A repeal of a tax on wooden arrows is but one of the many pork provisions getting tacked onto the bailout bill in order to win support from recalcitrant Congress Critters. So while the world watches and waits for us to rescue the financial system, our elected representatives are holding things up until they can grab their piece of the action. Awesome. This one is even better than the $0.10 Michigan recycling refund. I’ve been trying to crunch the numbers on my wooden arrow business for ages. Finally the margins will work. Full text of the passage, inside. What other fun special-interest pork projects can you find tacked onto this bill? Let us know in the comments.

NEWMAN: (peering at bottle label) What is this ‘MI, ten cents’?
KRAMER: That’s Michigan. In Michigan you get ten cents.
NEWMAN: Ten cents!?
KRAMER: Yeah.
NEWMAN: Wait a minute. You mean you get five cents here, and ten cents there. You could round up bottles here and run ’em out to Michigan for the difference.

KRAMER: No, it doesn’t work.

NEWMAN: What d’you mean it doesn’t work? You get enough bottles together…

KRAMER: Yeah, you overload your inventory and you blow your margins on gasoline. Trust me, it doesn’t work.

S 3055 [NYT] (PDF)
Text version [Open Congress]
(Photo: Getty)

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