Musings: Christmas Tree Tax !!

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Christmas Tree Tax !!

Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax

David S. Addington
November 8, 2011 at 6:15 pm

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).

To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees.

Acting Administrator Shipman had the temerity to say the 15-cent mandatory Christmas tree fee “is not a tax nor does it yield revenue for the Federal government” (76 CFR 69102). The Federal government mandates that the Christmas tree sellers pay the 15-cents per tree, whether they want to or not. The Federal government directs that the revenue generated by the 15-cent fee goes to the Board appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out the Christmas tree program established by the Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. President, that’s a new 15-cent tax to pay for a Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

Nobody is saying President Obama doesn’t have authority to impose his new Christmas Tree Tax — his Administration cites the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996. Just because the Obama Administration has the legal power to impose its Christmas Tree Tax doesn’t mean it should do so.

The economy is barely growing and nine percent of the American people have no jobs. Is a new tax on Christmas trees the best President Obama can do?

And, by the way, the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn’t need any help from the government.

obama

Musings

I have, many times, been unfortunate enough to stumble upon, and end up reading (reading is not the unfortunate part, as no one forces you to read anything, but I have a need to read whatever is in front of me, however wasteful) comments concerning our military, or the men and women who serve in our armed forces - hateful and vile comments.

Every person who loves and cherishes freedom, individual liberty of action and thought, of religion, and family, of hope and intellect - should give thanks for the nearly 1.5 million men and women in our active forces, and the nearly equal number in reserve.

These men and women, every day, stand against a tide that will not, and cannot be placated, regardless of what a few useless wankers may believe. It does not make you fashionable to hate the war, just simplistic. It does not make you a humanist to oppose the military, just naive. It does not make you hip to denigrate, criticize, and hate the military - just dangerous and stupid. History is on the side of those who understand the difference. Our flag is the symbol of that difference.

History stands against those who would capitulate and compromise.

We should, each day, remember the men and women who stand ready to fight, those who are fighting, and those who have given their lives, that all of us may follow whatever path we choose. They stand unyielding, against a tide of darkness intent upon swallowing all of humanity, and each day we owe them more, for they do it not because they wake up and decide they want to die, but they do it because that is what they do and who they are. They have no desire to give up everything, but they will, because they are the final guard that stands between all that I care about and the darkness of the abyss, one I cannot begin to fathom.

Whether they serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, Korea, or Germany, Hawaii, or San Diego, Pensacola, Pendleton or March, Pope, Travis, Vandenburg, Hood, Huachuca, Dix, Irwin, Sill, Lejeune, Bliss, Meade (and many others). I owe them my eternal gratitude.

For all human beings - their greatest wish, if they love liberty and freedom - should be to pray that the detractors and haters of the United States are wrong in their predictions. The day our military ceases to remain as strong as it has been these past decades, is the day the United States will begin a slow decline, culminating in the collapse of Western Civilization.

(I admit - Western Civilization will not fall the next day. It took the Roman Empire several hundred years to finally collapse ... so we will have a generation or two, but it would be traced back to the decline in the US military and US influence. Those who don't care or who would cheer said events, are not American nor are they human, for what would follow, would make all the barbarism in history pale in the bloodbath that follows. The exact time frame is less important than the correlation.)

"Each of these heroes stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live and grow and increase in its blessings."-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." ----Winston Churchill.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse." --- John Stuart Mill

Blogurpose

What could possibly be the purpose of all these posts? It is not to offer my opinion per se, rather - for the longest time I would collect / print off articles on scores of topics and they would pile up, for I have no other means of containing dozens of articles a week. I tried filing them, but that is boring. of course the articles could be saved as pdf or scanned or ... and that is more time than I feel like wasting - this is the easiest.

This blog service provided the answer. I could paste/link them on here, and include whatever point or purpose they were printed for (labels), with whatever thought at the time motivated the saving of the article. The blog becomes a filing cabinet, and while I wish it could be kept private, visible to no one, I cannot figure that out, if it is even possible.

It's my filing cabinet.

Musings

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Christmas Tree Tax !!

Make Mine Freedom - 1948

American Form of Government

Who's on First? Certainly isn't the Euro.

Blogurpose

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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Christmas Tree Tax !!

Make Mine Freedom - 1948

American Form of Government

Who's on First? Certainly isn't the Euro.

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