Truly a Screwy Idea

How do our State Senators and Assembly folk want to fill the hole in our budget? Plug it with porn! Yes, what we cannot raise through general taxes, we can get up by levying a tax on the production and consumption of pornography. Talk about a sin tax!

Pornography is a thriving cottage, and often mansion, industry in California and in our own San Fernando Valley in particular. Virtually anytime I drive past a large home in the Encino hills with all the windows darkened, I assume they are either growing pot or producing porn.

The porn industry creates jobs, trains the next generation of gaffers, directors, cinematographers--and of course "talent." It is the bubbling spa cum cesspool from which infomercials are born, that in turn beget music videos and may lead even to TV and legitimate movies. Though to be fair to porn, it is increasingly hard to distinguish legit from porn.

And therein may lay the back rub. How shall we determine which productions are doing porn and which are either art or commerce? How shall we define porn? Yes, yes, I know we may not be able to define it but we know it when we see it. But most importantly, who gets to see it? Who has to watch the dailies (or should they be called "nightlies?")? What panel passes on porn?

How many porn shoots take out permits, and will imposing the 25% suggested tax drive them further undercover--or even out of the state? In the immortal words of H. Ross Perot, "That giant sucking sound you hear will be jobs going to Mexico."

Our elected geniuses in Sacramento also want to stick it to the hardworking porn consumers and lay on another stiff tax by adding another 25% on the other end--the consumers' end.

So if pornography turns out like the lottery and we become dependant on what was once a sin (Gambling in the case of the lottery), will the State then begin to promote porn? Will they give tax breaks in an attempt to attract an expanding industry? Will it become a new civic virtue to support local porn? I can see the marketing slogan: Fantasize Global but Buy Local. Of course, they would never directly tell us to support porn with taxpayer funds, only ask us to give it not a handout but a hand.