This isn’t directly germane to the Pres. Election, but I just had to post it. From the Wall Street Journal:

The tax bill is named the “American Jobs Creation Act of 2004,” …

… On page 598 of the 650-page bill, at the end of a section designed to limit the use of corporate “deferred compensation” plans, is an exemption for any plan “established or maintained by an organization incorporated on July 2, 1974.”

Hmmm. I wonder what deferred comp. plan was established by an organization incorporated on July 2, 1974?

Ohhh … the PGA Tour Inc., the nonprofit association whose members play on the professional golf circuit.

The provision is the handiwork of lobbyist Daniel Tate Sr. of Cassidy & Associates, who registered in August to be the PGA Tour’s newest advocate in Washington. “I can’t talk about that, but I appreciate your thinking of me,” said Mr. Tate, a former Carter administration official who with his son, lobbyist Daniel Tate Jr., spreads campaign contributions widely on Capitol Hill.

The provision was intended to prevent golfers and the PGA Tour from being snared in rules intended for wealthy executives. The PGA Tour is a nonprofit organization, notes Mr. Price, the PGA Tour’s chief financial officer, and golfers are independent contractors. Current federal laws on plans in such circumstances are tougher than those Congress just enacted, but without the exemption, the rules would have created “administrative chaos,” Mr. Price says.

The measure was inserted in the bill by the staff of the Senate Finance Committee, PGA Tour officials said, then was approved by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, a California Republican.

As the bill moved through Congress in June, a crush of influential lawmakers attended the PGA Tour’s Booz-Allen Classic at Avenel Country Club in Maryland, where they played with the pros. Ways and Means aides say the boosters of the PGA Tour exemption included Rep. Jim McCrery, a Louisiana Republican. At the tournament, he played with Australian golfer Adam Scott, according to the Hill newspaper. The event wasn’t a lobbying opportunity, PGA Tour tax counsel Evan Migdail said. “They create goodwill, but members of Congress go to a ton of these things,” he said.

Mr. McCrery couldn’t be reached to comment.

“I don’t know what any of these special breaks have to do with American manufacturing jobs,” says Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means panel. “But I do know one thing — pro golfers and sports-franchise holders won the Washington lobby game, and the American taxpayers have lost.”

So there you go. As if Tiger’s game, endorsements, and wife weren’t enough …