Posted on 10/01/2005 9:59:21 PM PDT by akdonn
Alaska can help finance the recovery from recent hurricanes. It also can secure an energy supply and generate future revenue, thus avoiding tax increases.
But first, Americans have to get the facts straight about Alaska. The misinformation is atrocious. For example, Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends reported Tuesday that the 2005 highway legislation appropriated $223 million for a bridge (at Ketchikan) to serve 50 people, or about $4.5 million per person. That is ridiculous and exhibits the sloppy reporting costing major media their viewers and readers.
The bridge would replace an expensive and inadequate shuttle ferry to a regional airport used by civilian and military aircraft. Ketchikan lies at the south end of the 500-mile-long Alaska Panhandle. The only roads into the Panhandle are at the extreme north end. Ketchikan's closest access to the continental highway system entails a six-hour ferry ride to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, plus a two-day drive to the nearest state.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Considering the amount of pork that other states routinely get from congress...this is a minor league item for most states, but a significant one for Alaska. There aren't alot of grants going up to Alaska. The University of Alaska doesn't get tens of millions in grants to study the boll weavel. There aren't any PhD types out there studying the migration of fire ants to Alaska.
The highway trust fund was created in 1956 and is fed by the 18.4 cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline and a 24.3 cents-per-gallon tax on diesel.
Such taxes were assessed for 40 years before the trust fund but went into the general fund. Since 1956, it goes into the highway trust fund and if not spent on transportation projects stays in the fund, unavailable for other purposes.
At last a word of sanity on this subject. Alaska is always being accused of feeding at the trough, by people in states getting a million times more pork.
The story starts half way down the page. Its worth your time to read it.
The key point, This is Highway Trust Fund money, if not spent there, it does not buy anything else. It stays in the trust fund.
I used to live in Tok.
Part of the problem is Don Young's extreme arrogance when questioned on the matter.
It's hard to take his claims seriously given his pro-pork credentials.
OK put up a toll bridge.
what you call Don Young's arrogance, is exactly what keeps him getting elected again and again. He has stuffed animals in his Washington D.C. office, he says some of the stupidest things I've ever heard, and yet he represents the majority of Alaskans pretty well!
What's the matter, you drop out of 6th grade and can't read?
The money for these projects was collected for these projects out of GAS TAX. We already had the toll. Its been collected for 40 years.
If you lived here for any length of time, and were not just yet anohter carpet bagger from down south, you would remember the quote:
Before you accuse Alaskans of gold plating the plumbing, at least let us get out of the out house.
Did that quote come from Don Young? I've never heard it before, but it sounds like something he might say. Recently he told the critics of the bridge they could "kiss my ear." It resulted in the typically indignant response from a liberal in Juneau... http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/092305/let_20050923001.shtml
I understand that the moneys COME from a gas tax. I don't understand why they GO to Alaska. The author seems incredulous that California gets more than twice as much money as Alaska... Golly, could that be because California has FIFTY TIMES the population of Alaska? Per capita, Alaska gets more than twenty times as much funding as California.
By the way, I grew up on Long Island. The bridge to Staten Island costs NINE DOLLARS, and serves hundreds of thousands of people per day.
READ MEY LIPS: The money was collected FROM ALASKANS via the GAS TAX. Its simply coming home after sitting in the trust fund for 40 years.
Jay Hammond.
The sad fact is the Ketchikan bridge would serve less than forteen thousand (14,000) people. That's for a total official cost estimate (which, of course has been raised about 40% and is still low) of 315 MILLION. That's a principle of 22,500 per man, woman, and child to repay and at least DOUBLE that for interest, and there isn' ANY significant population within 300 miles and there is NO road access!! The closest road, as the article states, is a six-hour ferry ride away, and then you drive two days through a foreign country to get to the next nearest state!!
The scope of the project is roughly the same as the Golden Gate. In length and vertical clearance. The same ships visit Ketchikan and San Francisco. The difference is that the Golden Gate is a TOLL BRIDGE, was built by a local BOND ISSUE vote, and not ONE DIME of State or Federal funds was involved.
And finally, in 2004, the revenue from tolls on the G-Gate was 84 MILLION DOLLARS. How are less that 14,000 potential users of the Ketchikan bridge going to ante up even a fraction of the cost of MAINTAINENCE for this most outrageous fiasco.?
Three-Four Hundred Million Dollars for a bridge from an ISLAND of 14,000 to an ISLAND of 100 to ANOTHER ISLAND with a 30-year-old airport and 30 residents. And they're a six hour boat ride away from a two-day drive to the next nearest State of the Union.
Yeah it's just not fair that the largest State in the union gets any pork. There aren't enough people for Alaska to really count as a State. Bummer for y'all. I feel your pain, really.
BTW you can stuff that, "Alaskans haven't paid gas taxes enough to share a place shoulder to shoulder at the trough with California" cr@pola.
ANILCA granted the State of Alaska something like 50% of trans-Alaska pipeline fees, the Federal government never ever paid that agreeded upon %. That's thirty years of billions of gallons of oil stolen from Alaska by the Feds/congress. So you know where you can stick that red herring.
That sounds like the position of a cheap-skate. We could go into all kinds of comparisons about the size of Alaska (5+ Californias...)but maybe I can help you understand why we manage to get more than other states...
We have what you might call a uniquely POWERFUL Republican delegation (Two Senators and only one Representative) who are able to steer much-needed revenues to our mostly undeveloped state. It won't last forever, but it feels pretty good now. When the Eisenhauer Administration was considering Alaska as a new state one of their primary concerns was that everybody in elected office here were Democrats! That changed in the 1980's.
Did you buy the Staten Island bridge for $9 when the other kid tried to sell it to you?
Oh, yeah. I guess I have heard that before--when I lived in Juneau.
Those are all great reasons to build it! We think big in Alaska...
Scuze me? Alaska Airlines carries 20 times that into and out of Ketchikan every year.
A cursory examination of demographic distribution of federal disbursements shows that per capita, Alaska is the leader in Government largess. (And there are three or four states with less population than Alaska.)
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