Before 9/11? Again that airport was put on Gravina Island in the 70s with promise of construction of a bridge. How much before 9-11 do you want to get? 9-11 didnt hinder government spending in the slightest, especially by the GOP.
My point was that the bridge WASN'T built Bunz, and I suspect you know that, but you're playing ignorant so that you don't have to deal with the realities of my argument.
Oh, and one other thing, you can take your snide, and totally disingenuous little shot at the GOP and shove it sideways up your fourth point of contact! Where's your indigination at the DNC controlled Congress and THEIR out of control spending before the "class of '95"? The fact is that the Dim-O-Craps controlled Congress (with the exception of the 6 years between '81 and '87 when the Republicans held the Senate) from 1955 until 1995! So if you really want to try to play your silly-assed little partisan politics game, you'd better be sure you have your facts in order, or I'm going to delight in embarassing you all over the place.
Alaska certainly takes its fair share of BS from the lower 48 about spending here. This is without the Governor running for VP, and the Sr. Senator under indictment.
Of course it does, because most people only look at the population of the State and the amount of money going TO the State, instead of looking at what they're simply getting back as a proportion of what Alaska is contributing TO the general fund.
You obviously havent spent much time in Ketch. There is no land to put an airport on the Ketchikan side. It is surrounded my mountains.
I've only been there twice, but the one thing I immediately noticed is how incredibly STUPID it was to put the airport where it is. Even on the flight in, you can clearly see that the land about a mile to the north of Herring Cove (bearing 035 degrees), is perfect for an airport as it's no more hilly than it's current site was before it was developed. Please try to remember Bunz, I'm an Engineer, this is my business, and these are things that I notice immediately.
Hindsight of course is 20/20, but it is worth pointing out that the area you are talking about falls within Tongass Natl Forest and IIRC is apart of Misty Fjords Natl Monument. My point in mentioning this is that I am sure that method was researched at the time, and for any number of reasons it was decided against. Part of the reasonsing is the land designation surrounding Ketchikan.
As I'm sure you're aware, that entire area, from Ketch in the south, all the way to Yakutat in the north, (with the exception of Glaciar Bay NP) including Juno itself, falls within the Tongass. The reason they put the airport where they did was
proximity to Ketch, and with the understanding that the bridge would be built, and that's why I DO have an objection. Building a bridge, across a very busy shipping channel, to the airport is a rediculously expensive undertaking, when simply moving the airport to the site I mentioned would have precluded any need for a bridge, and only required the expansion of Tongass Hwy. along the coast to the airport site.
Frankly, it would make FAR more sense, and be far more cost effective to build a tunnel under the channel instead of a bridge over it. A twin tube tunnel of two lanes each, of the same type in my home town, could be constructed (and this is a SWAG without having the specifics of the channel itself) could probably be build for roughly half the cost of the bridge, if not less, and a toll system could be emplaced over the next 30 years to recover the cost, operations and maintainance of the tunnels. (feel free to share this idea with your State DOT, and you can even take all the credit)
HA, we have the money. We can build 100 of them out of pocket. It is the political will power to do so. Its a shame this whole fiasco has come to this, but good intentions 30 years ago make for broken promises and headaches today.
Oh really, and where is all of this money you say that the State has to build the bridge? In the general fund? Or are you talking about in the Permanant Fund? If you're talking about the Permanant fund, then you should be well aware of the reasons why that money can't be used for the bridge, unless of course you're willing to forego that nice check that YOU get from the fund EVERY YEAR.
Aside from that, the fact remains that Governor Palin had NOTHING to do with the decision to kill the bridge project, that decision was made before she even ran for Governor, and the fact that she finally had to acknowledge the futility of attempting to continue in no way makes her a "flip-flopper".
