The Christmas Tree Tax of DOOM!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Surprised there isn’t already a thread on this. You guys like wacky stories!

So word got out that The Obama Administration is putting a tax on Christmas trees this year. People became outraged because it was a blow to hard-working American people, part of the war on Christmas, and evil of Obama.

Well, the “Obama Tax On Christmas Trees OMG!” part was the end of the telephone game line. This conservative blogger also got the memo that it’s just a 15-cent tax, and the tax was for the explicit purpose of promoting live Christmas trees in the same vein as “Got Milk?” and “Beef” promotions.

But that blogger was outraged. Lots of conservatives got outraged. The conservative media got outraged! Due to their righteous outrage, the Department of Agriculture dropped the plan.

The real story is that the people who grow live Christmas trees were like “man, people just don’t buy Christmas trees anymore. We need some advertising! Who did that ‘Incredible Edible Egg’ campaign to fix eggs’ image?”

They decided together that paying 15 cents per tree sold to a fund, in the form of a tax, could pay for the Department of Agriculture to help them have a big advertising campaign. I guess it’s easier to have the federal government collect a tax for you, and help you run a national advertising campaign, than to collect fees as a private organization from thousands of sellers across the country.

Now that “everyone” is freaked the fuck out about it (except the liberals…not one FB friend of mine (all liberals) or Doper (come on you guys are mostly liberal)) the Department of Agriculture has decided to not go through with the “tax” and basically the growers can go fuck themselves. Or something.

Here’s an article from the Chicago Tribune about the program, before anyone started to complain.

Here’s an article from Slate the day after, when the Department of Agriculture backed out.

For more fun, Google “christmas tree tax” and read all of the comments from angry citizens at the end of all the articles. It’s maddening.

2

Day-umm. The 2012 Olympics are coming up; jumping to conclusions, recreational outrage, and foaming at the mouth could be the new Triathalon.

Also those real tree-hugging varmints will get my pre-lit artificial tree when they pry it out of my cold, dead living room!

3

That’s a sig line right there, Miss Tomato.

4

It was the USDA that was going to implement the tax, unbeknownst to the White House. The White House put the kibosh on it.

In other words, Corporate America through their contacts in USDA got USDA to create a tax and use tax dollars to fund private enterprise. The Obama Administration stopped it.

5

Don’t like this user fee tax? Don’t buy the item! I am proud to say that yet again this winter, I will not buy a Christmas tree.

6

But it was a self-imposed fee. As in, if you sold a Christmas tree from your farm you had to put 15 cents into the pot. Then the pot would be used to help you sell more Christmas trees next year.

The way you describe it makes it sound like a chunk my income tax money would go to Christmas tree sellers for fun and profit, or something.

7

On the surface this appears to be a routine issue. But I have to wonder how nobody in the Obama administration was able to foresee the symbolism. A tax on Christmas? Did they really not see how the conservative media would jump on that?

8

I’m guessing the USDA already does this for other industries. If so, it would have been a case of industry reps requesting an established procedure. No one involved at ground level would have thought that bundling PR funds for Christmas trees would get twisted into TAXING CHRISTMAS OMG!!

The reason I’m guessing that it’s an established procedure is that I’ve run across similar things at the city level. There’s at least one merchant’s group in town that voluntarily pays an assessment district fee on their property taxes. The County collects it and the City holds the account that it’s paid into and disburses the funds twice a year to the group.

The group uses the money for advertising, banners, extra frontage maintenance and installation of things like benches and flower boxes. The contract establishing the assessment district has to be renewed by all parties every five years. Some of the funds may be going toward their Octoberfest event.

You’d think that folks waving the flag for Capitalism would know how Capitalism works.

9

Hmmm…probably because the US Department of Agriculture was handling it and the President’s adminisration had nothing to do with it. They’re not omniscient, you know. It’s kinda tough to weigh in on an issue when nobody discusses it with you in the first place.

—G!

Communication Breakdown…
. --Led Zeppelin
. Communication Breakdown

10

Still, the idea of a PR campaign for Christmas trees seems kinda silly…no matter where the money is coming from.

11

Got milk?

Pork, the other white meat

Beef, it’s what’s for dinner

Why would an agricultural group want to advertise? Maybe to make a living wage

12

So, what you’re saying is that the Obama Administration was trying to launch a brutal collectivization program for Christmas Tree farms to convert them all to socialistic Winter Holiday Tree kolkhozes (which in turn is just part of their master plan to eliminate all vestiges of Christianity from America and replace it with Islamo-Nazi-Communism), but a few brave bloggers (“Wolverines!”) caught wind of the scheme and were able to thwart it before it was too late, right?

13

The Incredible Edible Egg was my favorite.