Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A Santa Tax Next?


This from "The Foundry":

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.

"The Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996." Well, well, well. Seems to me that if one person or a group of people have a commodity that needs research, promotion or information, maybe they should just hire somebody to do it for them. And pay for it themselves. Certainly a fifteen cent tax on a Christmas tree isn't going to put the hurt on the holiday season for anyone but why should a small segment of the US agricultural complex be subsidized by the taxpayers?

Further information:

Artificial War On Christmas Campaign Launches Fake Obama "Christmas Tree Tax"
November 09, 2011 12:38 am ET - by Jeremy Holden

Right-wing media figures are accusing the Obama administration of seeking to impose a tax on Christmas trees; but the Christmas tree industry has been working since 2008 -- before President Obama was elected -- to partner with the Department of Agriculture and establish a marketing campaign funded by tree growers in order to promote the sale of fresh Christmas trees.

On November 8, the Federal Register published a rule establishing a program within the U.S. Department of Agriculture "to strengthen the position of fresh cut Christmas trees in the marketplace and maintain and expand markets for Christmas trees within the United States":

USDA received a proposal for a national research and promotion program for Christmas trees from the Christmas Tree Checkoff Task Force (Task Force). The program will be financed by an assessment on Christmas trees domestic producers and importers and would be administered by a board of industry members selected by the Secretary of Agriculture (Secretary). The initial assessment rate will be $0.15 per Christmas tree domestically produced or imported into the United States and could be increased up to $0.20 per Christmas tree. The purpose of the program will be to strengthen the position of fresh cut Christmas trees in the marketplace and maintain and expand markets for Christmas trees within the United States.

The Task Force proposed that a referendum be held among domestic producers and importers three years after the first assessments begin to determine whether they favor continuation of the program.
Led by the Drudge Report and Fox Nation, right-wing media figures immediately leaped on the rule, calling it President Obama's "Christmas tree tax":

Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft said the "Christmas Tree Tax" illustrated that "Barack Obama hates Christians."

Far from a tax initiated by the Obama administration, the proposal to create an assessment on tree growers to fund a research and promotion program through the USDA was begun by the industry during the Bush administration.

In February 2008, faced with declining sales, members of the National Christmas Tree Association created a task force to consider the merits of a checkoff program, which would allow the USDA to collect a fee from growers in order to fund research into marketing Christmas trees. NCTA officials explained:

While the fake tree industry is investing dollars to vigorously promote their product, the Real Tree industry is pulling back and devoting fewer funds to public relations and marketing. More than 1,000 people donated more than $900,000 for 2004 promotion and marketing programs. By 2007, donations to the market expansion activities had dropped to about $400,000. The erosion of funding resulted in fewer projects aimed at positively impacting consumer attitudes about Real Trees limiting the ability of the industry to affect the sales of Real Trees in the marketplace.

Given this continued erosion of the market share of farm-grown Christmas Trees, an industry task force is being formed to study the possibility of a federal marketing order that could establish a nationwide checkoff designed to support expanded promotion, marketing and research projects.

The NCTA Board of Directors supports the industry task force study of a federal marketing order.

Even if the industry decides to pursue a nationwide checkoff, it takes at least a year for USDA to follow its "rule making procedures." Thus, it is highly unlikely that a checkoff could start before 2010. In the interim, NCTA will engage in an aggressive promotion and protection program as funds allow.

The NCTA board urges members and non-members to be involved in the discussion and will schedule a town hall discussion at the 2008 national convention at which time the task force will give a report.
In April 2008, NCTA officials announced the formation of a task force to continue studying the merits of a checkoff program. As explained in the Fall 2008 edition of Christmas Trees, a leading Christmas tree magazine, fee levels are established by industry -- not government -- and commodity growers frequently partner with the USDA for marketing and research checkoffs:

Examples of other agricultural commodity Checkoffs include the egg, beef, pork, mushroom, milk, and honey, etc. industries. We're all familiar with the Dairy industry's ad campaigns; "Milk Does a Body Good" and "Got Milk." "Pork: the Other White Meat," "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" and "The Incredible Edible Egg" are recognizable slogans developed and funded by Checkoff programs. These four 'big guns' collect between $45 and $91.2 million in assessments annually.

Funding for promotions and research comes from within each industry. Fees could be assessed for example, in the Christmas tree industry, on a percentage of the selling price, per cut tree or per seedling basis. The amount of the assessment, who would participate, how the fees would be collected and how utilized, would be determined by the industry taskforce with the input of growers and attendees at the National Convention. Fresh imports (mainly from Canada) would be assessed at a comparable rate. As in other agricultural industries there would be exemptions for smaller growers. If the assessment is made on a cut tree basis, 4,000 trees has been discussed as a minimum. A percentage of the amount collected could go to state associations in proportion to the amount paid from within that state. The state association could utilize the funds for promotion and research abiding by the same rules as the national Checkoff organization. Hugh anticipates that Christmas tree assessments would be comparable to the amount raised by the blueberry industry, which is $2 million.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

At least no one was shot to death

Dismal Tale of Arrest for Tiniest of Crimes
By JIM DWYER New York Times
The arresting officer came by the cell, Samantha Zucker said, to make snide remarks about finding her with a friend in Riverside Park after its 1 a.m. closing.

For instance:

“He was telling me that I needed to get a new boyfriend, that I should get a guy who takes me out to dinner,” Ms. Zucker said. “He mocked me for being from Westchester.”

Early in the morning on Oct. 22, a Saturday, Ms. Zucker, 21, and her friend Alex Fischer, also 21, were stopped by the police in Riverside Park and given tickets for trespassing. Mr. Fischer was permitted to leave after he produced his driver’s license. But Ms. Zucker, on a visit to New York City with a group of Carnegie Mellon University seniors looking for jobs in design industries, had left her wallet in a hotel two blocks away.

She was handcuffed. For the next 36 hours, she was moved from a cell in the 26th Precinct station house on West 126th Street to central booking in Lower Manhattan and then — because one of the officers was ending his shift before Ms. Zucker could be photographed for her court appearance, and you didn’t think he was going to take the subway uptown while his partner stayed with her at booking, did you? — she was brought back to Harlem.

There she waited in a cell until a pair of fresh police officers were rustled up to bring her back downtown for booking, where she spent a second night in custody.

The judge proceeded to dismiss the ticket in less than a minute.

News about the Police Department lately could run under the headline of the daily Dismal Development, starting with a judge declaring Tuesday that an officer was guilty of planting drugs on entirely innocent people and continuing back a few days to gun-smuggling, pepper-spraying and ticket-fixing.

Here, in the pointless arrest of Ms. Zucker, is a crime that is not even on the books: the staggering waste of spirit, the squandering of public resources, the follies disguised as crime-fighting. About 40,000 people a year — the vast majority of them young black and Latino men — are fed like widgets onto a conveyor belt of arrest, booking and court, after being told to empty their pockets and thus commit the misdemeanor of “open display” of marijuana.

Such arrests are a drain on the human economy.

Ms. Zucker said that throughout her stay in police station cells, other officers were shocked that she had not been given a chance to have a friend fetch her ID. “The female officers were gossiping that the officer who arrested me had an incredibly short fuse,” she said.

We are instructed by the mayor that the garish crimes of police gun-running and fake arrests are the work of rogues, not the daily toil of honest police officers. A fair point — but no more than Ms. Zucker’s observations of spiritual corruption.

“While it may have been one out-of-control officer that began the process,” she said, “no other officer had the courage to stand up against what they knew was a poor decision.”

After two days of storming design firms around the city with about 80 classmates, Ms. Zucker stopped at the hotel near West 103rd Street where the group was staying so she could drop off the bag she had been schlepping. Then she got Mr. Fischer — a classmate, not a boyfriend, the leering remark of the police officer to the contrary — to walk with her a few blocks to the park, at about 3 a.m. They wanted to see the Hudson River, which runs past her hometown of Ardsley, N.Y.

“We’re there five minutes when a police car came up and told us we had to leave because the park was closed,” Mr. Fischer said. “We said, ‘O.K., we didn’t know,’ and turned around to leave. Almost immediately, a second police car pulls up.”

Its driver said they would get tickets for trespassing and demanded their IDs. Ms. Zucker suggested that someone could bring her papers from the hotel. “He said it was too late for that, I should have thought of it earlier,” she said.

The law does not require people to carry identification, but those who do not have it with them when they are stopped for an offense are held for a court appearance instead of receiving a summons for a later date.

Asked about the policy, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said officers can allow a friend or relative to retrieve ID. He did not say if a supervisor approved the arrest of Ms. Zucker, which was attributed in court papers to a Police Officer Durrell of the 26th Precinct.

Twice, she said, the officer told her not to call him by a specific foul term.

“I said, ‘Sir, I never used that word.’ ”

No doubt he was hearing things: the unspoken truth about his unspeakable actions.

At the same time, we have this:

Democrats For Election Fraud

Posted 07:02 PM ET
Suffrage: We're used to Democrats' trotting out the Republicans-are-racists trope whenever they want to score a political point. But even we can't believe they're doing it to block reasonable protections against election fraud.

This week, Maryland's Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, claimed that "we are witnessing a concerted effort to place new obstacles in front of minorities, low-income families and young people who seek to exercise their right to vote."

Earlier in the month, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous declared that "this is the greatest assault on voting rights, happening right now, that we have seen since the dawn of Jim Crow."

It all sounds so menacing. Except that these liberals are excoriating Republicans for supporting what the vast majority of Americans agree is a perfectly reasonable requirement for voters — that they show a photo ID before casting a ballot.

This year, three states enacted photo ID laws, and three others toughened their existing laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In all, 31 states now require voters to show some sort of ID, with 15 requiring a photo ID.

The requirement is hugely popular with the public — a Rasmussen survey this June found that 75% of likely voters back photo ID laws, including 63% of Democrats — which is hardly surprising given that citizens routinely have to produce a picture ID to board a plane, buy alcohol and any number of other mundane tasks.

Plus, the states offer free photo IDs to those who can't afford them and let people cast provisional ballots if they don't bring their IDs on Election Day.
Well, to liberals intent on politicizing everything under the sun these days, voter ID laws are merely a Republican ploy to suppress turnout among those most likely to vote Democratic — namely blacks, Hispanics and the poor. They point to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice that claims the requirement could disenfranchise 5 million eligible voters.

But a Heritage Foundation analysis of that study found it to be seriously biased and fundamentally flawed. It notes that there's no concrete evidence whatsoever that ID laws discriminate or suppress turnout.

In fact, turnout in Indiana and Georgia — the first two states to enact strict photo ID laws — climbed sharply after that requirement went into effect.

What's more, legal challenges have failed because, as Heritage's election expert and former FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky noted, "The plaintiffs were unable to produce a single individual, much less 'millions' of voters, who would be unable to vote because of the requirement to show a photo ID."
Does this strike anyone as unreasonable?
Well, to liberals intent on politicizing everything under the sun these days, voter ID laws are merely a Republican ploy to suppress turnout among those most likely to vote Democratic — namely blacks, Hispanics and the poor. They point to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice that claims the requirement could disenfranchise 5 million eligible voters.

But a Heritage Foundation analysis of that study found it to be seriously biased and fundamentally flawed. It notes that there's no concrete evidence whatsoever that ID laws discriminate or suppress turnout.

In fact, turnout in Indiana and Georgia — the first two states to enact strict photo ID laws — climbed sharply after that requirement went into effect.

What's more, legal challenges have failed because, as Heritage's election expert and former FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky noted, "The plaintiffs were unable to produce a single individual, much less 'millions' of voters, who would be unable to vote because of the requirement to show a photo ID."
And when the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's voter ID law by a vote of 6-3 in 2008, liberal Justice John Paul Stevens concluded that asking for an ID "does not qualify as a substantial burden on the right to vote."

Liberals also make the curious claim that voter ID laws aren't needed because there isn't any evidence of "widespread" election fraud.

What are these people arguing? That a little voter fraud is perfectly OK? That we don't need to take steps to secure the sanctity of the voting booth until the election process completely breaks down?

Whatever happened to the Democrats' insistence that we had to count every vote and that every vote counted? Surely they understand that even one case of fraud is unacceptable, since it denies another citizen his right to be heard.

In any case, the liberal argument that election fraud is a myth merely ignores the many reports of fraud over the years. Can you spell Acorn?

Keeping elections honest is a fundamental responsibility of our government officials. It's too bad Democrats would rather play crass racial politics than uphold this principle.

So, it's against the law to be in a park after dark without an ID but you can vote without one?