Annals of McCain - Palin, VII: helping hunters

Good news. Governor Palin's "road to nowhere" has just opened and now you can take it there. If that's your destination:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's transportation department has completed a $25 million gravel road leading to the site of a bridge that Palin, as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, now boasts that she stopped, so as to save taxpayers money. The road was built with federal tax dollars.

Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein said the 3.2-mile road will be useful for road races, hunters and possibly future development. But with no bridge to serve it, that's probably about it.

"I think it will be good for recreational things like a 5K and a 10K," Weinstein said. "And instead of people walking through brush, it may be used for hunting in the area." (AP)

I guess she forgot to say "no thanks" for the $25 million road. At least now I'd appreciate a thank you note, since I helped pay for it. In any event, it's surely a good investment. Now hunters won't have to walk through the brush. The ones that are walking and not flying, that is:

Governor Palin seems a lot like our current VP who "hunts" quail at tame quail farms. More fun than a barrel of fish.

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Yea, $25 million road to no bridge to nowhere... A research project I'd eventually like to do on several snake venom proteins which may make lead to novel pain killers would cost less than $3 million if I had to buy all new equipment... Instead of funding medical research, they spend that much money to build a road to a destination that requires a $300 million bridge before it's really useful? Pathetic. $25 million, that could fund one or two really good research projects or many more undergraduate research projects

If anyone reading this has never lived in a rural area you'd have no idea how valuable, aside from the stated reasons, that a road of this type can be.
Locals will undoubtably use it for reasons other than covered in the AP release:

Ketchikan, seven blocks wide and eight miles long, is Alaska's entry port for northbound cruise ships that bring more than 1 million visitors yearly.

It opens access to land development too revere. With all due credit noted in the article.
We are fastly becoming an over populated planet.

Jared is right and this is the difference between Fed money and the earmarks.

They looked at it this way and I explained it to Phila. Fed money has to be used for the intended project. So they WERE due the money for an improvement that went to the bridge to nowhere. But it also went down the main drag of town so that was an acceptable use of the money. You see it a lot in the South. You hit town and the center of the city has a four lane that runs down to two after about a mile. This one terminates at what was a part of the Alaska DOT plan for a road to the bridge. So now it goes down to the beach.

Seems she also kills what she aims at Revere and in this case not a road that they could use in Ketchikan. But it also hooks up to the roads to their cruise ship port and to the college. But 3.2 miles is now the official stretch that goes to nowhere.

Here is a link that shows the airport too.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=mozilla&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:…

By M. Randolph Kruger (not verified) on 22 Sep 2008 #permalink

With all due respect, Lea, I hardly think Alaska is going to be the next frontier of gentrification.

Every earmark benefits someone. Those millions could have gone to helping EVERYONE.

Where did I say gentrification abc? I didn't.

Maybe Lea is referring to Alaska being the promised land after Rapture.

No Goindy, I don't embrace that type of thinking.
Sorry to disappoint you.