Obama wants to impose sharia law on Christmas!
If there is one thing you can always rely on Americans to do it's get a bug up their ass over the most asinine bullshit. This week rabid, foaming at the mouth anti-tax teabagger types found the perfect distraction they needed from the dismal performance they had in Tuesday's elections - Christmas trees.
Yep, Christmas trees. Fox News watching patriots love to foam at the mouth over the war on Christmas, after taxes. Bonus! This current issue involves both.
Christmas trees and taxes? You betcha, I'll try to keep it simple, you try to keep up.
Christmas tree growers in this country have taken a beating for a while now with the popularity of artificial trees. Fake trees don't make a mess of needles that you will be busy cleaning up until the tulips bloom; They don't require frequent watering to keep fresh and prevent becoming a fire hazard in your house; there's no needed hacking and trimming the trunk to fit into your tree stand that may or may not be balanced enough to hold the tree up without it falling over at least once from the cat using it as a jungle gym. I can remember on at least one occasion tying a tree to a nail in the wall to keep it upright.
What this means for tree farmers, unfortunately is fewer people buy real Christmas trees. I can also recall in the 1980's environmentalists raging about real trees contributing to deforestation, ignoring the fact that Christmas trees are grown on farms, and ignoring the obvious environmental risk with real trees in the pesticides and fertilizers used to grow them, but they only sit in your house for a few weeks, then can be recycled into mulch. The polyvinyl chloride used to make artificial trees is toxic from creation in Chinese factories to non-existent decomposition once its in the American landfill, forever. Real trees biodegrade.
SO what have real tree growers done over the years to promote their environmentally friendlier product that creates some annoying nuisances like the potential for dried out needles poking your feet or torching the house (And I know fake trees catch on fire too, so it doesn't really matter which way you go)? In the 80's they hired TV personality Willard Scott to be the spokesman of how awesome real trees were.
Uh ... yeah, that face makes me want to run right out and drop $50 on a beautiful Douglas Fir. Sure. Despite the face and the catchy slogan, it didn't really help with encouraging more people to make it a "real tree merry Christmas." What did the National Christmas Tree Association do next? They hired a private marketing firm known for their Republican political campaigns. Soon, both real and fake tree producers were looking for celebrities to convince the American public that their product was the better choice.
Now, here we are in the year 2011, and the NCTA still struggles to find the right method to promote real Christmas trees. Since not all growers got on board voluntarily with past campaigns, they decided to make it mandatory. The association went to the USDA and asked them to set up a federal tree board to help promote real Christmas trees. Having a full time department in the USDA requires funding, so the NCTA suggested a self-imposed assessment of $.15 per tree to fund the new agency.
... Wait ... what's that? A new tax ... ON CHRISTMAS???
OH GAWD! MORE GOVERNMENT THEFT OF MY PROPERTY! How dare AMERICAN Christmas tree growers try to improve their own industry by forcing a tax on trees that will ensure a natural, made in America product is purchased over cheap, toxic plastic trees made in CHINA!!! How dare American tree growers try to preserve American jobs! The NCTA makes Baby Jesus cry!
First - the Christmas tree tax was not a tax at all. That word was used however by Neo-con propaganda vomitoriums like Fox News to invoke an emotional response on the American people and to make them believe they would end up paying the tax. That was never the case. The diatribe-ridden misinformed outcry was so loud however, that President Obama caved yet again to Repugnithuggery and delayed the NCTA's desire to get some help with promoting their American produced, job creating industry.
Think about that while you set up your made in China, toxic PVC tree in the living room of the house you and your family inhabit this Christmas.
Yep, Christmas trees. Fox News watching patriots love to foam at the mouth over the war on Christmas, after taxes. Bonus! This current issue involves both.
Christmas trees and taxes? You betcha, I'll try to keep it simple, you try to keep up.
Christmas tree growers in this country have taken a beating for a while now with the popularity of artificial trees. Fake trees don't make a mess of needles that you will be busy cleaning up until the tulips bloom; They don't require frequent watering to keep fresh and prevent becoming a fire hazard in your house; there's no needed hacking and trimming the trunk to fit into your tree stand that may or may not be balanced enough to hold the tree up without it falling over at least once from the cat using it as a jungle gym. I can remember on at least one occasion tying a tree to a nail in the wall to keep it upright.
What this means for tree farmers, unfortunately is fewer people buy real Christmas trees. I can also recall in the 1980's environmentalists raging about real trees contributing to deforestation, ignoring the fact that Christmas trees are grown on farms, and ignoring the obvious environmental risk with real trees in the pesticides and fertilizers used to grow them, but they only sit in your house for a few weeks, then can be recycled into mulch. The polyvinyl chloride used to make artificial trees is toxic from creation in Chinese factories to non-existent decomposition once its in the American landfill, forever. Real trees biodegrade.
SO what have real tree growers done over the years to promote their environmentally friendlier product that creates some annoying nuisances like the potential for dried out needles poking your feet or torching the house (And I know fake trees catch on fire too, so it doesn't really matter which way you go)? In the 80's they hired TV personality Willard Scott to be the spokesman of how awesome real trees were.
Uh ... yeah, that face makes me want to run right out and drop $50 on a beautiful Douglas Fir. Sure. Despite the face and the catchy slogan, it didn't really help with encouraging more people to make it a "real tree merry Christmas." What did the National Christmas Tree Association do next? They hired a private marketing firm known for their Republican political campaigns. Soon, both real and fake tree producers were looking for celebrities to convince the American public that their product was the better choice.
Now, here we are in the year 2011, and the NCTA still struggles to find the right method to promote real Christmas trees. Since not all growers got on board voluntarily with past campaigns, they decided to make it mandatory. The association went to the USDA and asked them to set up a federal tree board to help promote real Christmas trees. Having a full time department in the USDA requires funding, so the NCTA suggested a self-imposed assessment of $.15 per tree to fund the new agency.
... Wait ... what's that? A new tax ... ON CHRISTMAS???
OH GAWD! MORE GOVERNMENT THEFT OF MY PROPERTY! How dare AMERICAN Christmas tree growers try to improve their own industry by forcing a tax on trees that will ensure a natural, made in America product is purchased over cheap, toxic plastic trees made in CHINA!!! How dare American tree growers try to preserve American jobs! The NCTA makes Baby Jesus cry!
First - the Christmas tree tax was not a tax at all. That word was used however by Neo-con propaganda vomitoriums like Fox News to invoke an emotional response on the American people and to make them believe they would end up paying the tax. That was never the case. The diatribe-ridden misinformed outcry was so loud however, that President Obama caved yet again to Repugnithuggery and delayed the NCTA's desire to get some help with promoting their American produced, job creating industry.
Think about that while you set up your made in China, toxic PVC tree in the living room of the house you and your family inhabit this Christmas.