State Senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) thinks that soda, a sugar based carbonated beverage, is responsible for obesity in children. It couldn?t possibly have anything to do with a lack of exercise due to excessive video game playing, surfing the net or sitting in front of the television all day, could it?

Ortiz?s Senate Bill 1520 would apply a $2 tax per gallon of syrup and 21 cents per gallon of soft drink that is produced from powder and sold in the state of California. Granted, the tax will be applied to distributors, manufacturers and wholesale dealers, but, it will ultimately trickle down to the consumer.

Through the tax, Ortiz hopes to raise money for schools that stop selling soda on school campuses. While this is truly altruistic on Ortiz?s part, her logic and motivation for the bill are flawed.She thinks that, by raising the cost of soda, people?umm, children…will stop drinking soda excessively and the obesity rate in children will decrease. This is typical Politician Think: they love taxing the addicted.

I think it will work. After all, it worked with cigarettes and alcohol–oh wait, it didn?t.

Cigarettes and alcohol are taxed heavily, and that doesn?t prevent people from abusing them. Hell, even the threat of cancer and/or death does not prevent the masses from downing a cold beer with a shot and sticking a heater in their mouth. That?s a lot worse than carrying around an extra 20 or even 50 pounds.

I have to give Ortiz credit for wanting to give 50 percent of the revenue generated by the proposed bill to the schools, but I think that it is the wrong way to fund the public school system. That is why we already pay taxes in the first place, but that?s not good enough, she wants to double-dip into our wallets and pocketbooks.

Ortiz should be asking why soda is so prevalent in schools in the first place. It has to do with the schools being funded inadequately and being forced to endorse Soda Fascism. We have it here at Sacramento State, where we are strictly a Pepsi campus. And we didn?t necessarily do it because we like Pepsi; we did it because they pulled up in a Brinks truck loaded with cash.

Back before the invention of the ink pen, when I was in elementary school, we couldn?t even buy a can of soda on campus, unless it was after school and we snuck into the teachers? lounge after basketball practice. Nowadays soda machines are everywhere.Ortiz would serve herself and the state?s schools better by just legitimately trying to get the money through the state budget, but funding is tough to find when you got ol? Gray Davis spending $10 million to mail out DMV rebates rather than just lowering the fees; and let?s not even bring up the energy debacle.

Maybe if the Senators and Assembly members looked into the mirrors, trimmed their excessive spending a little bit and tightened their own belts, schools wouldn?t be in this situation in the first place.

Does Matt Wagar?s opinion fizzle? Tell him why or why not at [email protected].