[AKcrab]

From Nick Jans - USA Today:
(The whole article is pretty long, i've taken some highlights.)

As you stand at the gas pump this summer, think of Alaska. No, not as a fantasy to escape the heat or the price of your latest fill-up. Instead, consider that each spin of the pump's meter means money slurping north, straight from your wallet.
...
It's a fact: For every dollar we Alaskans pay in at-the-pump gas taxes, we get $6.60 back, thanks to you generous, unwitting donors.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan watchdog group in Washington, that breaks down to $1,150 for every Alaskan in "earmark" funding for in-state projects alone, 25 times what the average American garners for his or her home state.

How could this be? Alaska is so rich that residents not only pay no state income tax, but we get individual yearly checks as our share of the oil wealth. Why should your gas taxes, which are supposed to fill potholes in your local interstate or repair your decaying bridges, end up so far from home?
...
Simple. We have Don Young. You don't.
...
As chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, our lone congressman has incredible clout in determining where federal funding (provided by your tax dollars) ends up.
...
• $223 million to build a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge, to connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the city airport on Gravina Island (population 50). Currently, the link is provided by a 10-minute ferry ride that has worked for years. This proposed project won Young a "Golden Fleece Award" from Taxpayers for Common Sense - an award he has told supporters he cherishes.

• $200 million for another "bridge to nowhere," which would lead from Anchorage, the state's largest city, to a rural port that has one tenant and a handful of homes. Total cost for the project has been estimated at upwards of $1.5 billion. Not even the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce wants it.

• $15 million to begin work on a 68-mile, $284 million access road to Juneau, the state capital, even though a majority of area residents have said they would prefer improving service in the existing ferry system instead. The proposed road would compromise so many ecologically sensitive areas that the Environmental Protection Agency, in an extremely unusual move, has stated its opposition to the project.
...
Paying homage to the senior Stevens' success, Young once told an Alaska audience, "I want to be a little oinker, myself."

The fact is, most legislators want to be oinkers. Their constituents expect them to use every shred of influence and power to direct every possible dollar of funding home, as if their political lives depend on it - which they do. Don Young isn't any different or worse; he's just better positioned.

Finally, the problem far transcends the boundaries of TEA-LU, the excesses of which are mere symptoms of a deeply flawed funding process in dire need of reform. Even funding for the war on terrorism, with national security at stake, is tainted by abuse and waste, as are armed services appropriations; congressmen fight with the same tooth-and-nail ardor over useless weapons systems, bases and facilities as they do over funding for bridges and bus stops.

The antiquated system of earmarking pork barrel projects based on seniority or clout is, in itself, a costly bridge to nowhere - one we can no longer afford. A fair formula for distributing federal funds is certainly within reach; all that would have been required to drastically cut and reform TEA-LU was a simple amendment to cull all earmarks. Despite a few modest rumblings, nothing was done. Unless action is taken in the final conference stage, it'll be up to the president to carry through his threat of a veto of this monument to waste and excess, sending it back to the House, back into Young's lap.

Focus down, and think about it next time you're standing at the gas pump, all you donors. That steady gurgle is the sound of your money draining away.

Why would the other Senators allow this kind of thing to happen? Why should one committee chairman have so much power?

Can the system be "fixed"?

[SVass]

Originally Posted by AKcrab

From Nick Jans - USA Today:
(The whole article is pretty long, i've taken some highlights.)

Why would the other Senators allow this kind of thing to happen? Why should one committee chairman have so much power?

Can the system be "fixed"?

He is a Republican and the Senate is controlled by Republicans. Vote for the democrats and he will no longer be in charge of the committee, so the pork will go to some other state. sam

[ThinkInsane]

Originally Posted by SVass

He is a Republican and the Senate is controlled by Republicans. Vote for the democrats and he will no longer be in charge of the committee, so the pork will go to some other state. sam

So the answer to fixing the problem isn't to actually fix the problem, it's to make sure that Republicans aren't in office and allowing the Democrats to distribute this tax money for their own worthless and gratuitous projects? Wow, there's a novel solution.

[Millennium]

SVass, this guy has been working the pork barrel since before Republicans had control of the Senate. Simply kicking an ideology you hate out of power will not fix this issue, nor even mitigate it all that much.

[tie]

The Alaskan representatives are disgraceful. I don't know that any other congressmen are quite as corrupt, or quite so dedicated to pork. So kicking Republicans out of power will at least limit the influence of these two. Also, Bush and the other Republicans deserve blame for letting them get away with it. Who made Young chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee? Why hasn't Stevens been kicked off the Appropriations Committee? Blame the Republicans. And Bush has never used his veto.

• $223 million to build a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge, to connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the city airport on Gravina Island (population 50). Currently, the link is provided by a 10-minute ferry ride that has worked for years. This proposed project won Young a "Golden Fleece Award" from Taxpayers for Common Sense - an award he has told supporters he cherishes.

• $200 million for another "bridge to nowhere," which would lead from Anchorage, the state's largest city, to a rural port that has one tenant and a handful of homes. Total cost for the project has been estimated at upwards of $1.5 billion. Not even the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce wants it.

These bridges are simply throwing away our money.

And yet from ThinkInsane and Millennium we get the typical knee-jerk "it's nobody's fault" response. $700 million willingly thrown away by Bush and the Republican leadership, and you say it's nobody's fault?

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by tie

And yet from ThinkInsane and Millennium we get the typical knee-jerk "it's nobody's fault" response. $700 million willingly thrown away by Bush and the Republican leadership, and you say it's nobody's fault?

I'm not a republican, but what you are saying is just silly, and based on pure partisanship and hatred. There's bad apples, politicians and crooks on both sides.

As if things would be better if the liberal morons were in power.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by tie

And yet from ThinkInsane and Millennium we get the typical knee-jerk "it's nobody's fault" response. $700 million willingly thrown away by Bush and the Republican leadership, and you say it's nobody's fault?

Who the hell said it was nobody's fault? All they said was that voting out the Republicans wouldn't fix this problem. Which it wouldn't.

The designers of the system are at fault as are the politicians who take advantage of the flaws in the system. Those politicians are on both sides of the aisle, and both Democrats and Republicans have allowed this specific Congressman to do his thing.

Try and actually understand what you read before commenting on it.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by tie

And yet from ThinkInsane and Millennium we get the typical knee-jerk "it's nobody's fault" response. $700 million willingly thrown away by Bush and the Republican leadership, and you say it's nobody's fault?

When did I say it was nobody's fault? What I said was that this post focuses on one particular person, and only SVass himself is taking it to mean that the entire party is this way. Kicking an ideology he hates out of power won't fix anything, as long as this particular person is still in power. You need to go after him, and him specifically, or you're not going to make any difference in this situation.

Or is SVass trying to project this one person's actions onto the whole Republican Party? This wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of him, I suppose.

[ThinkInsane]

Originally Posted by tie

And yet from ThinkInsane and Millennium we get the typical knee-jerk "it's nobody's fault" response. $700 million willingly thrown away by Bush and the Republican leadership, and you say it's nobody's fault?

I said that? Could you show me where? I've never said that it's no ones fault. I said that voting out the Republicans wouldn’t fix this problem; it just means that it'll be a Democrat doing the same garbage. From what Sam wrote, it seems that he doesn't have a problem with it happening, as long as it's not a Republican doing it. It's a problem that needs to be fixed, and Sam's solution is no solution at all, it's just placing blame on one side for a practice that is willingly embraced by both.

My point was simply that this has gone on for ages, both parties are guilty of it, and voting out the Republicans isn't going to make it stop. Sam seems to think that voting out the Republicans is the answer to all this countries woes, which I happen to think is a rather naive attitude to take, since both Democrats and Republicans have been playing the pork game for as long as I've been in this country, and I'm sure for far longer than that. If anyone would care to show me that pork barrel spending is strictly a Republican phenomenon, please do, but be aware you're going to have a tough road to haul on that one.

It's funny that you accuse me of having a knee-jerk reaction, yet you fail to mention the post I was responding too, which seems far more knee-jerk than what I wrote. As a matter of fact, your response seemed a bit knee-jerkish as well.

[tie]

I strongly disagree with what Millennium is saying, and maybe shouldn't have included ThinkInsane's post. I don't live in Alaska, and can't do much about who they elect. I don't agree that you need to go after one person specifically and not focus any attention on the group he belongs to and which supports him. Republican or Democrat -- as ThinkInsane says -- it's ridiculous to pretend that Bush and the Republican leadership deserve no blame for acquiescing to tossing away hundreds of millions of dollars.

It's funny that you accuse me of having a knee-jerk reaction, yet you fail to mention the post I was responding too, which seems far more knee-jerk than what I wrote.

Give me a break, I'm not a policeman! Actually, I assumed Sam's post was a joke -- "so the pork will go to some other state" -- but I took your post to be serious.

Originally posted by nonhuman:
Who the hell said it was nobody's fault? All they said was that voting out the Republicans wouldn't fix this problem. Which it wouldn't.

The designers of the system are at fault as are the politicians who take advantage of the flaws in the system. Those politicians are on both sides of the aisle, and both Democrats and Republicans have allowed this specific Congressman to do his thing.

Again, I disagree. Perhaps the designers of the system are at fault. But also voters are at fault for not holding the leadership responsible. While Sam was maybe joking, I think he made a good point. If voters hold their leaders responsible for spending their money wisely, then the leaders, of either party, will be more responsible. If voters are complacent about this, as Millennium still seems to be suggesting we should be, then it will only get worse.

[SVass]

Originally Posted by Millennium

When did I say it was nobody's fault? What I said was that this post focuses on one particular person, and only SVass himself is taking it to mean that the entire party is this way. Kicking an ideology he hates out of power won't fix anything, as long as this particular person is still in power. You need to go after him, and him specifically, or you're not going to make any difference in this situation.

Or is SVass trying to project this one person's actions onto the whole Republican Party? This wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of him, I suppose.

Consider that certain parties killed 100,000 or so Iraqis to remove one person from power! Certain parties suggest spending 100 billion dollars to protect us against 19 fanatics who are dead. Certain parties demand cancelling protections against searches without warrants, jailing without a trial, and I am called extreme for merely suggesting that we ought to vote for someone else. The whole Republican party and quite a few democans (who want to stay on the public dole) are not worth saving until the next generation. Get rid of the ones we know are crooks. sam

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by tie

Again, I disagree. Perhaps the designers of the system are at fault. But also voters are at fault for not holding the leadership responsible. While Sam was maybe joking, I think he made a good point. If voters hold their leaders responsible for spending their money wisely, then the leaders, of either party, will be more responsible. If voters are complacent about this, as Millennium still seems to be suggesting we should be, then it will only get worse.

I should have been more clear about the designers. Yes they're partly at fault for creating a system that can be abused, but I don't mean to say that this somehow removes the blame for the people who actually abuse the system.

Other than that I'm in completely agreement with what you said here. It is the politicians that engage in pork barrel politics that are at fault and whom should be held responsible. It is up to the voters to let them know that we don't approve of this.

It is not by any means however a party issue, which I think was the main objection to the orignal statement that voting out the Republicans would fix this problem.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by tie

If voters are complacent about this, as Millennium still seems to be suggesting we should be, then it will only get worse.

It is not my intent to suggest that voters should be complacent. It is my intent that they focus on doing what really needs to happen if they want change, rather than these silly pipedreams of eradicating the Republican Party. Simply "booting the Republicans out of power" will not do anything, because pork-barrel spending predates their rise (in fact, IIRC the group from which you got your statistics was founded by Republicans). This does not, however, mean that nothing can be done. It means only that they need to put some real thought into their actions, and not get carried away by emotions and stereotypes.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by tie

I don't live in Alaska, and can't do much about who they elect.

99.9% of all Alaskans LOVE the pork. Why would we change our representation when they bring us the fat? The voters can't (or will never) fix this.

[AKcrab]

Yay! It gets even better!
Alaska gains strong voice in transportation bill committee

Washington, D.C. - Those who want money for new roads should turn to the new potential powerhouse: the Alaska congressional delegation.

Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young have been named to the committee that's supposed to hammer out a final highway and transportation bill in Congress that's worth hundreds of billions of dollars. With that development, Alaska gets direct voices in the negotiations over money, as the House of Representatives and Senate work out the differences between each chamber's highway and transportation measures.

On top of that, Congressman Young will be in charge of that committee, which will craft the final bill. Young has already produced a bill that's passed the House, which would provide hundreds of millions of dollars alone for a Knik Arm crossing and a Ketchikan bridge.

[tie]

Fun link: http://www.taxpayer.net/Transportati.../percapita.htm

Alaska is getting $1,151.48 per capita. Next highest state is Oregon, with $82.48. I think this is beyond your run-of-the-mill pork spending. This is Bush-never-vetos-anything, DeLay-is-a-crook pork spending.

Code:
State	Per Capita Earmarks
Alaska	$1,151.48
Oregon	$82.48
West Virginia	$78.52
Arkansas	$68.83
Minnesota	$61.52
Nevada	$59.30
Maine	$57.65
Iowa	$57.58
South Dakota	$56.04
Hawaii	$52.17
...
Rhode Island	$32.43
Wyoming	$32.40
Arizona	$27.74
Vermont	$26.28
Virginia	$25.75
Idaho	$24.73
Oklahoma	$24.34
New Hampshire	$19.42
Montana	$17.73
Delaware	$15.31