If you lecture New Yorkers on the importance of dieting, will it make them like paying more taxes?
State Health Commissioner Richard Daines seems to think so.
And if you find that odd - and a bit hard to believe - just go to YouTube and check out his nutty, pedantic online shtick, in which he attempts to sell Gov. Paterson's "fat tax."
Daines defends the levy - 18% on sugared soda - as "good for your health." Yet with the tax, a $1.50 can of Pepsi would cost at least 25 cents more. We would've thought that kind of bump would make folks sick.
In the video, the commish - like some bizarro Julia Child - is seen pouring sugar and explaining how it is converted into fat in the human body.
"No one likes to hear about new taxes," he says, "but some taxes can be good for your health."
Daines, no doubt, has never met any New Yorkers; if he had, he'd know that they don't exactly like being told what's "good" for them by some politically correct liberal autocrat.
Indeed, if anything, he's supplied yet another reason to hate the tax.
"MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND NOT MINE," one YouTube comment reads. "I get tired of the social engineers using taxes to tell me how to live."
Surely that writer's not alone.
Daines' online scold, of course, is of a piece with the arrogant, we-know-what's-best-for-you attitude that Mayor Bloomberg and city health czar Tom Frieden have displayed to a fare-thee-well.
(Frieden must surely be thinking: "YouTube? Why didn't I think of that during the city's trans-fat "Battle of the Bulge"?)
But while Paterson & Co. have no problem telling the public what to eat and drink in order to shed fat, they themselves can't quite find any of the stuff to trim when it comes to their own budget waistline.
Instead, they just invent new taxes.
Like the "fat tax" - which New Yorkers oppose 60% to 37%, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll.
And new justifications for them: Hey, it's not just a revenue enhancer for the state; it's also a weight-loss program.
(Hmm. Can it polish floors, too?)
If they keep it up, though, we know where it'll lead: Eventually, New Yorkers will run flat out of money - and starve.
Now there's a way to guarantee they'll lose weight.
Or is that what Paterson and Daines had in mind all along?
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