Bailout Pork - Just Say NO!
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Here’s the first part of it: There can’t have been a more ridiculous bit of legal fluff in recent memory. Yet there it is, in plain view, as part of the much-ballyhooed Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that’s been passed by the U.S. Senate.
That’s right - part of this “urgently needed” bailout of dumbasses is to exempt “certain wooden arrows designed for children” from the excise tax.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t have anything against wooden arrows - and I mainly agree with anything regarding less taxes, but to claim that pork like this will make the bailout bill more likely to pass the House is (I hope!) just stupid.
The cost of the bill is up to an estimated $800 billion - but no one knows for sure. They don’t know because it’s a pork laden monstrosity.
Title I of the”Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007″ (yes, that’s still the name of the bailout bill) establishes the Troubled Assets Relief Program.
The name TARP is appropriate, because basically they’re attempting to sweep all the toxic mortgages and derivatives that the brilliant Wall Street crowd invested in under a giant rug. So I guess you could hide it under a TARP just as well….
I literally don’t know where to begin when talking about the pork in this bill. I guess I’ll start at the top and work my way down to give you some idea of how bloated this thing has become. It started as 3 pages. It’s up to 442.
Here’s the text of the bill in PDF format from the GPO. Please use this link to access the text of the bill. I apologize, but the links below won’t work because of the stupid search engine Thomas uses.
Here are the first few “urgent” parts of the bill. In reality, it’s just pork thrown in to get Representatives to vote for it:
That’s just the renewable energy section. Just below that, we get these barrels of pork thrown at the coal industry:
That should be enough pork thrown at energy projects right? Remember, the whole purpose of this is to bail out the financial industry…. But you’d be wrong if that’s what you thought. Take a look atthe part named Title II:
TITLE II–TRANSPORTATION AND DOMESTIC FUEL SECURITY PROVISIONS
Yup, more pork - this time thrown at the alternative energy crowd. NOTE - I’m a proponent of alternative energy - I just don’t want the governemnt to fund it!
Let’s see, what’s next in this budget busting bailout bill…. Crap, more energy credits…
Ok, I’ll skip on down and see what else there is…. O goody, Alternative Minimum Tax relief…. This is another good idea, but why is it in this bill?
A little further down (believe it or not, I’m skipping entire sections!) we find gems such as:
SEC. 314. INDIAN EMPLOYMENT CREDIT.
SEC. 316. RAILROAD TRACK MAINTENANCE.
And check this out - the wool subsidy is back!
There’s even a tax break for people who received settlements from the Exxon Valdez spill….
SEC. 504. INCOME AVERAGING FOR AMOUNTS RECEIVED IN CONNECTION WITH THE EXXON VALDEZ LITIGATION.
I’m not making any of this up! Here’s pork thrown to the Midwest:
And pork to the area hit by Hurricane Ike:
I doubt it, but all of these sections may have merit and may be useful. But that doesn’t mean they should be included in this bill, slipped through just to get more pork back to the home districts. If they’re worthwhile, let them be voted on, one at a time. See if they can stand on their own merits. Hah!
Please, call your Representatives and ask them to vote this down! Tell them you’ve had enough of this kind of crap coming out of Washington - tell them no more!
If you’ve read this far, you’ve got to be concerned. PLEASE contact your Representative and tell them how you feel. The Senate passed this crap, but this train wreck of a bailout bill can still be stopped before they vote tomorrow if enough of us contact our Representatives.
gk
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