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Arrows, rum, wool and NASCAR? Oh my

By Andrew Zajac | Tribune Washington Bureau
11:50 AM CDT, October 3, 2008

The heart of the Wall Street bailout bill approved Wednesday by the Senate authorizes the Treasury Department to spend up to $700 billion to buy up "troubled assets" currently held by banks and other financial institutions.

But the rest of the 450-page bill now headed to the House is a hodge-podge of tax legislation. It include a series of tax breaks to benefit transportation, energy production and energy conservation; tax breaks for parts of the country, mostly in the South and Midwest, hit by storms, and tweaks to the tax code, to the tune of $62 billion, to prevent about 20 million taxpayers from being subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax.

All told, these tax breaks are expected to increase the deficit by about $112 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

They include a grab bag of narrowly tailored provisions affecting relatively small numbers of people:

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--The NASCAR provision. Owners of race tracks would get to keep writing off the cost of their facilities over seven years, instead of over 15 years as sought by the IRS. Worth an estimated $100 million, the biggest beneficiary of the amendment stands to be International Speedway Corp., the racetrack arm of NASCAR. Both entities are controlled by the France family.

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I just barfed in my mouth
I heard it was more like $124million. $109 million for Virgin Islands rum and $6 million for kids wooden arrows
This provision just gives tracks favorable accounting treatments for capital improvements into their facilities. I'm not so sure we need track owners to pay higher taxes because they decided to upgrade.......

with that said....it makes me puke that any of these earmarks had to be inluded into this necessary legislation........

Repulican, democrap or Independent.....I say just don't vote for the incumbent.......they are all a bunch of self serving assholes....

I sure am glad those childrens wooden arrow makers got a tax break.....I was loosing some sleep over that one....
Hmm, that's exactly the plan Mr. Bush and the Republican congress promised us 8 years ago - you know, back when we had a budget surplus. Must have been those pesky terrorists that prevented them from implementing this sound economic policy. Let's hope Senator McCain and Governor Moose-poop have a chance to steal even more correct this oversight.

There are no easy answers to our current mess. This bill was a joke, and the concessions and sweeteners put into it to get it to pass have only made it worse.
no kidding......

People ar egoing to be jumping ALL over those 17% 6 month CD's......unfortuantley, a gallon of milk and loaf of bread is going to cost them$17.99...................

The Bail out will do it's trick of preventing us from living through another Great depression...but your right, it's not going to change the fact that most of Wall Street as well as most of Middle America has been living way beyond their means for the past 10 years...
It's just sad that Bruton and the Frances are so broke that they need our tax dollars. Most of us can barely afford tickets to the races, couldn't they have included tickets in the bailout too? Then I would have supported it! As usual, more waste. This time no one can blame either side, because both did it to us.
The last thing I want to read on this board is anything political ... please!
I think this is what they call getting porked!!!

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