There is a famous blog series on Dailykos, Rum & Coke Friday, but this story makes that look like someone in Congress took the fun to heart!

Bloomberg is reporting Bailout of U.S. Banks Gives British Rum a $2.7 Billion Benefit :

In June 2008, U.S. Virgin Islands Governor John deJongh Jr. agreed to give London-based Diageo Plc billions of dollars in tax incentives to move its production of Captain Morgan rum from one U.S. island -- Puerto Rico -- to another, namely St. Croix.

DeJongh says he had no idea his deal would help make the world’s largest liquor distiller the most unlikely beneficiary of the emergency Troubled Asset Relief Program approved by Congress just four months later.

Your tax dollars at work might just drive a person to drink!

Shouldn't the United States get some bottles for free considering a $2.7 billion dollar subsidy?

This is yet another reason why legislation should not be ramrodded through Congress.

Nascar track builders $109 million in taxes this year by allowing more generous write-offs.

Other tax breaks backed by Baucus help restaurant franchises make renovations by shortening depreciation schedules. Another shaves $478 million during the next decade from tax bills to movie and television producers as a better way of encouraging them to shoot in the U.S.

$33 Million for Tuna Canning

That means provisions such as a $5,000 tax credit for first-time buyers of houses in the District of Columbia have become a de facto part of the tax law since first becoming a temporary benefit in 1997.

It also effectively cements a $33 million break for companies that invest in American Samoa. That benefit had been targeted at tuna canners such as Del Monte Foods Co., which owned the StarKist tuna brand until Seoul, South Korea-based Dongwon Group bought it in June 2008

The sad thing about this story (hey, cry in your beer) is we wrote about those very tax breaks before the bill was passed.

Now months later we get a report on the waste, a host of Congress representatives claiming they didn't know and so on.

Very convenient. If we can read the bill text, assuredly paid journalists can read the bill text and maybe, just maybe our Congress could consider reading legislation they are voting on.

What a sham! Even this latest realization is in many ways a sham for why was it not stopped before the bill was passed? (Why was the TARP bill passed is yet another question)