Comments

1
The American Association of Family Pediatric… sold out to Coca-Cola too.
2
How sad that you can't even trust a children's charity to be free from corrupt behaviour.
3
The name should be changed to "Save my job"!
4
Same thing used to happen with tobacco companies. No way that kind of money doesn't influence your decisionmaking.
5
"How sad that you can't even trust a children's charity to be free from corrupt behaviour."

I've hated them for years ever since their street chuggers started heckling ongoers who ignored them. Douchebags.
6
Grotesque.
7
In the United States of America, everything is for sale.
8
True @7, but conversely you also must have something others want to buy.

Henceforth, I publicly announce my support for any organization, endeavor or initiative that will cost multi-national corporations a shit-ton of money. All those corporations have to do to get me to withdraw my support is give me a slightly smaller pile of money in exchange.
9
A $5 million grant from PepsiCo also had no influence on the decision


My bullshit meter just hit the redline.
10
"None of the soda tax measures supported by Save the Children passed."

Sad.
Officials of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who had encouraged Save the Children to advocate for soda taxes, are disappointed.

“They were obviously some of the strongest out there working on the issue, and we had such high hopes,” said Dwayne Proctor, team director for childhood obesity at the foundation. He said the two groups would continue to work together on other aspects of the obesity fight.
11
"And she greatly resents the insinuation that money might have influenced her organization's decision."

I'm Brian. And so is my wife!
12
Gotta love the reasoning given for dropping support - "the issue is too controversial'.

From that we could infer that any organizations that oppose causes or programs that are pro-children's health that Save the Children supports, can get the orginazition to drop their support by making the issue "controversial" - (and also giving them a hugh pile of money).

It's not like I had much or any respect for Save the Children before - but now I think even less of them.
14
@10, I wouldn't be so quick to call the DC compromise a complete failure. Soda is now subject to the regular sales tax here, which is certainly better than nothing (which is what it was before).

Having grown up in a state where soda, along with other "non-nutritive" consumables, were taxed under the regular sales tax, I was floored to find out that there were states that DIDN'T tax soda. I consider a tax on soda to be the very definition of a "luxury tax." There's absolutely nothing wrong with water, and iced tea and kool-aid, made at home, are cheap as all hell if you want some flavor/caffeine. Sad to see an organization sell out on something like this. To me it's just common sense that soda should be a taxable item.
15
It's all for the children!!!

No income tax on the rich. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!

No raised taxes on sugared foods. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!
16
That's the thing about most charities--they exist not to solve any sort of problem in the world, but to keep themselves running.

Perhaps you've heard of the HRC?
17
Fuckin' A, how venal can you get? If this occurred in the plot of a work of fiction, I would have trouble suspending my disbelief.
18
Why not just tax obese kids? It's more direct, and they don't have a powerful lobby.
19
You just may have hit on something, kungfujew.

Henceforth, every human younger than 18 (or older, if still living with parents) who is more than 10 pounds above his/her ideal weight will cost their parents $15 dolars per extra pound per week. Tax collectors (duly provided with portable scales) will come check your kids the last day of every month.

Oh, paradise!
20
Save the Face, is more like it.
21
Wouldn't it make more sense to end the subsidies on corn, from which high fructose corn syrup is made? The subsidies contribute to lowering the cost of soda products. It would have the same effect as a soda tax, but would lower the amount of governmental intervention. They would get to stop collecting tax dollars and distributing them to agribusiness. If they tax soda, they would continue to do this, but then have to collect the taxes back from people who buy the soda.

Taxes like those on tobacco products are disporportinately charged to those with a lower income. People don't adjust how much they smoke according to the price of cigarettes. Rich people don't smoke more than poor people, they just spend a much lower percentage of their income on it.
22
Right, if by "controversial" she means "causing controversy in our negotiations with soda companies". Why can't people just admit that they took the money as a bribe? Call it "quid pro quo" if "bribe" sounds too dirty.

"Yes, of COURSE we changed our position to appease Coke and Pepsi. Pepsi gave us five million dollars to do our very important work, and we negotiating with Coke for more. We're a Neo-Liberal activist organization operating in a global capitalist economy: why would anyone expect us to behave differently?"

Fuck Neo-Liberalism. We form governments with public oversight exactly so we won't have to rely on private corporations (for-profit or not) without public oversight to operate in the public interest. What the fuck do you people expect? The problem isn't Save the Children behaving exactly as it needs to within our social and economic system in order to get the funding necessary to do its work, the problem is the dismantling/lack of public infrastructure that necessitates private charities in the first place. Stop giving money to charities. Give time and energy instead. Work on a local level, and if your organization (in which you're actually involved) needs money for something, you'll know exactly what it is and how that money is being used. You'll be able to influence decisions like whether to sell-out to Coke and Pepsi. Most of all, vote against Neo-Liberal or Neo-Conservative candidates especially, and non-socialist candidates generally.

@21: It would make sense to end corn subsidies, but we should also tax soda as we tax other recreational drugs (if we're going to tax recreational drugs). Granted, refined sugars are caloric and so technically not a "drug" (although they are psychoactive), but then so is alcohol. And people most certainly do quit smoking or cut back because it's too expensive. That said, you're quite correct that sales taxes, including sin taxes, are regressive, as opposed to a more-progressive VAT, though the whole point of sin taxes is to coerce behavior by making it expensive to do things that other people think are bad (like smoke cigarettes). A disproportionate impact on the poor is actually a GOOD thing in this view, as it makes the coercion that much more effective for a segment of the population. Either that, or we could stop trying to legislate or otherwise coerce private behaviors. If people want to increase their risks of heart disease, stomach cancer, and diabetes by drinking soda, power to them. Soda brings me no pleasure; I choose to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes as my means of slow suicide. Power to me! Why the fuck does anyone else care? I like VAT, and I'm happy to pay a surcharge on my income and things that I buy and what I own in order to support the system that allows those products to be produced, distributed to me, enables my ownership of things, allows for me to make money, etc. Taxation beyond that, however, just seems coercive, and I'm not sure why anyone cares if/how I get high.

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