Ever since Barack Obama floated the idea of a soda tax, oh-so-caring politicians have been lining up to save you from yourself. Ka-ching.

First it was tobacco, with Al Gore, who grew the plant but never inhaled, preaching against it. Next it was SUVs, with Arianna Huffington warning that it was unsustainable for the average American to use one-tenth the amount of energy she does. Then it was the anti-tranny crowd, with localities all over banning trans-fats. Now it’s little boys’ bubbly, soda, which little boy San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom calls “the new tobacco.”

Yes, the “sin tax” crowd is at it again, preaching health and seeing wealth.

Ever since Barack Obama expressed openness to a tax on “sugary drinks” (note: juice is sugary, too — fructose ain’t a vitamin), politicians have felt emboldened to contro . . . I mean, help Americans be good little boys and girls. I guess the new cult of the body might say, “The road to Heaven is narrow, and you fat slobs couldn’t even fit through the Pearly Gates.”

As to this paternalism, Obama said about a soda tax, “It's an idea that we should be exploring. There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda.” He didn’t specify if “kids” included you and me.

One of the politicians charitable enough to pick up on the messiah’s idea is California state senator Alex Padilla, who is credited for spearheading an effort to require restaurant chains to disclose the calorie counts in their meals. This was imperative, as there’s no other way to know that your double-fried cherry pie is more fattening than the soy-burger-and-bean-sprout wrap served by the kid with the droopy pants and body piercings. Reporting on how Padilla is paving the way for a soda tax, Reuters writes:

[He plans] to hold hearings in November on the link between soda consumption and obesity.

The announcement from Padilla — who chairs the California Senate's Select Committee on Obesity and Diabetes — coincides with the release of a study that shows nearly two-thirds of children aged 12 to 17 gulp down at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily.

. . ."I don't think that most parents truly appreciate the role soda pop has in causing weight gain," Padilla said. "It is unfortunate that soda is actually cheaper than milk and even bottled water in many instances."

Yes, that’s a bloody shame. What’s next? A carbonation cap-and-trade plan?

Much quicker to pounce is San Francisco mayor Gavin “Any Twosome” Newsom. He don’t need no stinkin’ hearings. He has already proposed a tax on retailers who peddle sugary drinks. Explaining Newsom’s strategy, Heather Knight at SFGate.com writes, “Newsom would need voter approval to tax individual cans of soda and sugary juice, but only needs approval from the Board of Supervisors to levy a fee on retailers.” Just so you know, these are the same stupidvisors who passed resolutions condemning Catholic teaching on homosexuality and urging the bishop of the city named after St. Francis to defy Church directives, condemning talk-show host Michael Savage, condemning a rally by the Christian youth group Teen Mania, and who banned the Boy Scouts from using public schools.

But, hey, Newsom really cares. He was moved to act by the same study (courtesy of UCLA — much lunacy starts in academia) Padilla glommed onto. Writes Knight, “Researchers found that adults who drink at least one soft drink a day are 27 percent more likely to be obese than those who don't — and that soda consumption is fueling the state's $41 billion annual obesity problem.”

This is an example of either deceptive science or legitimate science deceptively reported. Here’s why. Sugar, having only four calories per gram, isn’t nearly as fattening as fat, which has nine per gram. Moreover, I once read that fat can be more easily metabolized into fat. Thus, there are many things more fattening than soda.

Even more significantly, the above statistics fail to tell the whole story. It’s ridiculous to think that the only difference between regular soda drinkers and abstainers is soda consumption; obviously, people who pop the pop are also more likely to eat junk food and less likely to exercise as well (on average). It’s much like the statistic indicating that those who don’t live together before marriage are less likely to get divorced than those who do. While I don’t believe in cohabitation, I’ll be the first to say that a bigger factor is probably that the former have far different moral compasses overall. And just as the refusal to cohabitate is usually only one planet in a certain moral universe, avoidance of soda is usually only one planet in a certain dietary one.

Also realize that a soda tax — and this applies to all food "sin" taxes — would not target only those with friendly fronts (many of them drink diet soda, anyway, which, presumably, would be exempt). It is instead a tax on everybody and disproportionately affects anyone who consumes more for any reason. As I wrote recently, “This means burdening bigger people more than smaller ones; men and, in particular, teenage boys (famous for fast metabolisms) more than women and girls; and athletes requiring 8000 calories a day more than sedentary computer geeks. Thus, the only thing such taxes are guaranteed to make thinner is your wallet.”  

“But, come on, Duke, don’t you know that these politicians really, really care?” Well, I’ll quote the very wise C.S. Lewis, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Yet, to make matters worse, our busybodies' morality is just a cover for their cupidity. After all, why would these relativists, who cannot truly believe in sin, be so taken with “sin taxes”? Does anyone really think that Gavin Newsom, Alex Padilla, and most of the other health Nazis — who never saw an abortion they didn’t like — really care about your well-being? It strains credulity to claim that people who would have been content to see you destroyed in your mother’s womb cannot bear to see you endangered in the slightest outside of it.

In reality, the Soda Cops are either liars or rationalizers, and, if the latter, which is more common, they’re simply lying to themselves. A soda tax appeals to them mainly for one reason: they want to raise revenue — and imbibers of soft drinks are considered another soft target.

Yes, peace is war. Plenty is starvation. Love is torture. Truth is lies. And soda is tobacco.

Honestly, I have more respect for a mugger on the corner armed with a knife than a thief in government armed with the pretense of benefactor.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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Bonnie said:

Apples and oranges Liberty is not unconstrained. One man's liberty to swing his fists in the air end where another man's face begins. A person should be free to fill his lungs with toxins if that is what he wants to do. However, his freedom to fill his lungs ends where another man's lungs begin. The only times one should be permitted to blow smoke in another person's face is 1) with the other person's permission, and 2) as a matter of self defense. As to soda, a person has the right to get fat. I am at a loss to come up with an example of how one person's soda consumption can harm another individual.

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September 21, 2009
Votes: +1

AmericanFreeman said:

America is just dead. Since it is now unsavory to actually FIGHT for our precious republic, maybe it's time to just let the Socialists claim her rotting corpse for themselves. Dear Founding Fathers, You gave everything to bestow Americans with the liberties and freedoms never before known ANYWHERE in the world. Unfortunately, "democracy" gave a voice to every sell-out sh1tbag to ever have an opinion, and to their unAmerican SOCIALIST agendas. America's modern "patriots" listened to their bleeding-heart wives and the televised do-gooders who claim that "violence is always wrong", and allowed the Leftists to continue, unabated, on their paths to undermining freedom for some skewed notion of a "common good." Unlike yourselves, "modern americans" no longer care about personal responsibility or accountability. They only care about free handouts and infringing the liberties of others. Das vidania, America!

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September 21, 2009
Votes: +4

Nicholas said:

... Founding Fathers re: America is just dead Well fella, thanks for the kind words, but really, we just didn't want to pay taxes on stamps. And we owned slaves. Actually, we were all kind of a bunch of d-bags. And putting us on the money? Hilarious! It's like baseball cards for slave-owners. Anyway, taxing sugary drinks is something we feel is a bit much. Lactose is a sugar too, after all (wait, how do we know what lactose is?). We doubt milk would face such a tax. Though we'd hardly call putting a tax on something taking away one's freedom to do said act or consume said product. It's just a tax, which does not even sound substantial enough to get people to stop buying these drinks anyway. Ah well, it's worth a revolution or anything.

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September 22, 2009
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