Here are a few items about politicians being politicians. One will not surprise you. The other two might.

The one that will not surprise you is about Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare. Ever since Obamacare arrived thousands have brought notes from home asking to be exempt. Companies, churches, unions, local governments, restaurants. They all say “Pity us. This provision in Obamacare is too much for us. Exempt us, please.”

So Washington has been granting thousands of exemptions. Last month it granted another couple hundred.

An odd thing happened with these exemptions. Twenty percent of them were for outfits in a single congressional district. Nancy’s. Golleee gee whiz, what a gol’ darn co-incidence, huh? We have 435 districts. Out of all those, one district gets 20 percent of the exemptions.

You might mumble that this is par for the course. Politicians will be politicians, will ferret out special favors for their own, etc. However, two more items in the news might surprise the cynical.

One is that New York’s Governor Cuomo is planning some big reforms. He is tackling, for instance, pensions for state, local and school employees. They are far too generous, he complains. These are big reforms. They will save billions. They will force workers to work more years and contribute more to their pension funds. They will curtail the practice of “padding” pensions through maneuvers with overtime.