Government may subsidize aspartame

If those on the right oppose this idea because it's an "eeeeevil" tax, and we on the left oppose it because it subsidizes toxic chemicals, why does it have any chance of passing?

The Senate Finance Committee has been hearing proposals on how to pay for health care reform. Personally, I'd rather pay 3 cents more for a can of Grape Crush than keep going without medical care, so I'm not urgently worried about a soft drink tax per se.

Unfortunately, however, this proposed tax would exempt diet soda. Of course.

If the tax exempts that diet shit that includes poisonous artificial sweeteners, I have every right to raise hell.

Hell, let me pay 30 cents more per can of regular soda, if it means diet soda is taxed just as much. In fact, I think diet soft drinks should be taxed more than regular, as they are far more dangerous.

Taxing regular soda but not diet is a subsidy to the aspartame industry.

Official favoritism towards artificial sweeteners is nothing new. The government approved cancer-causing aspartame in the first place because future war criminal Donald Rumsfeld ran the company that made Nutra-Sweet.

It's also safe to say that the double standard embodied in the latest tax proposal is driven in part by elitism: Diet soft drinks are consumed more by higher income groups. Can't have the well-off paying as much taxes as we do, can we?

What can we do if this double standard is enacted? We'd have to destroy the product being subsidized. We're almost inclined to seize shipments of diet soft drinks or sugarless bubble gum. If a Diet Pepsi delivery driver has their back turned outside Kroger, we'll have to grab an unattended crate of the stuff for its eventual destroyment. That's how Bo and Luke Duke would do it.

Don't threaten or rob the driver. They're just doing their job. In fact, the driver doesn't even have to know you're there. Just take the soda when they're not looking. Nobody will ever miss it.

Bear in mind that even such peaceful seizure of diet soda is legally questionable, so I'm not seriously encouraging it. Certainly, however, soda we legally acquire will be destroyed in a peaceful, safe public spectacle.

In the meantime, I think products that feature aspartame should be required to carry a giant skull and crossbones sign - the universal symbol for poison.

(Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/12/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5009316.shtml)