Wooden Nickels. . .and Wooden Arrows

A WHKP Station Editorial, October 6, 2008

Remember the old saying, "Don’t take any wooden nickels!"? We need to add A new one, "Taxpayers shouldn’t PAY for wooden ARROWS!" We’ll explain what that means in a moment.

Folks, we hope you had a good weekend…and didn’t waste too much of it worrying about that multi-billion dollar bail-out bill the Congress passed last week. There was no point in worrying….eventual passage of that bill was pretty much a "done deal" from the get-go. Probably, the American people have not been more vocal and united AGAINST anything since Communism than they were against that bail-out. Congress got almost as many calls against the bail-out as it did the day Rush asked his listeners to call Congress….and they jammed the capitol switch board.

It took them a couple of weeks, four tries, and countless worried faces with promises of no more credit, a collapsing stock market, runs on banks, and an end to financial life as we know it…all over our TV screens and newspapers for days….to get that bail-out passed. But by Friday, with the House vote…it was "mission accomplished". And that was close to record SPEED for our Congress approving ANY legislation.

Almost "lost in the shuffle" of all that was a trillion dollar "continuing resolution" passed by Congress…because they hadn’t done what we elected them to do…and had NOT passed a single appropriations bill. That continuing resolution alone contained enough political cholesterol, from enough Congressional pork, to thoroughly clog the arteries of our nation’s economy…and to throw the very heart of our financial system into fibralation, in danger of "full arrest". And don’t forget the $152 billion so-called "Stimulus Package" before that….a lot of good THAT did our economy.

Finally, along came that $700 billion bail-out…they said to save us from financial Armageddon. Almost no one doubted it would quickly become more like a trillion, with a "T"…at least. As the House approved the bail-out on Friday, some members said they "held their noses" when they voted FOR it. One from the mountains of East Tennessee said he didn’t like doing it but, forcing himself, he voted FOR the bill….as he said, "with his hand over his heart." But they did the deed….and Washington got what it wanted….in RECORD TIME.

Take a look at that so-called "bail-out" through a magnifying glass…and HERE’s what you’ll see: try tax breaks to save NASCAR and other racetracks $100 million in two years; tax breaks for the rum industry in Puerto Rico worth $192 million over two years; $148 million in reduced tariffs for the wool industry; and tax breaks worth $478 million over ten years…for the TV and film industry. and that list goes on.

But here’s the clincher: That "economy-saving" bail-out inclued a tax break for one manufacturer in Oregon who makes WOODEN ARROWS FOR CHILDREN….tax breaks worth $2 million over ten years. And the congressmen and senators from Oregon didn’t stop there. As part of the "bail-out" that will supposedly save our nation’s economy …those lawmakers from Oregon also got…now get this…tax breaks for employers whose employees RIDE BICYCLES TO WORK. What does THAT tell you…about the people who put that "bail-out" together…and got it passed? All these taxes…and all the other taxes given away last week as part of the "bail-out deal"…will have to be paid by SOMEONE…that only leaves you and me…and our descendants for generations to come.

Remember last week….how long we said it’d take just to COUNT to a trillion…a trillion With a "T"? Something like 190,000 years? It may take THAT long, multiplied a couple o times over, to pay off the trillions our Congress SPENT just last week…ostensibly to stave off economic disaster.

Folks, wooden nickels are bad enough. But multi-million dollar tax breaks….AND wooden ARROWS, rum, racetracks, and bicycle rides….all subsidized by us taxpayers AND those who finagled it all…OUGHT to be illegal.

Find out how YOUR members of Congress voted last week…and BE SURE you vote next month…and in every election.

As always, we invite YOUR comments…on OUR comments.

By WHKP New Director, Larry Freeman

(Tax-breaks reported by:

Rush Limbaugh, National Review, New York Post, Washington Times, USA Today…. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s own hometown newspaper…the San Francisco Chronicle.)