first. As has been pointed out, you can be arrested for almost anything. And when you have veteran police officers being reprimanded for harassing honest citizens because the officer doesn't know the law, you have too many laws. Historically, taxes often initiated many violent uprisings. The first American Revolution of 1776 was the result of taxes, tax resistance, and government attempts to enforce tax collection. Shortly after independence, the U.S. was faced with the Whiskey Rebellion, again taxes. The second American Revolution, called the Civil War, was driven taxation with slavery and states' rights as window dressing. The South exported huge amounts o f cotton and the U.S. government collected high tariffs, sending only part of the proceeds back to the governments of the states which had produced the cotton. Taxes. The following period saw revenue agents trying to collect taxes from moonshiners in the Southern mountains. This was followed by prohibition.
Shifting gears a little, East TN, Eastern KY, WV, SW PA, and Western NC were primarily settled by Scot-Irish, Scots, and Irish immigrants. Three seperate but related groups. OH, MI, WS, and MN were primarily settled by Germans, Italians, Jews, Poles, Scandinavians, and Baltic peoples who came from repressive regimes. These hardworking peoples did well in America and when unions began they fell into membership. They were used to being told what to do. And they readily paid whatever taxes or dues were demanded of them. The people of the mountains do not respond well to government or taxes or demands. Ask the English, they have been fighting to control the Scots and Irish for hundreds of years and have still not accomplished it. This is what government is facing trying to emplace and enforce more outrageous taxes. A long and expensive job when the resources could be better spent on areas of improvement desperately needed in TN. And again we come back to this question. Do we want government looking into everything we do, everywhere we go, everything we buy, or everyone we talk to? NO!!! And neither did the founders of this great country. The Constitution and The Bill of Rights were drafted to control Government not to control the citizens. And it is high time we returned to the Constitution.
Sidebar: If the TN government can try to control taxation at its border, why can't the U.S. government control illegals and smuggling at the Mexican border?