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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (50446)	10/6/2008 6:05:03 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224738

Arrows of outrageous fortune October 06, 2008 Michael Ackley worldnetdaily.com Thank goodness the first version of the financial bailout bill failed in the House of Representatives. The original measure – a concise three pages – assigned unprecedented spending power to the secretary of the treasury. The United States Senate, however, remedied matters by producing a $700 billion (more or less) bill with tighter controls on the secretary's spending authority and greater benefits for "Main Street" as opposed to Wall Street. Thus was averted the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, our lawmakers were so tightly focused on averting this crisis with a "clean bill," they only managed to increase the measure by a mere 448 pages. They accomplished this very reasonable inflation by taking many pet items off the legislative shelf and wedging them into the text. Naturally, all these items were essential to averting the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression, and so were worthy of a place in the final draft. Who could argue, for instance, with the "exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children"? You might not grasp the significance of this until you realize the lawmakers were talking about arrows with shafts "consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means of enhancing the spine of such shaft (whether sold separately or incorporated as part of a finished or unfinished product) of a type used in the manufacture of any arrow which after its assembly … measures 5/16 of an inch or less in diameter." If you're wondering how this item reckons in a $700 billion bailout, well, you obviously don't understand the importance of non-laminated wooden arrows to emergency economic stabilization or to the Troubled Assets Relief Program. If we have to explain the significance of "5/16 of an inch," you may be a hopeless case, but we'll try anyway: It also says, "or less"! Further, actress Geena Davis is one of the top female archers in America! If you don't "get it" now, it's probable that you likewise fail to understand the essential nature of the following portions of the stabilization bill: Inclusion of cellulosic biofuel in bonus depreciation for biomass ethanol plant property. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles. Exclusion from heavy truck tax for idling reduction units and advanced insulation. Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters and qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement. Increase in limit on cover over of (sic) rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Railroad track maintenance. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products. Merchantable timber contracting pilot program. Extension of expensing rules for qualified film and television productions. Then we have the 35 pages set aside for the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. This is only scratching the surface, of course. The 451 pages of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act include scores of items equally pertinent to the direst financial crisis to face the United States since the Great Depression. It says something about our senators that they were able to think about such details while maintaining their concentration on the terrible threat to national and world credit markets and, indeed, the American way of life. It says a great deal about them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the positive side, the Economic Stabilization Act extends a number of tax cuts. This demonstrates that Democrats not only understand the economic stimulus tax cutting provides, and also illustrates their stark fear. Only the terrors of a real financial meltdown could impel them to approve tax reductions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi may be the most inept speaker ever of the House of Representatives, but thanks to her anti-GOP diatribe prior to last week's House defeat of the initial economic stabilization measure, we are able to make a new entry in the Blind Partisan's Dictionary: bipartisanship – n., in politics, the equal apportionment of credit and blame; e.g., all credit to one's party and all blame to one's opponents.