Soda taxes are a favorite of liberal lawmakers everywhere. The super-liberal mayor of super-liberal Seattle, Ed Murray, has decided to double down on his proposed soda tax by expanding it to include diet drinks, which he considers a luxury enjoyed only by white privileged racists.

Okay.

Murray’s original two-cent soda tax was intended for sugary drinks like Coke, Pepsi, Red Bull, and a host of other deliciously sweet beverages. He hoped to raise $16 million in the first year to finance things like early education programs in public school and a subsidy for food stamp users that would enable them to shop at local farmer’s markets.

But, wait, said other Seattleites, everyone knows that only minorities drink sugary drinks, so they’ll be carrying the burden of the soda tax. And those darn middle class whites, who are inherently racist and exclusively drink diet sodas, will get to skate on this tax. (There goes that middle class again, always avoiding paying their share of taxes.)

You’re right, agreed Murray.

Diet drinks, Hizzoner reasoned, were more likely to be consumed by “upper middle class white people.” It had become for him “an issue of equity,” a way to tackle “white privileged institutionalized racism.”

Absurd on its face, of course, but this is life in the progressive utopia that is Seattle.

Although …

Not everyone in Seattle supports Murray’s tax, especially food establishments like this one:

Or this one:

Why would our City Council want to proceed with a massive tax on our diverse small business community and our city’s low-income families? There has to be a better way to raise revenue than hurting our most vulnerable residents and business people.

While it’s welcome news that citizens are pushing back, it’s unlikely that their efforts will stop the soda tax from being implemented. Seattle does, after all, have a registered Socialist on the city council.

Have a Diet Coke and a tax, you white privileged racist.