Its been a running joke for a while that Obama’s new tax on artificial tanning sessions is racially discriminatory. Instapundit has talked about that for ages as sort of a tongue in cheek way to attack the way anything that has an incidental effect on race, as racial discrimination under a disparate effect theory. Which although I recognize the value of this approach in some cases, in some cases it can get ridiculous, such as claiming that criticism of Islam is racist because the people who adhere to it are arguably generally not white.
So now Snooki has chimed in and of course Instapundit couldn’t resist the link (and conspiring darkly in a tongue-in-cheek fashion). I saw the clip on The Soup, and yeah, it was funny, but I wondered if Renolds was picking it up.
I don’t go tanning anymore because Obama put a 10% tax on tanning. McCain would never put a 10% tax on tanning. Because he’s pale and would probably want to be tan," she said. Snooki was referring to a provision in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act that mandates tanning salons impose a 10 percent tax on UV-ray sessions.
She goes on to say that that Obama doesn’t care because he doesn’t need to tan. Yike. Yeah, not touching that with a twenty foot pole.
But what is funny about that is that Snooki intuitively gets the most basic problem with much, if not all, liberal regulation and taxation: that the more you burden businesses, the more you drive people out of that business.
Think of that tanning company. I don’t want to even guess how much time that woman spends in the tanning salon, all gone because of a 10% tax. Revenues for the salon is surely down. And while I assume some people will continue to tan artificially, it can’t possibly be exactly as much as before. And given the frightening reality that people actually look up to her (shiver), she might actually have influence. So, Snooki gets it, but the Democrats do not?
Or do they? Consider equally the case of John Kerry who anchored his yacht in Rhode Island, because you can do so tax free, instead of Massachusetts. So even Kerry gets it, but every time one of these votes comes up, he doesn’t seem to think most of the voters will do what he does. So, stupid? Elitist (which is arguably redundant with the word “stupid”)? Or take the paranoid answer, that they intent these kinds of effects?
Beats me, but its interesting.
