Welfare and Pork

Want to know how those bi-partisans in congress got that dirty diaper of a bailout bill passed? How they garnered the support of those liberal Democrats looking out for main street tax payers and conservative Republicans who are ideologically opposed to corporate welfare?

They bribed them.  Works every time. Here's some fun ones:

1. Repeal of a $.39 excise tax on wooden arrows manufactured in Oregon;

2. $128 million of tax relief for the manufacturers of car racing tracks, aimed at congressmen in Nascar states, such as Virginia and North Carolina;

3. A provision to give $10 million in tax breaks to small television and film producers (thankfully not my congressman Waxman, because he had already, amazingly voted for it. At lease he's not being bought);

4. $223 million to Alaskan fishermen who were affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

5. An increase in limit on the excise tax of RUM to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

6. $19 billion for companies doing research and experimentation in the United States, (Microsoft, Boeing, United Technologies, EDS, and Harley-Davidson)

7. $148 to clothing manufacturers that use imported wool fabric.

8. $3 million to businesses doing business in American Samoa.

Full list here, in full Orwellian prose.