aflanigan wrote:
History gets written by the victors and Media Relations managers with reporters on speed dial. I'm a very small player in a tiny corner of the ag market, and checkoff programs do nothing for me. I still get to pay for them, tho. So do you, for that matter—that checkoff fee doesn't come out of thin air. It raises production costs, which ultimately come out of the customer's pocket. So you're paying to find more customers to compete with you at the store and bid the price you pay up further.

I get the joke, just thought is was kinda thin. And the checkoff thing hits a nerve.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
My familiarity with these checkoff programs was previously close to nonexistent, but most of the news reports I've seen tend to support their effectiveness in boosting the sales/popularity of the various farm products (from blueberries to dairy).  Besides, as I tried to point out, my main goal is to point out the silliness of grandstanding campaigns decrying the "War on Christmas" mounted by folks like O'Reilly, John Gibson, and others that fasten onto news reports and snippets to promote the notion of a "liberal plot" against a culturally popular holiday.  I'm emulating their breathless denunciations for comic effect.  I guess with you, I've failed, eh?

 aflanigan wrote:
Couldn't care less why conservatives are protesting it, I'm concerned that you think it's worth defending.

 kurtster wrote: 

The USA was founded by slave owners.

That is reason enough to curse the USA and be suspicious of everything it does (right?)

 Lazy8 wrote: 

Fine, you think checkoff programs are incompatible with your free-market principles.  So are subsidies and many other things the government does.  That's not why conservatives are protesting this, is it?

 aflanigan wrote:
Imagine an industry you're part of had some players active in a trade association (that you may not be a member of, may not agree with, may not even like) and decided they wanted to impose a fee on everybody in the industry to promote a product. If you aren't a member, would you even know about it? Would your first notification be a visit from a USDA enforcement officer three years later handing you a summons for the back taxes you didn't know you were supposed to be paying, plus a fine for non-compliance?

Being given an opportunity to object isn't the same thing as being allowed to opt out, or even vote on it. Or on the people that make the rules—this is an administratively-imposed tax, established by bureaucrats. Smaller players, again, will probably never hear about the hearings until they're over. If the magnanimous concession is made to let people opt out why involve the federal government in the first place? Make the industry fund its own promotion.

The check-off fee may cover the cost of the promotion, but does it cover the cost of collecting the fees, enforcement actions against those who don't cough it up, and administrative overhead? I seriously doubt it. Competitors are funding the USDA thru their taxes. Is the USDA going to create a check-off program to promote artificial christmas trees, or are they paying taxes to support an agency that's trying to put them at a competitive disadvantage?

The federal government is favoring one industry over others, tilting the playing field. This is not what governments are for.

I don't care what Jim DeMint thinks about it. His partisan theatrics don't justify anybody else's.

 aflanigan wrote: 
band name

 Lazy8 wrote: 

I don't think characterizing the fee as "self imposed" is misleading at all.  The idea did not originate with Obama or the USDA but with the trade association representing Xmas tree growers (NCTA).  There was a months long comment period for input from growers, and most seemed to favor it.  And how does a "checkoff" fee imposed only on sales of natural trees force artificial tree makers to pay for it?  Your comment doesn't make sense.

You may feel that such checkoff programs, which have been popular with other produce, are not effective, and that's OK.  Maybe you could lobby for allowing small growers to opt out.  But the bloviators such as Sen. Jim DeMint who are howling and cursing Obama aren't arguing the merits of its effectiveness.  They are using (to borrow your words) "cheap rhetorical tricks" to slam Obama, and potentially harming Christmas Tree farmers just to score cheap political points.

As to your last question, to the extent that the title of this topic and the wording of my original post contained some hyperbole, chalk it up to my lame attempt at satire.

 aflanigan wrote:
Your article is quite misleading. This isn't an industry "imposing a fee on itself", which they don't need the USDA taxing tree farmers to do. Industry groups fund this kind of promotional effort themselves all the time. This is an example of crony capitalism.

Every grower, member of the trade group or not, pays this tax and deals with the overhead of accounting for it. The tax is supposed to cover the costs of the program, but I seriously doubt that every penny of administration and overhead at USDA would be. Taxpayers (including manufacturers of competing products) are chipping in to boost sales for one industry.

This program is a triumph of industry lobbying over the common good. Why aren't you outraged by its very existence? And why are you using the kind of cheap rhetorical tricks that you object to elsewhere?

 aflanigan wrote: 
I'm sorry...Didn't you see my hand up?

ah, today's screaming match... buh bye, now.

 hippiechick wrote: 

Yes, but my question was for Bill, not you.

 kurtster wrote: 

So if conservatives suddenly believe in the separation clause, why do they accuse others who object to creches on government property for the same reason of making "war on Christmas"?  Why aren't they leading the war?

This is all too deliciously hypocritical!

 aflanigan wrote: 
Yes! Every citizen is entitled to legal representation. (Every person, citizen or not?)

 Monkeysdad wrote: 

Should Ted Bundy be entitled to legal representation?  Should Fred Phelps?

 Monkeysdad wrote: 

Actually, it did.  Read the story.  Pressure from the Heritage Foundation and other conservative pundits has derailed an industry-initiated promotional campaign aimed at boosting lagging natural Christmas tree sales.

 bokey wrote: 
Perhaps, but it's an odd contradiction.  They're an organization which upholds and defends rights granted by the American Constitution - well, in theory.

 Proclivities wrote: 
I figure they just learned to keep their agenda quiet.

 Proclivities wrote: 

I was going to say somethng similar, but that is funny!

 bokey wrote: 
Maybe it's enough for you, but that's a statement from the late 1920's, written by a man who left the ACLU over 60 years ago and died 30 years ago.