Common Ground
A homeowner in Waukesha for 20 years, Steve is president of the Waukesha Dog Parks Organization and enjoys motorcycling, fishing and staying on top of politics.
Taxing Soda Pop
The New England Journal of Medicine has published an article by several doctors promoting a penny per ounce tax on sugar sweetened soda. That would be 12 cents on a typical can of soda or 32 cents added to the 99 cent McDonald's summer special drink.
This idea has been discussed for many months as has other ideas aimed at reducing obesity so that ObamaCare can afford to treat 50 million more people without increasing taxes. That leaves open huge fees, of course. Our own Governor Doyle has explained to us that fees are not taxes. Sunday, George Stephanopoulos read the definition of taxes out of a dictionary to Obama and he walked around that as deftly as Bill Clinton trying to define what "is" is.
Reading what I could of the good doctors' article, I thought of what Will Smith said to a scientist in the movie I,Robot. He said "You are the dumbest smart person I ever knew!"
If the doctors' intention is to nudge people to drink diet soda instead of high fructose corn syrup sweetened soda, don't most pudgy people order a #1 super-sized.....with a diet soda? Are we to believe that stores are going to price a 12 pack of Diet Coke differently than regular Coke? Or restaurants are going to charge differently for regular or diet soda? I think not.
No, I don't believe this has anything to do with calories or that the doctors are stupid smart people. The conspiracy believer in me thinks it is an evil plot to save all the corn syrup for methanol. Or failure to think things through.
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