"Tan Tax" Causes Cries of Racism
If you don't like reading about or discussing race issues, tune out now.
For those still reading, back in March, Doc Thompson, a fill-in host for Glenn Beck, gave us this great sound bite "I now know the pain of racism." What was Doc referring to? Why, the "tan tax" of course. Because as a white man, he felt that being taxed to tan was racist. Actually, he felt it was "reverse racism."
Note to Doc and everyone else using the term, there is no such thing as "reverse racism." It's just racism. Reversing it would be no racism, which isn't the same. If it's racism against blacks or whites or any race, it's still racism. Quit muddling the English language.
The "tan tax," which went into effect last week, refers to a portion of the new Health Care Bill that enacts a 10 percent tax on tanning services and will raise roughly $2.7 billion over the next 10 years.
Immediately after the tax was announced, and more recently after it went into effect (because people forget) the ignorance came flowing out of the woodwork with cries and comments of discrimination and racism. You see, tanning customers are almost exclusively white. That's just a fact of life. It doesn't benefit a darker skinned individual to pay for a tan. So that is the basis for the argument of the opponents of the tax questioning the legality of the tax. To them, it's a 10% tax for being white.
It's a really stupid argument, to put it bluntly.
From Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy, "There is no constitutional problem at all, because a plaintiff would have to show that the government intended to disadvantage a particular group, not simply that the group is disadvantaged in effect," he said. So in order to truly question the legality of the tax, and it being racist or not, opponents would have to prove to a court of law that Congress and the President intended to be racist.
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