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Have you heard about the Obama administration’s Christmas tree tax? It was all the rage to talk about it two years ago — and now it looks as though it’s back.

Some people say it’s not fair to call it a tax, but I think they’re arguing semantics. Let’s look at what’s really going on and why it matters.

The proposed fee right now is only 15 cents per tree. That doesn’t sound like an onerous amount to add to the price of a tree, but it’s another example of tiny increases that add up. Really, though, I’m bothered even more by what the fee is than by the thought of having to pay an extra nickel and dime per tree.

The federal government has set up various promotion boards over the years to be the advertising arm of a lot of industries, mostly agricultural groups. You know those ads you see for milk (“Got milk?”) that don’t promote any particular brand? That’s an example. You’ve probably also see ads for pork, beef, cotton and a dozen other things. Have you ever wondered who’s paying for those ads?

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Have you ever heard of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC)? Unless you follow the minor leagues of college sports, the name is probably meaningless to you. The conference consists of 10 “historically black” universities stretching from Texas to Alabama.

Although the conference has its roots in Texas, it’s currently headquartered here in Birmingham. Why? Because the city of Birmingham hands the conference half a million dollars each year and supplies free office space, too. And what’s in it for the taxpayers who are handing that money over? That’s a harder question to answer.

For the last dozen years or so, the conference has had a championship football game here in Birmingham. It’s been played at a dump of an old stadium which was once a proud facility which was called “the Football Capital of the South.” But that was many decades ago. Today, it’s a pile of out-of-date junk. The stadium’s upper deck had to be torn down because it was unsafe, but it didn’t matter anyway, because the sort of events it holds these days don’t typically attract more people than a rather large high school crowd. (See the example below of the “crowd” at the stadium for a UAB football game.)

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Does this ever happens to you? Some issue pops up in the news or there’s some new action in society — by government or a company or a private organization — and you instantly know what you think about it. An action is completely wrong. It’s clear-cut. Nobody with principles could see it differently.

But then you talk to somebody else who’s obviously intelligent and informed, but he sees it completely different from how you see it. Then you talk to someone else and discover that this person has an entirely different point of view from either you or the other guy.

“Those idiots!” you mutter darkly to yourself. “It’s so obvious. How can they be so blind?!”

This happens in politics all the time. I hear people saying that their opponents are dishonest, stupid, crazy or evil. The opponents tend to be equally sure that you’re dishonest, stupid, crazy or evil. How can we come to such different conclusions?

I think the people who disagree with me about politics or social policy tend to be simply wrong, not evil or stupid or crazy. My thought has been that if you can understand their assumptions and their ways of looking at the world, their conclusions will at least make sense, even if you still think they’re completely wrong. You can understand that people of good will and sound brains can disagree.

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