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

 

Email To A Friend

Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.

Separate multiple addresses with commas

SPONSORED BY
 

Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) awarded a contract to build the road on Dec. 1, 2006, three days before Palin took office.

Palin could have canceled the contract upon taking office. The governor has that power, said Roger Wetherell, spokesman for Alaska's DOT, and Federal Highway Administration spokesman Doug Hecox said that he could think of "a number of examples" of states canceling projects begun by a previous governor's administration.

Moreover, the fact that the funds had been earmarked for that purpose doesn't mean that the state is forced to use them, Hecox said. The state could opt not to use the money, and Congress has the power to send it to other federal needs.

Alaska has so far used a total of about $41 million in federal funds for the road and related projects, Hecox said.

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica . ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

Lisa Schwarz contributed research to this article.

© 2008

Label

Newsweek Top Stories
NEWSWEEK's 20/10
NEWSWEEK's 20/10

Our decade-in-review project recalls the highs and lows of the last 10 years.

Obama's Promises
Obama's Promises

Is the new president fulfilling his campaign pledges? Or falling short?

The Decade in 7 Minutes
The Decade in 7 Minutes

Video: A fast-paced review of the best and worst moments. Don't blink.

Accidental Celebrities
Accidental Celebrities

From Levi Johnston to Elian Gonzalez, these people never expected to be in the spotlight.

Discuss

Sponsored by

Member Comments

  • 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????

Reply

Report Abuse

Enter comments if any for reporting abuse