Motus Mentis

6 Comments

1. the one eyed man says

   What are the top news stories of the week? Voters in Ohio decisively rejected union busting legislation, and Mississippi voters turned down the personhood bill. The anti-immigration zealot in Arizona got booted out. Democrats scored key wins in swing state Iowa and deep red state Kentucky. Obamacare and the individual mandate won a major court victory. Rick Perry can’t remember which government agency he wants to vaporize, and Herman Cain blames the increasing number of harassment claims on “the Democrat machine,” without bothering to provide any evidence for his accusation. Despite being only about two months old, OWS has a higher favorability rating than the Tea Party, whose tactics and overreach are alienating an increasingly large number of Americans.

   However, in the alternate universe of Fox News and the right wing media, these inconvenient truths are overshadowed by the “government tax on Christmas trees.” Except it’s not a tax, it’s not a government program, and it’s a shame that it is being aborted.

   There are currently eighteen agricultural trade groups which use the USDA to collect levies for their promotional activities. The largest is “got milk?” The makers of organic Christmas trees — not all Christmas tree makers, as Addington suggests — are losing market share to artificial trees. They wanted to do the same thing as companies which sell milk, cotton, and soybean do: use the USDA as the venue to support a promotional campaign. Moreover, organic trees are made almost entirely in America, while the fake trees come in large part from China.

   However, why let facts stand in the way of a good narrative? It fits conveniently into the “war against Christmas” narrative, the “big government liberals are getting their noses everywhere” narrative, and the “they’re taxing everything now! Even Christmas trees!” narrative. It’s a natural winner for the right wing propaganda machine. Except it has no basis in reality.

   Most of these non-stories are hit-and-episodes which come, get a lot of attention, and then get debunked, without any apology from the media which propagated them. Whether it is the Al Qaeda flag in Libya, the $200 million a day which Obama purportedly spent on a state trip to India, or his Kenyan birthplace, they all play to the preconceived notions of the gullible and uninformed masses who rely on right wing media for the facsimile of news which they offer. These non-stories can have devastating effects: Al Gore probably lost the Presidency because of the oft-repeated but completely baseless assertion that he claimed to have invented the Internet. It’s an unending game of whack-a-mole.

   Posted November 10, 2011 at 10:12 am | Permalink
2. Malcolm says

   Wow, Pete, you might want to consider switching to decaf. It was just a minor filler item. It’s not as if the left-wing media don’t fish around for stuff too. Lighten up, fer Chrissake.

   And: if the USDA is coercively collecting money by imposing a mandatory fee on the sale of a product for the government to redistribute in support of some lobbyist’s interests, that’s a tax, and a government program. If people prefer fake Christmas trees, they can bloody well buy fake Christmas trees if they like, and if people are losing market share to fake Christmas trees, they should either figure out some way of getting people to buy more of them on their own, or start making fake Christmas trees, or get out of the organic-Christmas-tree business altogether. If We The People want to discourage the sale of fake Chinese Christmas trees in the US, the right way to do it is to impose a tariff on fake Chinese Christmas trees, not to shake down American taxpayers. That you rise so reflexively, so angrily, to the defense of this little boondoggle illustrates the scope of the problem.

   You can say it’s “not a tax”, and “not a government program”, if you like, though, because it’s still a free country for now, and you can say whatever you want. But if it looks like a duck, and swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

   Posted November 10, 2011 at 12:11 pm | Permalink
3. the one eyed man says

   Perhaps I spend more time on Fox News than you, but it was a big deal to them. It has now been eclipsed by the pederasty scandal at Penn State. There’s probably a joke here, but it eludes me.

   The National Christmas Tree Association polled its members, found widespread support for the program, and asked the government to collect the levies, as it does for pork producers, rice growers, and so forth. The money then goes back to the Association, which decides how to spend it.

   A tax is the non-voluntary confiscation of income which then goes to fund government activity. The Christmas tree program is voluntary, has a discrete purpose, and the funds are not used to fund government activities. Surely you can see the difference.

   If a two million dollar operation like this is so abhorrent to disgraced Cheney aide David Addington and the Heritage Foundation, presumably they are livid at the much larger programs for other agricultural products. Yet we haven’t heard a thing. Why do you suppose that is?

   Posted November 10, 2011 at 1:04 pm | Permalink
4. Malcolm says

   Lots of people, indeed most fiscal conservatives, and any self-respecting free-market advocate, think we should end most, if not all, special-interest government subsidies. If you “haven’t heard a thing”, you haven’t been listening.

   A “tax” is the coercive collection of money by the government. This levy (which, by the way, was implemented merely at the whim of an executive-branch appointee) would force every Christmas-tree vendor to pay a mandatory impost on the transaction. There’s nothing “voluntary” about it.

   That’s a tax!

   A “government program” is when the government formally decides to deploy some apparatus to achieve some result. In this case the government has deployed the USDA to bleed money from American vendors and consumers to fund a private interest, namely the Christmas-tree-grower’s lobby.

   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).

   That’s a government program!

   This silly little Christmas-tree tax is small potatoes in any absolute sense, of course. The point, and what makes it worth mentioning at all, is how symptomatic it is of the million small ways our grotesque, obese Federal government gets its hungry little hooks into everything. It’s like being nibbled to death. You couldn’t have come up with a better example.

   Time to quote Tocqueville again, I fear:

   The sovereign extends his arms over the whole society; he covers its surface with a web of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls are unable to emerge in order to rise above the crowd; it does not break wills but softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces men to act, but constantly opposes itself to men’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from coming into being; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it presses down upon men, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and it finally reduces each nation to no longer being anything but a herd of timid and industrious animals, whose shepherd is the government.

   I have always believed that this sort of regulated, mild, and peaceful servitude, whose picture I have just painted, could be combined better than one imagines with some of the exterior forms of liberty.

   Again: if Christmas-tree growers want to promote their industry, let them form a voluntary association, and fund it however they like. If the US Government wants to discourage the sale of imported artificial Chinese trees, let it impose a tariff.

   Posted November 10, 2011 at 1:19 pm | Permalink
5. TheBigHenry says

   “What are the top news stories of the week? … However, … these inconvenient truths …”

   Those news stories characterized as “inconvenient truths” would be characterized as bad-news stories by most sensible people. That the OWS has any favorability rating at all is a sad commentary on the willful ignorance and indecency of the general public. And, to your everlasting shame, Peter, your reveling in such news speaks volumes about your own bad judgement and bad taste, which you are, of course, entitled to; and welcome to, as well.

   Posted November 10, 2011 at 2:20 pm | Permalink
6. the one eyed man says

   Did I revel? I did not. I merely reported.

   If you want to eliminate “special interest government subsidies,” then fine. This obviously includes things like oil drilling subsidies, crop supports, hiring agents to go around China looking for software piracy, and so forth.

   However, American companies compete in a global marketplace against other companies which are subsidized by their governmnents up the wazoo. As long as you are prepared to cede American jobs to countries which have tilted the playing field towards their domestic industries, then you have a consistent position.

   Posted November 10, 2011 at 2:43 pm | Permalink