Lens of Liberty

By now you’ve probably seen this story today, that the Department of Agriculture was planning to impose a fifteen cent tax on live Christmas trees in order to fund a program to promote the Christmas Tree industry.

I suspect most of the spin on this story will revolve around the tax (which apparently has been suspended), but the real outrage is the notion that the federal government should be involved in promoting Christmas trees, or any industry for that matter.

With the amount of debt we’ve been racking up, wars in half a dozen spots around the world, people protesting in the streets over crony capitalism (whether they know it or not), there are people in Washington with nothing better to do than dream up a program to save Christmas trees.

Ron Paul doesn’t sound quite so nuts when he talks about closing the Department of Agriculture, does he?

I always knew there was something wrong with those people.

Women marching in Portland to protest the double standard over topless men in public vs topless women are upset that their topless stroll down the street attracted the attention of men.

Ty McDowell, who organized the march, said she was “enraged” by the turnout of men attracted to the demonstration