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In an unusual -- though welcome -- aberration, Congress is contemplating a reduction in what is known as a "sin tax," those unequal-protection-under-the-law taxes that single out such socially frowned upon consumables as tobacco, gambling, wine, liquor, and beer.
The "sinful" product in question is that favored drink of the Common Man: beer. (More than half of such purchases are made by those with family incomes under $45,000.) The federal beer tax currently stands at $1.7 billion per year. Local jurisdictions add their own taxes to this burden.
Sad to say, this spurt of rationality has Mothers Against Drunk Driving up in arms.
The federal penalty on beer represents a tax of $18 per barrel and is double the amount imposed before 1991. In that year, the prez and Congress suffered from a fit of egalitarian nonsense and increased federal sin and luxury taxes not only on beer but also on wine and liquor, yachts, planes, and jewelry. After all, only the "filthy rich" purchase such items. They can easily afford the extra taxes.
This enlightened policy worked so well, in fact, that the feds managed to K.O. the livelihoods of a plethora of blue collar workers when the rich stayed home in droves and figuratively said, screw you, we can live without (for example) new yachts.
Seems the feds underestimated the pampered rich's aversion to (even more) exorbitant taxation. If no one is buying these "luxury" products, the poor Joes who make them will quickly be filing for unemployment benefits. Indeed, Representative Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota said that the sin tax increase cost 50,000 jobs in the beer industry alone when sales dropped.
Of course, none of that matters to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). MADD's president, Millie Webb, was quoted in a Minneapolis Star-Tribune online story (July 6, 2001) as saying, "We not only oppose it [the tax reduction], but in fact we'd support a substantial increase in these taxes."
Oh, yes. Let us tax undesirable behavior into extinction. I might even accept this violation of my rights and moral autonomy if all politicians at all levels of government agreed to a 100% tax on their income and property if they pass -- or even vote for -- any single law, regulation, or resolution that violates the U.S. Constitution. (Now that's a sin tax!)
Otherwise, forget it.
Since I'll be ice skating in Hades long before the miracle of honoring and respecting the Constitution becomes universal among our politicos, I don't think I have much to fear on that score. (Plus, the very act of voting for a new tax would trigger the 100% tax. How's that for a Catch-22?)
A recent cartoon I saw made a telling statement regarding MADD. A sign says: Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Then "Drunk" is crossed out and "Drinking and" is substituted. Another edit leaves the sign reading: Mothers Against Drinking. (Unfortunately, I've lost the reference to this and, hence, the artist's name.)
MADD is not really concerned with safety. Not anymore. They could care less about objective evidence. The facts indicate that the real threat from drunk drivers comes from those with blood alcohol levels above .15. Social drinkers -- who increasingly face unjust punishment under the newly coerced federal standards of .08 -- are no real danger to their fellow travelers.
MADD has transformed from a reasonable activist group drawing attention to a valid problem and, like the Puritans of yore, into an anti-pleasure nag, resorting to petty tyranny to enforce on the rest of us their constricted view of a proper lifestyle. Apparently, nothing will satisfy them until we have total prohibition.
And that worked so well last century...
Despite their flight from reason and common sense, MADD continues to get good press on this issue. After all, such attacks on "sinful" behavior have a long history in this country. In the days of those fabled Puritans, the government tried, via "sumptuary laws," to restrict how people dressed, what they ate, what they drank, and what they smoked. Back then, "luxury" goods taxed at a higher rate included such present-day staples as sugar and spices.
Such constrictive souls unfortunately still roam the land. Alcohol and tobacco products are not the only focus for their assaults on our freedom. Cries for taxes on fatty foods, junk food, caffeine, SUV's, and whatever else the do-gooders abhor continue to receive distressingly receptive -- and approving -- attention.
The real problem underlying these and other controversies is basing law on purely emotional reactions rather than on objective knowledge and rational proportionality, i.e., "common sense."
(Appeals to emotion are fine if they are intended to reinforce logic and evidence. They become the rankest of fallacies, however, when feelings are allowed to substitute for facts.)
In almost every area of legislation today, we are treated to endless wrenching tales of woe as the proponents of some added insult to the Bill of Rights self-righteously, arrogantly, indignantly demand that another "sinful" product or behavior be made verboten.
For MADD, smashed cars and dead babies make for compelling emotional drama. After all, who can resist the tragedy of an infant or young mother killed by some slobbering drunk behind the wheel of his car?
For eco-fascists, distorting, lying, and regaling us with increasingly horrid fantasies of the death and destruction of the "environment" are all acceptable tactics. In their warped thinking, the "seriousness of the dangers" justifies any means to their extreme ends. "Wasteful" behavior simply must be recognized for the sin it is and stopped...now!
These Chicken Littles appeal to fear time and again. To heck with the fact that lifespans continue to expand despite the environmental "horrors" laid at the foot of capitalism and technology. So what if the air and water are cleaner than ever? Meanwhile, the eco-fanatics turn a conveniently blind eye to the real environmental disasters created by those self-same governments they want to have "protect" us from ourselves.
"Reduce, reuse, recycle"...or else.
For the anti-self-defense, pro-victim disarmament folks, weeping profusely over every dead child murdered by a criminal using a gun goes hand-in-hand with obsessive media coverage that is long on tears and short on facts. Somehow it's always the gun's fault, never that of the murderer.
Yet these shameless exploiters of death are curiously silent when it comes to murder committed by car or knife or baseball bat. Plus, I never hear them screaming for bans on swimming pools, buckets, or trampolines despite the greater number of accidents suffered by children using those particular items. To heck with the reality that far more lives are saved by people using guns defensively. After all, guns are evil!
For politicians intent on insuring their power, scaring seniors with visions of life in the streets or dining on dog food should Social Security or Medicare be changed even a teensy bit are par for the course. Don't dare study the experience of countries such as Chile that have implemented some privatization. After all, it's a sin to oppose the omnipotent State, don't you know?
Oh, yes, let's not forget to frighten parents with tales of starving children if we eliminate school lunch programs. (Funny how I managed to survive my entire grade school experience on the sack lunches my parents provided me...and three years of high school with no lunches [when I spent my money on books instead].) You mustn't be cold and heartless and evil. "Compassion" delivered at the point of the gun is the essence of virtue, you ignorant swine.
These leaders delight in telling terrified citizens that strung-out druggies will seduce their children if we don't wage war on our own people; that they'll be harmed by professionals should occupational licensing be eliminated; be financially wiped out if the feds do not regulate the stock market; drowned in their own garbage or cheated of mail service or fall prey to a million other calamities if their friendly, neighborhood statist is not there to protect them.
Don't be evil! Don't sin! Don't be an individualist!
Obey! Submit! Worship us!
It's sick, it's sad, it's disgusting, it's...
Emotion over mind, beast over human, pure and simple. The one emotion the hysterical souls at MADD and elsewhere should feel is the one feeling they never do experience and never will:
Shame.
So, cheers...to open rebellion against stupid, dictatorial sin taxes and the unjust laws the nannies and do-gooders have imposed on the long-suffering citizens of this country for far too long.
*Sploit!*
