Tax Twinkies?

From The Conglomorate, discussion of an article in The New Republic arguing for taxation of saturated fat and transfatty acids.

This raises all kinds of ethical and public policy issues. The law school professor (Will Baude) who wrote the article concludes:

It is arguments like this that make us libertarian types so nervous about the pervasiveness of the welfare state. As Virginia Postrel has pointed out, once everything is government taxed and subsidized, then every private decision can become an allegedly public one. At first, this made my Federal Income Tax class invigorating and exciting — every life decision was also a tax issue! — as the semester went on, though, I realized how frightening that was. The power to spend, John Marshall might have noted, is the power to destroy.

We didn’t think there were many libertarians among law school professors. We still don’t, but are glad to find one.