Is there any clearer symbol of how far the lunacy has gone?
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.
Yeah, nothing more in need of an image upgrade than the marketing of live Christmas trees. You must have seen that rumor on the Internet about organized crime taking over the business, and the industry has long been accused of ignoring the needs of Jews and Muslims.
And this is not a "tax," OK? It's a "fee." That the sellers must fork over, which means they'll add it to the cost of the tree. Merry Christmas! They do it because they can, folks.
UPDATE: Backlash fever!
The Obama administration is delaying and re-evaluating the imposition of a fee on Christmas tree growers that conservative critics have attacked as a "Christmas tree tax."
"I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees," said spokesman Matt Lehrich. "What's being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the "Got Milk?" campaign."
"That said," he added, the U.S. Agriculture Department "is going to delay implementation and revisit this action."
UPDATE #2: One of the regular trolls, my own personl cyber stalker, sent an email sneering that this policy comes from 2008 "when Obama wasn't POTUS. Not sure what this has to do with him." I suspect he got his sneer from this post in Media Matters, which seems to be his Bible:
