sin taxes have long been one of the sneaky little ways that politicians find to fund their pet projects. they find a behavior that can be seen as objectionable and vilify those who engage in it, penalizing them for their choice and claiming that the proceeds will go to some worthwhile endeavor. just as with any other special purpose tax, those funds end up being siphoned off and used to curry favor with some special interest or other. no one seems to care because the money comes from bad people and is being used for the good of society. all the mob wants is a good scapegoat to blame for some real or imagined woe and to know that government is there to protect them from the latest sin.
lately we seem to have an abundance of those naughty little groups to blame for our general discomfort. smokers, drivers, drinkers, over-eaters, the wealthy, anyone involved in banking or insurance, business in general - the list just seems to go on and on and on. the deeper the hole our representatives dig us into, the more scapegoats are needed to finance their hare-brained schemes for recovery. now they would like to target the obesity epidemic as the latest cause of our distress and bleed us all down to our bones by taxing those sugary drinks they claim are a major cause of the problem. once again they will tell us it is all to fund a series of programs designed to make america healthier and once again they will drain all that revenue away to pave the way for their reelection campaigns.
