Better Than Drudge

recent posts

about

Fat in America: Taxing Us to Death in the Name of Taxing Us to Health

Chained Refrigerator First they came for the tobacco, and I did not speak out because I
was not a smoker. Then they came for the alcohol, and I did not speak
out because I was not a drinker. Then they came for my food, and there
was no one left to speak out for me because misery loves company.

By Selwyn Duke

We've all heard about driving while black. Now we have eating while
fat. But, unlike the former, size profiling is more reality than
rhetoric. As to this, and coming on the heels of the recent story
about a mother arrested for having an obese son, is more folderol from
the fatism front: a proposal by the Urban Institute to tax "fattening"
foods to fight obesity. In other words, if you're overweight, you're
guilty until proven innocent and thus fair game for the most onerous
"corrective" action.

Reporting on this in the Los Angeles Times, Melissa Healy writes:
"'Facing the serious consequences of an uncontrolled obesity epidemic,
America's state and federal policy makers may need to consider
interventions every bit as forceful as those that succeeded in cutting
adult tobacco use by more than 50%,' the Urban Institute report says."

Read the rest here.

Posted in , , ,

2 responses to “Fat in America: Taxing Us to Death in the Name of Taxing Us to Health”

  1. Walt Avatar
    Walt

    Selwyn,
    Your idea will never work because it is built upon pure clean Rocky Mountain common sense. The sense that the statists operate is full of additives preservatives, trans-fats, MSG, reversaresponsibilitol and relitivisa-glutamate. With all of those additives mixed in you can’t get to the bottom of their sensibility at all.
    Fat folks know why they are fat, smokers know why they cough, drunks know why their head hurts in the morning, drug and tattoo addicts know why they have hepatitis, sex addicts know why they have STD’s; they also know how to make their problems go away. It is simple if they want to be healthy stop doing bad stuff.
    Now if a leftist is truly married to their ideals, they should instead of trying to figure out how to save the person by providing medical care to them (at the cost of everyone else), perhaps they should really look at the Dr. Kevorkian mentality they so championed. Letting self destructive people, self destruct, would be a consistent philosophy leftists. Isn’t assisted suicide a near equivalent to long term self destruction? Is a hands off approach not the perfect embodiment of pro-choice? To me absolute inaction would be a consistent approach to help the fat, addicts, smokers, and other self defeaters. What’s more, if the fat gene does exist, wouldn’t allowing them to simply die at their own hands, be a perfect eugenic solution? Yet another leftist ideal!

    Like

    Reply
  2. Philip France Avatar
    Philip France

    I once again commend Selwyn Duke for his superlative argumentative skills and for his unmatched talent for expressing simple logic and common sense.
    I also again criticize Selwyn Duke for missing the greater point. The “obesity” or “fat” tax is not what its proponents and defenders say it is. They don’t care about you. In fact, they would rather that you were destroyed in the womb of your mother.
    What this is about is control. The Left intends to control your life. The health argument is merely a vehicle to bring about a more pernicious end.
    Please allow me to simplify this for you by two points:
    1. Every new law is a commensurate loss of your liberty.
    2. Every new TAX is a commensurate loss of your liberty.
    It’s that simple. Read that again. It’s that simple. Read it again and let it sink in. It should anger you to rage!
    The renowned economist Milton Friedman; of whom I imagine none, if not most (and more likely all) of us encouraged us to resist ANY new tax.
    The word “tax” should cause our skin to crawl. It should cause us to lose sleep. It should cause us to, at the suggestion of any addition to our already obscene tax code, gather en masse with pitchforks and axe-handles at the homes of our Congressmen and women.
    Give me liberty or give me death!

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to Philip France Cancel reply