GOVERNMENT WASTE

- ALASKA -

Date	Individual / State Agency	Who, What, Where?
09/01/05	Senator Ted Stevens	How About Selling the Brooklyn Bridge? A few of the rarely mentioned items that sneaked through the massive $286.5 billion transportation bill recently passed by Congress include two enormous bridges for the state of Alaska. One of the bridges, a $220 million boondoggle with a span equal to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, exceeds the “pork” normally doled out by Congress by leaps and bounds. The bridge will connect Ketchikan (a city of 8,000) to a ferry-served island that holds fewer than 50 people but also contains the local “Podunk” airport. Senator Stevens, the powerful head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had the gall to publicly state,” I remember when I was a young person in California, when people accused the people in Washington, D. C. of being wasteful about building a bridge called the Golden Gate Bridge because no one lived in Marin County at the time.” Of course, the senator failed to mention that millions of people lived on one side of the bridge in San Francisco. Perhaps we could actually sell him the Brooklyn Bridge. People have been trying that ruse for over a hundred years, too. He also managed to include another $220 million for another 2-mile bridge that connects Anchorage to a barely inhabited section of marshes. And we wonder, how soon can we expect the marshes to grow to the population of Marin County? But Senator Stevens didn’t stop there. Somehow $15 million was allocated to build a road between Juneau and Skagway that eventually will cost over $300 million when complete. But there are a few problems with the road. For one, the citizens don’t want the road. Secondly, the road will be built in an area of at least two-dozen avalanche chutes; it will be too dangerous to drive in the winter, and an excellent ferry service already exists between the affected cities. On top of that, the road was originally designed to connect Juneau to the Klondike Highway in Skagway, but the Federal Highway Administration won’t permit construction through Skagway’s Gold Rush Park, a national monument, so the road will stop 18 miles short of it’s target. Ah! The road to nowhere really will exist. Now what does this unnecessary “pork” really mean to each taxpayer? Is it simply the case that every time another scumbag politician steals your money to build a bridge to nowhere to “buy” votes at home, are we only taking about a dollar apiece out of our pockets to pay for each bridge? No, it is far more sinister as the recent catastrophe with hurricane Katrina in New Orleans cruelly demonstrates. Politicians have known for years that the levees around New Orleans could not withstand a major hurricane. Under both presidents Clinton and Bush, the cries of the Army Corps of Engineers for nearly $100 million for repairs fell on deaf ears. Congress begrudgingly finally allocated $42 million last year, hardly enough to do the job. Let us not forget that the hideously inefficient defense contractors are trying to extort $358 million out of the taxpayers to pay for EACH copy of the new F/A-22 fighter aircraft, not to mention the two $220 million bridges that are absolutely unnecessary, plus thousands of other “pork” projects amounting to billions and billions of dollars. What is more important? Where are our priorities? Let us not forget that both political parties, whether through “pork” or corruption, jointly share in the callous disregard of taxpayers. We have to send a powerful message to the congressional miscreants that “we’re fed up and we’re not going to take it anymore.” The only answer is to throw all Republicans and Democrats out of office.