I was checking my twitter this afternoon and I saw "Christmas Tree Tax?!" with a link to a (wait for it) Fox News article. I quickly did some searching and found some baseless discussions.
The recent flap, if you can even call it that, is around a 'tax' on Christmas trees. Luckily, I found a Huffington Post article that was able to point out all that was wrong with biased story coming from Fox News and Heritage Foundation's Foundry blog.
President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees -- the Christmas Tree Tax -- to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.
In the Federal Register of Nov. 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a "program of promotion, research, evaluation and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry" (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of "information" is to include efforts to "enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States" (7 CFR 1214.10).
Michael Doyle (McClatchy Newspapers) reported:
Following an extended debate that pit one region against another, the Agriculture Department on Tuesday gave the green light to a new industry-funded Christmas tree promotion program.
By taxing themselves, growers will raise $2 million a year for ads promoting the merits of real, live trees. Or, at least, trees that once were living, as opposed to the artificial kind that have seized an increasing share of the holiday market.
"As demographics and buying habits have changed we have watched the market for real trees shrink drastically, requiring us to spend much more time and money on promotion," said Don Cameron, past president of the California Christmas Tree Association.
Cameron and his wife, Carolyn, owners of a tree farm in Simi Valley, Calif., were among the 500-plus people to weigh in over the past year as the Agriculture Department considered the proposed Christmas Tree Promotion, Research and Information Order.
Akin to similar programs that promote milk, beef and cotton, the new Christmas tree program will impose on U.S. domestic producers and importers an initial fee of 15 cents per tree.
So, stand down the army of right wing Christians that will think that their Christmas is being attacked.
"Got (real) tree?"