CAMPAIGN 2008

Palin Admin. Oversaw $26 Million ROAD to ‘Nowhere’

A ProPublica investigation into the controversial earmark project.

 

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When Lois Epstein approached Gov. Sarah Palin during a July 2007 meeting, she says she had a simple request: pull the plug on the construction of a $26 million dead-end gravel road that she saw as a waste of federal money. The road was part of the $398 million project to link Ketchikan and its airport on Gravina Island known as the "Bridge to Nowhere," and an earmark inserted by Alaska's congressional delegation had provided the funding. But construction had begun in June, and it didn't seem to matter that the infamous bridge—to which the road would have led—would never be built. Every dollar spent on the project was a dollar wasted, Epstein thought.

Epstein, director of the nonpartisan Alaska Transportation Priorities Project, told ProPublica she handed Palin an editorial that had run the prior month in the Anchorage Daily News. The editorial, by Heritage Foundation fellow Ronald Utt, called the road a "wasteful" project with "little to no measurable benefit." It urged Palin to be "responsible and ethical" and "return the money to Washington" so it could be redirected to hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi. Utt's piece reflected the consensus in Washington, D.C., and Alaska that no more money would be earmarked for the bridge project, which had become a symbol of pork-barrel spending.

"I gave her the Heritage Foundation piece and said this is not a good project and she should think about reappropriating the money," Epstein told ProPublica. Palin replied that her administration was "very close" on making a decision, Epstein said. Two months later, Palin announced the state would no longer pursue the $398 million design. The statement made no mention of the 3.2 mile access road to an empty beach, which by then was well underway.

Since her nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate, Gov. Palin has stressed her reform credentials, singling out her handling of the "Bridge to Nowhere" as evidence. "As governor, I've championed earmark reform to stop Congress from wasting public money on things that don't necessarily serve the public interest," she said last week.

But a gravel road on an Alaskan island with 50 inhabitants doesn't serve the public interest, critics say. "This project isn't satisfying any specific transportation purpose or any public need," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

As ProPublica reported last week, Palin's administration is still planning to link Ketchikan (pop. 7,400) to its airport with the help of as much as $73 million in federal funds earmarked by Congress for the original "Bridge to Nowhere" project.

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  • Posted By: Krohn @ 11/02/2008 11:15:21 PM

    The Wall Street crisis was planned the night of Obama's meeting at Bill Ayres home to put Obama in The White House. Together they put a beautiful plan into place.

    This Strategy was first elucidated in the 1966 issue of 'The Nation' Magazine by a pair of radical Socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

    David Horowitz summarizes it as:

    "The strategy of forcing political change through an orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of Capitalism by overloading the Government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
    unquote

    Obama begin with ACORN by funneling millions into their organization. He then trained ACORN to stage protests in banks to force them to issue risky loans or they would be threatened to face racial charges. ACORN was trained to intimidate financial institutions into giving ???Ninja??? loans to people with NO assets, NO job and NO income, who couldn???t afford these loans.

    That caused the housing bubble two years ago it was by ACORN's actions they were able to destroy our credit system.

    As this played out, D-Barney Frank and D-Chris Dodd were able to cover up the millions of improvident loans to these bad risky house buyers. And Barney Frank and his chums successfully were able to block all of President Bush's attempts to put a rein on this problem.

    So Fannie & Freddie was forced to purchase all these failed subprime mortgages.

    Then both Frank and Dodd denied that there were any problems, and refused the Bush Admin. requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the 'minute they failed'.

    Democrats then blamed Bush saying it happened on his watch knowing it would hurt the Republican Party in the election setting it up that Barack Obama could use this to his advantage.

    Karl Marx once compared a Revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface.

    Barack Obama is that Marxist mole !

  • Posted By: akmother @ 10/28/2008 2:39:17 AM

    are you retarded???
    #1...The money did not go to oil companies..it went to other transportation projects AS IS THE LAW OF THE APPROPRIATION!!!
    Why would you give back that much money when as a state, you requested it, deserve, pay federal taxes IN like everyone else....and have a ton of transportation needs..just like the other states that received federal funds.

  • Posted By: akmother @ 10/28/2008 2:27:02 AM

    are you aware this is a rain forest in AK...with 180 inches of rain a year! Dark, blowing, rainy winters and you think its reasonable for people to boat back and forth to their homes? Here's a newsflash....down south, when people want to open areas for development, they get GOVERNMENT money, build roads (or bridges) and begin developing. If it makes sense for a 14,000 population town in the midwest....why is it porkbarrel spending when alaskans ask for it????

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