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The new law, which reads as follows, was passed as part of the recent Wall Street bailout package (
H.R. 1424) and was entered to appease (read: swing the vote of…) Congressman Blumenauer (D) of Oregon.

SEC. 211. TRANSPORTATION FRINGE BENEFIT TO BICYCLE COMMUTERS.

(c) Definitions- Paragraph (5) of section 132(f) is amended by adding at the end the following:

(F) DEFINITIONS RELATED TO BICYCLE COMMUTING REIMBURSEMENT-

(i) QUALIFIED BICYCLE COMMUTING REIMBURSEMENT- The term ‘qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement’ means, with respect to any calendar year, any employer reimbursement during the 15-month period beginning with the first day of such calendar year for reasonable expenses incurred by the employee during such calendar year for the purchase of a bicycle and bicycle improvements, repair, and storage, if such bicycle is regularly used for travel between the employee’s residence and place of employment.
‘(ii) APPLICABLE ANNUAL LIMITATION- The term ‘applicable annual limitation’ means, with respect to any employee for any calendar year, the product of $20 multiplied by the number of qualified bicycle commuting months during such year.
‘(iii) QUALIFIED BICYCLE COMMUTING MONTH- The term ‘qualified bicycle commuting month’ means, with respect to any employee, any month during which such employee–
‘(I) regularly uses the bicycle for a substantial portion of the travel between the employee’s residence and place of employment, and
‘(II) does not receive any benefit described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of paragraph (1).’

(d) Constructive Receipt of Benefit- Paragraph (4) of section 132(f) is amended by inserting ‘(other than a qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement)’ after ‘qualified transportation fringe’.

(e) Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2008.

Personally, I have a strong appreciation for bike commuting as I am very much a bicycling enthusiast and with the recent purchase of
a new Trek Soho S, I’m quickly becoming an avid cyclist as well.  Not to mention the fact that with traffic congestion and air pollution, legislation to encourage alternatives for commuters outside of their cars can only help our country, not just from an environmental standpoint, but also in the effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil for everyday travel. 

Coincidentally, Tampa’s Bay Area Commuter Services group held a kickoff event today for the 12th annual “
Commuters Choices Week“, which I attended for a short while this afternoon. In case you are wondering…yes, I did go there by bike.  Among other local organizations, my friends from the
Carrollwood Bicycle Emporium were there performing free bike tune ups. 

While I do support the above mentioned addition to the recent House bill and I do believe strongly that it is a step in the right direction, I don’t agree with the way it was added into a bill that has nothing to do with bicycle commuting, non-taxable reimbursements, energy or environmental issues. This leads me to wonder how many other items were added into this bill in order to swing the votes of other Congressmen who may not possess the same zeal for issues like pollution and physical fitness as Oregon’s Blumenauer does.  I suppose I will have to
read the bill in its entirety to find out.

Sec. 317 looks like a good place to start.

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Personally, I’ve got lots of big ideas; world changing ideas though, perhaps not so many (possibly 1 or 2).

At this point, I would be happy if the
FBI would step up their investigation efforts against the companies like Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and AIG who are getting set to take U.S. taxpayers for a $700 billion ride. 

It is not enough that we are
borrowing an endless supply of cash from foreign governments like China and Japan to finance our ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, now our government wants us to bail out the same companies who were absurd enough to agree to pay their incompetent CEOs multi-million dollar salaries.

Here’s an idea that might not change the world, but could go a long way toward solving the financial crisis in the United States:

Since we can all agree that either McCain or Obama will inevitable assume executive responsibility for addressing this country’s financial situation, why not pull them both off the campaign trail and force them to work together to come up with a plan to salvage what is left of our economy and re-establish some sense of stability.  Ultimately, they would need to come up with something together that both parties can agree on.  Meanwhile, their vice presidential running mates can make themselves useful by serving as each respective candidates’ press secretary by providing the American public with daily status updates on their progress and current estimates for when our budget will be balanced and how much tax money their combined plan is going to save us.

The winning Presidential candidate in November’s general election assumes responsibility for executing this new financial stability plan. 

If the plan fails, we all suffer, but at least we will be able to stop focusing on our incumbent President’s shortcomings and immediately begin taking steps toward the positive changes that we are being promised from both candidates.

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I’m not saying that Obama is a perfect candidate, but as the embedded video below points out, some of the propaganda that McCain’s camp is distributing about him are just outright lies.

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Mr. Diaz presented me with the question, “what would you rather see, an increase in the price of gas or beer?” Naturally my first instinct was to say that I wouldn’t like to see an increase in the price of either. Being a good sport, I played along and stated that I would prefer an increase in gas prices over beer prices. Unfortunately, that was the only part of my interview with Mario that wasn’t cut from the segment.

I went on to clarify my response with an explanation of the economics behind how prices of high margin, high volume consumables, such as gasoline and alcohol are set. Apparently Mario wasn’t interested in sharing with his viewers the fact that price rarely has anything to do with production costs, but has everything to do with demand and market tolerance for substitute products (if any exist) and competition in the same product category. I clarified my explanation with an example pulled from the beer industry.

In explaining to Mr. Diaz that if the cost to produce Anheuser Busch’s most popular economy brand (Bud Light) goes up, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the price of that product is going to increase because if it did, then consumers would simply purchase a different economy brand, such as Miller Lite or Coors Light instead and that a premium domestic 6-pack will continue to cost consumers around $7 while standard domestic lagers such as Coors, Coors Light, Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller High Life and Miller Lite will continue to be priced under $5, as they have been for years…because this is what consumers expect to pay.

Gasoline is different, because there are considerably fewer alternatives to choose from, unless you consider
octane ratings (regular/ mid-grade / premium) or diesel fuel as legitimate alternatives. As a commodity product, it is assumed that you are going to get the same thing whether you purchase it from an Exxon station or a Citgo station. Or at least it will deliver the same results regardless of where you purchased it from.

Mario was apparently more interested in delivering a story based on sensationalism and the fear that a $5 micro-brew draft will suddenly get more expensive because the price of hops has gone up than the fact that what we pay is determined by who is selling it and what they feel their customers will tolerate paying for it…not what it costs them to make it. This is what drove me to concluding that the news we are fed by mainstream media is garbage.

The good news is that with thousands of niche bloggers online and sites like
LiveLeak out here, we are not limited in options for getting the straight story, whatever that might be. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for network news producers to figure this out.

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