Time for us to get taxed by the pound

If you are reading this column, you are probably too fat. No, I’m not psychic. I just happen to know that a solid majority of Americans are overweight, so the odds are that most of the people who are reading these words could stand to lose a few pounds. Now the question you are probably asking yourself is this - what is the federal government doing about my weight problem?

The answer to that question, according to a group of nutrition and economics experts who published an opinion piece in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is that it isn’t doing nearly as much as it should. What we need, say these experts, is a tax on soda pop.

They contend that a steep tax on sugary beverages is a brilliant concept for the same reason that cigarette taxes were a good idea. Such a tax would discourage people from using a product that is not good for them and it would also raise new revenue that the government could spend on much needed programs to further improve public health. That is what we call a win-win scenario.

You might think that congress would be all over a great idea like this one, but to date none of the proposed health care reform bills has included language mandating a soda tax. There was discussion of such a tax when the bills were being crafted, but fears of a backlash from the powerful soft drink industry and angry soft drink addicts prompted lawmakers to back away from the idea. For now.

Let’s face it - it is only a matter of time before we are paying a hefty add-on fee for our Cokes and Pepsis and Dr. Peppers. And it is unlikely that they will stop there. Candy bars, potato chips, movie theater popcorn, and other bad-for-you treats will undoubtedly be sin-taxed as well at some point.

But why not go even further? If we are going to tax our way to better health, there are other consumer products that contribute to our collective obesity that we should be penalized for indulging in.

For example:

- Big screen TVs. There aren’t many things that we buy that encourage us to sit around the house as much those giant flat screens that tend to eat up an entire wall of our living rooms (or our “home theater rooms” for the more avid TV watchers out there.) TVs should be taxed at an increasingly higher rate as their screen size and picture quality increases. With the revenue generated from this tax, we could eliminate sales tax on things like treadmills and stationary bikes. This is what is known as “lifestyle engineering”, and America obviously needs a lot more of it.

- Couches. I can’t think of any piece of furniture in the house that encourages slothfulness as much as a comfy couch does. These things should be taxed so high that people can’t even afford them and are forced to sit in front of the TV on those hard wooden pews that used to be so popular in churches. You wouldn’t even make it half way through “Dancing with the Stars” before you had to get up and walk around.

- “Fat” clothes. Having reasonably-priced clothing readily available in very large sizes has made us all too comfortable with our expanding waist lines. If we had to pay an increasingly steep fee for our clothes every time we went up a size, we might put a little more thought into whether or not we could really afford to have a second helping of Grandma’s apple pie after Sunday dinner. “Sorry Granny, I can’t. I don’t make enough money to shop in the Big and Tall section.”

Latest Obama outrage: brainwashing our children

Apparently, even the little children are not safe from the nefarious plans of President Barak Hussein Obama. That at least seemed to be the message that was being widely broadcast by the ever-vigilant “Obama is a tool of the devil” constituency over the Labor Day weekend.

The president was scheduled to deliver a video address to all public schoolchildren on September 7 and some conservatives flew into a tizzy, sure that he would be indoctrinating our innocent children into the evils of socialism, government-run healthcare, radical environmentalism, and Lord-knows-what-else.

So some schools opted not to show the speech to their students, some parent kept their children home from school rather than have them be subjected to it, and some kids whose schools wouldn’t show the speech stayed home so they could watch it.

That was an awful lot of hand-wringing over an 18 minute pep talk whose message (yes I did read it) can be boiled down into the following statement: Work hard in school if you want to get a good job and make a contribution the future of your country.

I’m nearly certain that if Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich had read basically the same speech to our children there would not have been a peep in protest from the right wing. But I’m sure that in that case the liberals would have protested the same speech just as vehemently as the conservatives did in the run up to the president’s address.

What I can’t understand is why everything has to be so very personal. It seems like every day I get a new hate-o-gram directed at President Obama in my email Inbox. He’s not really an American. He’s a closet Muslim and has secret plans to convert America into an Islamic state. He’s raising a secret, private army (to do what I’m not sure, but it has to be bad.)

The people who send me these emails usually include a short personal message that conveys a sense of barely concealed glee at their newest discovery of the unimpeachable truth of Obama’s evil nature. “See, I told you he was out to ruin this country!” they exult. I always wonder what exactly I’m supposed to do with this information. I think I am supposed to buy a gun, or build a bomb shelter. Or both.

Let me state plainly that I did not vote for President Obama, I don’t approve of most of the things he is doing as president, and I hope that he is out of office after one term. But my lack of support for him stems from the fact that he and I have a basic difference of opinion regarding the proper role of the federal government in terms of its size and scope. I have nothing against him because of his race, his (real or imagined religion) religious preferences, or his personality. If he were to wake up tomorrow determined to embrace the ideals of low taxes and limited government, I wouldn’t have a problem supporting him without reservation.

But I certainly don’t believe he is Evil Incarnate, and I don’t believe it is wise or effective for those of us who oppose his policies to always assume that every move he makes was orchestrated by Lucifer himself. There was nothing wrong with the speech Obama gave to (some of our) nation’s schoolchildren this week, and if he influenced any of them to buckle down and take their studies more seriously this year I say good for him.

Maybe someone needs to give the adults in this country a speech about not assuming the worst about people before they get all their facts straight and how it is possible to disagree with someone without being disagreeable.

It shouldn’t be me, though. Too many people already think that I’m an idiot.