In an attempt to try and remove a $15 billion deficit facing the state, New York Governor David Paterson has proposed several new taxes and spending cuts, among them a tax on non-diet drinks. The effort would impose a 15% tax on sodas and other non-diet drinks. diet sodas, milk, bottled water, and the like, would not be affected.
I’ll get to the nanny state aspects of this in a moment, but first of all, why not diet soda? And milk is already banned from many schools as a fatting "bad food"?
Soda is already a zero nutrient drink as it is, and all diet soda does is take out the sugar and replace it with either aspartame or sucralose, both zero nutritional value. So, while it might not fill you up with sugar, it’s not doing anything else for you either.
But I digress. So, what is it with these nanny state tactics? Over simplified answer: it’s the liberal ideology’s requirement to “protect people.”
Namely, liberals wish to protect people from themselves. It is their United Nations (UN) mandate, which they openly embrace and promote. But "the people" don’t need or want the sort of protection the way liberals want it, only those promoting UN mandates support such taxation and legislation while falsely claiming "grass roots" support.
Many states have their own experiences with these types of heavy handed tactics. Their method for cutting obesity is take the junk food right out of school cafeterias. No milk, peanut butter, sodas, no sugary foods. Not even fries. I mean, come on. Peanut Butter… Milk? Of course, the states soon realized the method was taking money out the pockets of school districts, so some have recently started to at least partially compensate them for the efforts.
So why the drastic measures? Surely education is the best way to get the message across. To liberals, education simply isn’t enough. They feel they must use the power of the state to directly combat that which, in the "government’s opinion", is a growing problem among youth. Yet, it comes at the cost of penalizing those people who don’t have any such health problems. Thus tries to combat a future that might not exist for some people.
Forcing state-defined "bad food" out of kids hands is not the answer because it unfairly affects those people who might not have a problem. Education is the answer.
Of course, it’s easier to ban something than it is to try and make sure kids are being educated properly. And there are other side affects to measures like an obesity tax… freedom is not free…. you will only get to keep the Rights you vigoriously defend daily…
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