Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax

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• Hey Folks. Don't like being the one to spoil a good Barry bashing, but I don't see anything upsetting here. This is a tax voluntarily self.imposed by the growers to promote their product. This is no different from the boards that bring you the ads for milk and beef and cotton. Now look, these's enough material to beat up on Sock Puppet with, without going off the deep end over nonsense like this. It just distracts from real issues and makes us look foolish.

  • Did you read the article or have you read details from elsewhere? This article says it is mandatory and imposed by the DOA. Did I miss something? I know there is usually more to every story than what is reported by biased reporters. In this case, certainly biased to the right. What are we missing? Please good sir, elaborate if you would.

    • This is the story I read:

      http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-1109-christmas-tree-wars-20111109,0,2983619.story

      In relevant part: " ...the Agriculture Department on Tuesday gave the green light to a new industry-funded Christmas tree promotion program.

      By taxing themselves, growers will raise $2 million a year for ads promoting the merits of real, live trees. ...

      " 'We looked at what other industries have done, and how successful they've been."

      After three years, growers and importers will vote on whether to continue the program.'

      That's what I read. I admit I didn't even bother reading what HF had to say.

• Since the money is supposed to support the actual growers, I'd say Obama is in the pocket of Big Tree. To me, this is corporate welfare.

  • Sure but the lefties will love it. Big tree is all about "green' after all... ;)

    • Sure, what is more harmful to the environment than a Chinese made artificial Christmas tree? Put that in a home with Chinese made drywall and you will have casualties.

• "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”

  Here's an idea; when dickboy ceremoniously lights the WH tree this year.... maybe he could use the phrase "CHRISTMAS TREE." Nah, the teleprompter will read "holiday or seasonal tree." Don't wanna offend any non-christians. My guess is this program is designed to promote calling them anything but christmas trees.

• The war of Christmas marches on.

  • seems to me that obama, in hopes of influencing the vote, is cuddling up with what, i believe, he thinks is Christianity. He's using religious identification quite effectively, for one who wanted to fundamentally change America.
    My nation was founded on the Premise that God lives and breathes and is active in the governance of the people.
    Let America be led by a just and true person.
    let America recognize what they cannot see.

    • I like how you mentioned what "he thinks is Christianity". Considering that the Black Liberation Theology that is promoted at Trinity United, where he went to church for 20 years, has a view of Christianity that many don't recognize. The marxist elements that guys like Wright preach leave most Americans scratching their heads.

• This is not what you do if you want to use the government to promote and improve the fresh Christmas Tree industry. You simply do not tax the industry you are trying to promote, you tax their competitors, the fake tree industry. Tax it right out of existance!

  The incompetence!

• The tax is supposed to pay for a new, and of course un-necessary, DOA bureaucracy that will expand the survive forever. Here's yet another no brainer prediction. The tax will not begin to pay for the bureaucracy.

• You're a mean one, Mister O, You really are a heel,
  You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel, Mister O,

  You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel!

  You're a monster, Mister O, Your heart's an empty hole,
  Your brain is full of spiders, you've got garlic in your soul, Mister O,

  I wouldn't touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!

  You're a vile one, Mister Grinch, You have termites in your smile,
  You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile, Mister O,

  Given a choice between the two of you I'd take the ... seasick crocodile!

  You nauseate me, Mister O, With a nauseous super "naus",
  You're a crooked dirty jockey and you drive a crooked hoss, Mister O,

  You're a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce!

  You're a foul one, Mister O, You're a nasty wasty skunk,
  Your heart is full of unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mister O,

  The three words that describe you are as follows, and I quote, "Stink, Stank, Stunk!"

  You're a rotter, Mister O, You're the king of sinful sots,
  Your heart's a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots, Mister O,

  Your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled up knots!

• I can't believe anyone would put this in office.We need to get this out.I can't believe how we got here.Why are we paying for these government retirements.

• Wait a minute - an official Federal regulation refers to a certain forest product as a "Christmas" tree - and the atheists haven't rioted yet? Oh, wait, they can't, they're too busy screaming at Wisconsin governor Scott Walker for using the offensive term "Christmas" tree to refer to the state holiday forest product. And why on earth is the Federal government promoting the Holiday Forest Product industry in the first place?
  I better lay down before I have a conniption.

  • Define "Christmas Tree." What if I just happen to want a tree in my home during this time of year? I don't, I never have, but what if I did? I'm not a Christian, I don't celebrate Christmas, so do I still have to pay the tax?

    • a decorated evergreen coniferous tree, real or artificial, and a tradition associated with the celebration of Christmas.

      just don't buy your tree off a Christmas tree lot, or cut one down in a Christmas tree plot. maybe if you went off and cut down a wild tree you wouldn't have to pay the tax.
      oh, and if you did that then the govt. might raid your house to be sure you didn't have decorations on it, cuz if you did then it'd be a Christmas tree, by definition, and you'd have to pay the tax. and likely a fine for trying to pull an end-run around the tax law, and we both know only politicians and their donators are free to do that.

    • Yes - unless you've made a large, strictly voluntary donation to El Presidente's re-election campaign, in which case you don't have to pay any taxes at all, and may be eligible for a large kickb...er, loan from the Energy Department.

• Just like the muslim that he is. Anything dealing with Christianity must be abolished or pay a heavy tax. All part of the teaching of muhammad