Have you ever had a friend or family member ask you, “Do you need me to get you something when I go to the store?” Their main objective may be to get bread and milk, but before you now it they have come home with case of Keystone and a bag of pork rinds. Well that’s how our federal government does things, they create legislation with a main purpose and add on that bag of pork rinds and in some cases, a bottle of rum.

The recently passed “bailout plan” included some interesting pork items, the first of which is the lifting of an excise tax on wooden arrows for children. Robin Hood (D-Loxley) and William Tell (R-Alabama) co-sponsored the bill. The proposal will cost taxpayers about $2 million dollars over the next ten years. Congress pays for the plan by robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.

Another attachment gives $200 million dollars in tax breaks to owners of motorsports tracks. In an era where we are being asked to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it is comforting to see tax breaks given to facilities that promote driving around in circles at high speeds for hours at a time.

Captain Henry Morgan must be happy that an excise tax on rum is eliminated as part of the bailout plan. The Coca-Cola Company is hoping that more people will be consuming rum and cokes after rum producers get a $192 million in tax breaks from the feds. It looks like congress will be getting drunker with power.

The last few pork items are paltry when compared to the $19 billion in tax breaks given for research done in the United States. Companies like Microsoft and Harley Davidson stand to reap huge rewards from this tax break. Microsoft alone brings in around $60 billion a year in revenue and they get a tax break, while most Americans don’t make $60 thousand a year and they get nothing, and what kind of research is Harley doing? Maybe they are trying to figure out ways to make their bikes louder and more annoying.

There are other provisions including one that gives $478 million in tax breaks to television production companies that agree to produce their shows in the United States, tax breaks to the wool industry, businesses in American Samoa, and for employers to offer a fringe benefit to employees who ride their bicycles to work. Somebody also snuck in a nifty tax break for companies that received settlements from Exxon Mobil as part of the Exxon Valdez disaster. 
 
At first, I thought it was just rich Wall Street bankers were getting $700 billion dollars as a reward for their financial mismanagement and bringing the country on the brink of disaster. It’s nice to know that other multi-millionaires and billion dollar corporations will be getting a piece of the pie as well.
As for the rest of us, unless you ride your bike to work, buy wooden arrows for your kids, drink rum or own a small racetrack, you are not getting much more than a little more debt that will have to be paid for by your children when they are too old to play with wooden arrows.

It just goes to show you that the only way to get a tax break in this country is to get on your Harley and go to a toy store to buy some wooden arrows then take what money you have left and put it into a bad investment. When you get your tax break, you can use the money to buy a bottle of rum and get drunk while watching an American produced TV show about a small race track. Now that’s what I call the American Dream.