We've unfortunately got used to incessant false accusations of racism from the left while seeing genuine leftist racism ignored. With the current administration and Congress we've also been confronted with actions that, while not explicitly racist, are racist in their effect: killing the D.C. school voucher program didn't have the words "white" or "black" written in it, but since virtually all the voucher recipients were black, the effect of harming black kids disproportionately is as clear as Bull Connor's firehose sprays.
Apparently, as cynical as we are, it's never quite enough; we were still surprised to find Obamacare containing an explicitly racist tax targeted specifically against whites, from which "people of color" are fully exempted.
Must pay the tanning tax. | Doesn't have to. |
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CNN Money reports:
The Obama administration is turning up the heat on tanning salons across the country with the passage of its new health care bill.
To help fund the $940 billion health care overhaul, a 10% tax on individuals receiving indoor tanning services was tacked on, and the initiative is expected to generate $2.7 billion over ten years.
The article goes on to discuss the anger of tanning-salon owners; no surprise there. Particularly so, when you consider that the tax hits only the salons:
The tanning tax will go into effect July 1 and will apply to electronic products designed for tanning that use one or more ultraviolet lamps with wavelengths between 200 and 400 nanometers. Other sunless tanning options such as spray tans and tanning lotions are not included in the tax. [emphasis added]
Your humble correspondent must confess a certain lack of experience with the denizens of tanning salons; in fact, I've never so much as darkened the door of one. I am, however, reliably assured that tanning salon patrons are almost exclusively white.
You will never see Barack or Michelle Obama at a tanning salon - they don't need it! The whole point of an artificial tan is to color your skin, and while Harry Reid famously observed that the Obamas are "light-skinned" by some standards, by tanning salon standards they're all set. So are their fellow genetic descendants of Africa; so are our compadres whose origins extend south of the border.
But Americans who can trace back to the Emerald Isle, the Sceptered Isle, or the frozen reaches of Scandinavia? Prepare to be taxed!
Maybe the Obamas have been reading Dr. Seuss' story about The Sneetches, at least the first half, where Sylvester McMonkey McBean makes a fortune off of his ability to change one Sneetch ethnicity into the other. Except, of course, that Mr. McBean earned an honest living by inventing a machine to do the job and provide a saleable service to willing customers; like Congressional Democrats, Obama simply wants to use the coercive power of government to skim money from entrepreneurs. Not so much Sneetches, as Leeches.
Whatever. We now have something in common with the newly-tanned on looking in the mirror: seeing red!
What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?