It seems that many of our congresscritters took advantage of the public outcry for a quick passage to pack a bunch of pork into the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It seems ridiculous, but members of Congress took advantage of a bill meant to save the economy to fund questionable programs in their home states. While many contend that the pork was needed to get enough votes for the bill to pass, you'd think the threat of martial law would have given senators enough reason to pass the bill without the added fat.

Taxpayers for Common Sense compiled a list of the Top 10 pieces of pork stuck into the bailout bill, the most ludicrous listed below.

1. Tax break for manufacturers of wooden arrows used by children -- Cost $2 million
2. 7 year tax extension for Race car Tracks -- Cost $100 million
3. Tax incentives for film and TV production companies -- Cost $478 million

These are just a few of the crazier examples of pork attached to the bailout bill, the rest of the list encompassing billions of dollars in expenditures is sure to turn your stomach.

Not all pork has to be bad, there are many other extras added into the bailout bill which in my opinion fall under the bacon category, as in pork that tastes good!

Depending on your point of view, you're either stunned that the House failed to pass this $700 billion bailout that the Secretary Treasury and White House has been imploring Congress to vote for, or you're pleased as punch.

Either way, if you want to compose an angry letter or offer a congratulatory phone call, there is an easy way to find out how your Congressperson voted.

Just click on this link. It's a link belonging to the Office of the Clerk at the U.S. House of Representatives and it explains who voted what way--the yays and nays. Since an election is coming up, you may want to check it out and exact your revenge at the voting booth this November. One warning, though. Any web site with a House.gov in its title right now is moving a little slower than usual. Actually, because of that, here's a CNN link, with the same information.

But, hey, kudos to everyone who at least put their names out there, voting one way or the other. Incredibly, a Republican Congressman from Illinois, Jerry Weller, didn't vote.

According to one article I've read, he isn't up for reelection, which may have had something to do with it. But considering how important this bill is, you'd like to think there was a different reason. Maybe he has the flu.

Geoff Williams is a freelance journalist and an author.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should begin by pointing out that I live in New York City, where I am a regular and enthusiastic patron of the city's amazing public transportation system. I approach the train in much the same way that a cocker spaniel approaches car rides. If I could open the window, put my hands on the sill and let my tongue loll out of my mouth, I definitely would.

Right now, one of my biggest worries involves funding of the city's subway system. A little over ten years ago, the city and the state slashed funding. It would be prohibitively expensive to have an entirely rider-funded system, so the MTA began borrowing money. Lo and behold, a few years later, the subway is still underfunded, is seriously in debt, and is looking at massively raising fares while scaling back on service.

New York is only one of many cities currently experiencing problems with their public transportation systems. At the same time, these systems also offer one of the best solutions to the country's current gas crisis. America's subways, trams and buses conserve 4.2 billion gallons of gas per year. They reduce wear and tear on public roads, keep cars out of city centers, and allow citizens to cheaply move from place to place. In terms of pollution, each person who rides public transportation reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 20 pounds per day. In New York, that works out to over 3 billion pounds per year.

However, unless a consistent, reliable funding source emerges, the sort of feast-or-famine situation that is plaguing New York and other cities will continue. With that in mind, it was particularly satisfying to discover HR 6052, the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008. This bill would provide federal subsidies both to cities and to "non-urban areas" for the development and improvement of public transportation systems. It is designed to improve the public transportation grid while lowering fares for travelers. The bill has passed the House of Representatives and is currently working its way through Senate committees.

Between cheap public transit, fewer drivers clogging the highways, lowered petroleum dependency and reduced carbon emissions, HR 6052 seems like a great idea for pretty much everyone. Now if we can just get it passed...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He even has favorite subway beggars: the current winner is the magician on the four line.

Despite the relative risk aversion most people associate with renting a house, the ever rising number of foreclosures has been hurting tenants, sometimes even harder than landlords. In most cases the tenants don't even know that the landlord has been failing to make payment until they receive the foreclosure or eviction notice on their front door. From there, the renter's rights vary from state to state with the protections generally being lackluster. To top off the need to quickly find a new place to stay as the bank takes ownership, many tenants are also out a month's rent and the security deposit.

One renter in Virginia lost $1,200 when her landlord was foreclosed on; a hardship which coupled with the loss of her roommate and access to transportation has left her 6 months pregnant living in a homeless shelter. Some states do provide protections which will allow the renters to pay the bank and live in the home until the new owner moves in but the extra time for tenants isn't usually long enough. In some other areas legal aides actually recommend living in the home rent free while the foreclosure process is completed in order to build up enough money for a new rental. No matter where you live the protections for renters from indiscriminate landlords are not good enough.

The House passed a measure last year which would afford more protection to renters in foreclosure cases but the measure hasn't yet been put into place. Congress needs to stop wasting time with credit card interchange fees and baseball steroid scandals and get on to passing something which I think we can all agree protects consumers. In these cases the foreclosures are especially sad because the displaced renters aren't the irresponsible ones; they have paid their rent and made the smart decision to not buy a home they cannot afford. Congress, quit carrying on about an energy plan for one day, leave your fly fishing trip early and get some protections passed. It'd be great if for once we could reward those individuals who made good decisions when it comes to housing.

While you may not know it; merchants have to pay a fee to use the credit card machines which typically is 2% of the actual purchase price. To defray this cost of doing business many retailers factor the 2% fee into the shelf price for items which leaves cash-paying customers shelling out the same 2% overhead on their purchases too. During this year your family will spend on average $427 to cover these fees while the credit card companies net a cool $48 million from the interchange fees.

You can't make that kind of money in the U.S. without attracting attention from Congress and lobbying groups especially when your industry is already under fire for high interest rates and complicated anti-consumer fees and fine print. Congress is looking to regulate the interchange fee with the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008. This fee is a cost of doing business; get rid of it and you risk a less reliable system or having the cost will moved to a different area under a new name. Even if the retailers can negotiate a lower fee, how likely is it that they will drop prices to reflect it? Consumers are already adjusted to the current price so the profit will stay with the retailer, not be passed to the consumer.

Let me begin by pointing out that I'm a big fan of train travel. I've ridden trains up and down the Eastern Seaboard and across half of Europe. I've hung out in old rail yards, searched out hidden rail tunnels, and once went to a wedding in the O. Winston Link museum. Like my Walletpop colleague Beth Wechsler, I'm a fan of the romance of train travel and would really like to see it come back. Unfortunately, though, I don't think Amtrak is going to make it happen.

Recently, the House of Representatives passed a bill authorizing almost $15 billion to fund Amtrak for the next five years. In addition to covering general operating expenses, the money would be used, with matching grants, to extend rail service into states where it is lacking. The justification for this massive expenditure was the fact that rail, ideally, provides a low-cost travel alternative for consumers.

There's a problem, though. First off, Amtrak isn't really low-cost. According to the Amtrak website, a ticket from Union Station in Washington D.C. to Penn Station in New York City ranges from $98 to just over $200 dollars. By comparison, a bus ticket for the same run generally goes for under $30. While the bus takes a little longer, it offers clean, comfortable seats. Amtrak, on the other hand, always leaves me desperately wanting to shower.

Every now and again over the past couple of years, some media source or another has run a story about the impending switch to digital TV. As of February 17, 2009, all television signals will be broadcast in digital, as opposed to analog, format.

This was mandated by Congress, which justified it by stating that digital broadcasting will clear up frequencies for public-safety communications. I'm sure that this decision had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it would ultimately require millions of Americans to buy new televisions, which would pour tons of money into the coffers of various manufacturers. I can't help but wonder how much money Sony has contributed to Congressional election funds over the last decade or so.

On the one side, this is really pretty irrelevant. If you receive your television signals through cable or satellite, then you will not be affected. In fact, this will only be an issue for people who use television antennae, a technology that is almost out the door.

Consider:

• The credit crunch has a lot of people concerned that student loans will be difficult to come by. Companies including College Loan Corp., CIT Group Inc., NorthStar Education Finance Inc., HSBC Bank USA, M&T Bank and Zions Bancorp have recently stopped issuing federally guaranteed loans. In all, 50 lenders representing 12% of the market have stopped making these loans.
  
• Sallie Mae has said it will no longer offer consolidation loans for federal loans.
• State agencies in Iowa, Michigan, Montana and Pennsylvania have suspended their student loan programs.
• It's an election year.

What does all this mean? Congressional hearings of course! At 10 AM EDT, a hearing on the state of the student lending industry convened, and lawmakers and several proposals aimed shoring up the market are floating through Congress.

I'm not so sure a little tightening in the industry is such a bad thing though. Student loans have become easy to get, allowing students to graduate from college with $50 thousand or more in debt, severely hurting their ability to get a good financial start in their adult lives.

Fewer student loans may encourage kids to pursue lower-cost options for education, and that will be good for them long-term.

Isn't it time you started reaping the benefits of your local congressman's clout? Not yet ready to ask for a letter of recommendation for West Point? Have no fear because if you are the bearer of student loans and your loan company is shafting you, your congressman may be the key to a happy ending.

Getting some satisfaction with the help of your congressman or woman is so easy anybody can do it. Granted, like all problems and lending issues, it helps if you are in the right and have been paying your lender what the terms state. But this strategy may work even if you are close to being handed off to a collection agency.

As a little background: My wife had all of her student loans through Sallie Mae, affectionately referred to around our house as the devil. Several of these private loans which Ms. Mae was holding on to were pulling in 13.25% interest! We had included some of these loans in an initial federal consolidation which never worked out. Apparently the incoming fax line at Sallie Mae was hooked right up to a paper shredder because they never received our requests to consolidate. We tried again to consolidate my wife's private loans with Wells Fargo, who, just like our federal consolidator, never received a response from Sallie Mae. Fed up with the problems we were having, I did what any rational person would, I called my local news stations call for action. This is where I found out I could contact my congressman to get some satisfaction.

The U.S. of Representatives moved to protect borrowers and improve lending disclosure by passing the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act late yesterday. Democrats were joined by 64 Republicans to pass the much needed bill by 291 to 127. Mortgage brokers and bank loan officers will have to be licensed and will have to register to be involved in mortgage lending - something that's been needed for years - if the legislation becomes law. No longer will they be able to make deals behind the scenes that cost borrowers more money for years in higher interest payments without fully disclosing the costs.

The bill, if passed by the Senate, would bar a lender from making a loan unless the borrower has a reasonable ability to pay and would set clear federal standards that apply to all lenders. The bill would also prohibit financial incentives to sell mortgages at higher rates than the borrower qualifies for. Brokers defend these incentives, known as yield spread premiums, as worthwhile for borrowers who want to finance certain expenses to hold down closing costs. But the higher rates cost them much more money over the life of loan. Many times the yield spread premiums are not even disclosed to the borrower. The bill's chief proponent, Rep. Barney Frank, said the bill will allow these premiums provided the borrower knowingly agrees to the higher rates.

The bill would also make Wall Street banks responsible for lending practices that violate this law even if their only involvement with the mortgage was to package and sell it as a security. This provision certainly will make banks much more cautious before putting together these securitized mortgage pools. But, banks must abide by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac standards to sell the loans to these government-chartered entities, so a similar underwriting process is already in place and practiced regularly by the banks.