Thread: Bridge to no where, in Alaska, dropped!

The $233 million would be better used to get the fence started on our borders!

...On Friday, Alaska decided the bridge really was going nowhere, officially abandoning the project in Ketchikan that became a national symbol of federal pork-barrel spending...

...The $398 million bridge would have connected Ketchikan, on one island in southeastern Alaska, to its airport on another nearby island.
Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday the project was $329 million short of full funding.
"We will continue to look for options for Ketchikan to allow better access to the island," the Republican governor said. "The concentration is not going to be on a $400 million bridge."...

Looks as though this project was for tourism! They were going to fund a $233 million bridge for 50 people?

Ketchikan is Alaska's entry port for northbound cruise ships that bring more than 1 million visitors yearly. Every flight into Gravina Island requires a 15-minute ferry ride to reach the more densely populated Revillagigedo Island.
The town — seven blocks wide and eight miles long — has little room to grow. Local officials have said access to Gravina Island, population 50, is needed for the town and its economy to grow.

Anyone know if Stevens is going to vote a Yea or Nay for the "Dream Act"?

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans, championed the project through Congress two years ago, securing more than $200 million for the bridge between Revillagigedo and Gravina islands

How about we use that federal tax money, $233 million, for insentives to contract the fence along our border!

Under mounting political pressure over pork projects, Congress stripped the earmark — or stipulation — that the money be used for the airport, but still sent the money to the state for any use it deemed appropriate.
Stevens spokesman Aaron Saunders said Friday the senator was interested in how the state ultimately used the money. A spokeswoman for Young said the congressman would have no comment.

McCain?

Just last month, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said pet projects could have played a role in a Minnesota bridge collapse that killed 13 people earlier this year.
"Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country," McCain told a group of people in a town-hall style meeting in Ankeny, Iowa.
"Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it."

Why are we concerned about using federal tax money for roads in Alaska when our borders are wide open in the lower 48?

On Friday, Leo von Scheben, commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, said the bridge money could be used to build roads in Alaska.
"There is no question we desperately need to construct new roads in this state, including in southeast Alaska, where skyrocketing costs for the Alaska Marine Highway System present an impediment to the state's budget and the region's economy," von Scheben said in a statement.

oops forgot the link

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070922/...dge_to_nowhere

That's great news!! Beside posting on this discussion forum, I also participate in a tansportation blog, here in my city in the NW. There are plans afoot to spend upwards of $30-40 billion here---and a lot of it is on projects that we really don't need, and which will also greatly enrich certain property owners. Instead some of us are lobbying them for some badly needed--but less costly-- projects.

In other posts I have ben writing about the spiral of immigration and public expenditures. Our region is growing fast--and a great part of that growth is due to refugees from other states more impacted by illegals than we are.

Whatever the reason, our economy is in danger enough that we certainly cannot afford continued federal budget deficits. I'm going to post this article on our transportation blog as an encouragement to other fiscal conservatives. We don't need the " Immigration-Public Spending-Taxes-More Immigration Spiral!!

Well, then... shouldn't the headline in the local fish wrap be:

Bridge to Nowhere Goes Nowhere