Intellectual Property Law

Congratulations taxpayers! Your senators have ridden to the rescue and approved a piece of legislation that should ungum the credit crunch. You'll now be able to buy that car. In the process, your lawmakers also approved extended tax breaks for the film industry in Puerto Rico, and for the makers of "certain wooden arrows designed for use by children."

I kid you not.

I won't bore you with the details, but if you're interested, the Puerto Rican film industry provision is on page 298 of the massive 400-plus page bill, which the senators approved Wednesday evening to Save Americans.

"The exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children," provision occurs shortly after that.

That provision is then followed by another that allows people who received income from the settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill litigation to treat it as income from the fishing industry for tax purposes.      

You probably haven't heard about any of these specific kind of earmark requests because they're buried in an inscrutable 400+ page PDF document that no-one had the time to read during a busy workweek.

This is the kind of under-the-radar activity that the non-profit group the Sunlight Foundation has been trying to stop with its online petition this week to ask lawmakers and others to actually read the bill (at web sites such as Read the Bill First, and Public Markup.)

Wired has suggested that the next president listen to Sunlight Foundation co-founder Ellen Miller. This might be a good time for the job applicants to start listening.   

See Also:

• House Website Crumbles Under Weight of $700 Billion Bailout
• House Members in Tight November Elections Scuttle Bailout
• Bailout Agreement Hits the Net -- Is This Transparency?
• Advocates Demand Congress Put Bailout Details on Internet
• Online Bailout Outrage Jumps to Streets, and Into Lawmakers' Inboxes
• Treasury Secretary's Bailout Request Compared To Spam Scam