When I was just sketching out this website, I planned on having an occasional feature like a dumb or despicable comment of the month. I figured I’d be rotating between the likes of Ditsy Pelosi, Mean Dean, the dick – Durbin or now Punch Landrieau, but I didn’t expect to start the feature with a Republican.
When Rep. Don Young of Alaska says, essentially to America, “They can kiss my ear”, we know what what part of his anatomy he really meant. So while Young holds his middle finger high to the taxpaying public while he rips us off for 223 million dollars, it’s now to the public to hold him accountable. Actually a statue of that hand gesture would be a fitting trophy to award Million Dollar Don.
Less than fifty people live on Gravina Island. Young thinks we should pay for a bridge to connect this 20-mile-long-island which has a small commercial airport, now linked by ferry, to Ketchikan, population, 8,000. We could buy a fleet of shuttle helicopters and have full-time pilots on stand-by virtually forever, for far less than Young wants to steal from us for this and one other unnecessary bridge. What’s sad is that this type of insanity is not uncommon. This year-old-episode is only getting additional publicity because of the blogosphere efforts to find budget cuts to offset some of the costs of Katrina.
contramundum quotes some of the locals – “Everyone knows it’s just a boondoggle that we’re getting because we have a powerful congressman,” offers Gravina resident Mike Sallee. “The funny thing, when that big bridge is done, it will take more time to get to the airport than it does now on our little ferry,” said Dale Collins, a mariner who heads the ship pilots association here, noting the awkward roundabout route of the new bridge. “But it sure will be big. It’s unbelievable, the size of that bridge.”
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Lets figure out a way to make him ashamed of himself. Ironically, it seems the locals have a head start.
newer contramundum post – “The people I’ve talked to here in Kodiak are actually a little embarassed about it all.”
