SARAH VINDICATED once again- Obama lies
Find a Conversation
| Sun, 09-14-2008 - 11:34pm |
CCAGW: BRIDGING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP ON THE “BRIDGE TO NOWHEREâ€
(Washington, D.C.) - The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today released a backgrounder on congressional funding for the bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island in Alaska, better known as the “Bridge to Nowhere.†The material addresses some of the questions raised about the history of the bridge and its ultimate demise.
“There has been much debate and even more speculation about how funds for the Bridge to Nowhere were first provided, Congress’s role in changing the nature of the funding, and the various options the state of Alaska had to build the bridge,†said CCAGW President Tom Schatz. “Many in the media and the public are providing an opinion when they should be providing the facts. We intend to continually update this document on our website as additional verifiable information becomes available.â€
The Bridge to Nowhere was first funded in August 2005 through the 2005 SAFETEA-LU Act through a $223 million earmark inserted by then-House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska). In October, 2005, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) offered an amendment to the fiscal 2006 Transportation Appropriations Act to transfer $75 million in funding for the Bridge to Nowhere, along with money for the Knik Arm Bridge in Alaska, to support the rebuilding of the Twin Spans Bridge in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. His amendment was defeated by a vote of 15-82. Senators Biden (D-Del.) and Obama (D-Ill.) voted against the amendment; Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) was not present for the vote.
In November, 2005, Congress included language in the final version of the fiscal 2006 Transportation Appropriations Act that allowed the state of Alaska to either spend money on the two bridges or on other surface transportation projects. In October, 2006, Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski included $91 million for the Gravina Island Bridge in his budget submission for fiscal year 2007. As a candidate for governor, Sarah Palin expressed a mixture of support and doubt about the bridge, particularly about how the project would be funded. As governor, she submitted her budget on January 17, 2007 without any money for the bridge. On July 17, 2007, the Associated Press reported that “The state of Alaska on Friday officially abandoned the ‘bridge to nowhere’ project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending.†Governor Palin said in a statement that “Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer.â€
“Media reports that Congress killed the Bridge to Nowhere are not accurate,†said Schatz. “The 2006 transportation appropriations bill allowed Alaska to decide whether or not to move forward. Governor Murkowski said yes; Governor Palin said no. Any discussion about the project should begin with facts.â€
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
http://councilfor.cagw.org/site/News2?abbr=CCAGW_&page=NewsArticle&id=11594
Sarah is vindicated once again by the non-partisan group Citizens Against Goverment Waste which states she killed the Bridge to Nowhere not Congress.

Pages
They didn't pull the funding. They removed the earmark, so the had the choice of whether or not to spend the money on the bridge. She said, "Thanks" for the money, but "No Thanks" to the bridge and spent the money on other infrastructure that was not so wasteful.
Mark, I would like to apologize to you. Your posts have been frustrating to me because I couldn't imagine why you were delivering (what I perceived to be) such relentless, nonsensical blind partisan attacks. Now I am beginning to believe that you are sincere, but just don't really understand how this system works.
That is like, depressing to the max dude...
What matters is all the choice we have is Obama or McCain.
~mark~
I'm sure they do. But you've GOT to be JOKING, right? Have a look at this article, from USA Today in March of this year:
Now, a little further down in the article, we find (since they're comparing Alaska to - oddly - Arizona) the following sentence: "The state (Arizona) receives more federal funding than state taxpayers put in, according to the Northeast-Midwest Institute, which found that Arizona got $1.19 for every dollar taxpayers spent in 2005." That means that even in pork-rejecting Arizona, the citizens still got back $1.19 for in federal funds for every buck they paid out in taxes to the feds in the same year.
Now let's look at Alaska for the same year. With a population of about 700,000, Alaska received a total of $506.34 per capita. The USA Today article does not specify how much residents of Alaska OR Arizona paid in total federal taxes for that year, but they DID provide both the per-capita figure of federal funds received for both states, and the taxes-collected-to-federal funds received ratio for Arizona. From that, we ought to be able to get a good idea of whether residents of Alaska had a higher ratio of taxes-collected-to-federal funds received than Arizona - and how MUCH of one.
If Arizona has 6.16 million people (which it does) and received $1.19 in federal "earmark" funds for every dollar they spent in taxes, then - using the figure the article cites of $18.70 per capita in funds received -Arizonans paid $15.71 per capita in taxes to the feds. Alaska, with a population of 700,000 and a per-capita take of $506.34 in federal funds, would EITHER have had to pay $425 per capita in taxes - more than 27 times the figure in Arizona, OR they got a whole lot more - dozens of times, in fact - the "return" on their "investment" that the Arizonans did, if you assume that the per-capita tax rate wasn't THAT much different between the two states.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that it's unlikely that Alaskans paid more than 27 TIMES per capita in taxes what Arizonans paid, which means that the latter figure - that Alaskans got many times more back per capita from the feds in the form of "earmarks" than Arizonans did is probably much more likely to be accurate, given the figures. I don't know if you consider Arizona's $1.19 back for every dollar sent in taxes to be fair or not, but I sure think it beats a traditional savings account. And if someone else (or another whole STATE, in this case) is getting a better rate-of-return by a factor of a couple dozen TIMES....then I'd say they've got no right to complain on the "hey, we pay taxes TOO" front.
Next (silly) question, please!
Lump lingered last in line for brains
And the ones she got were sort of rotten and insane
Small thing's so sad that birds could land
Is Lump fast asleep or rocking out with the band?
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has sturck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging
Horse poop.
In 2004, they tried to sell us the same, warmed-over manure about John Kerry - all of a sudden, a "report" surfaced, "proving" that Kerry was "the most liberal Senator." This year - strangely, since Kerry's still in the Senate - OBAMA is now somehow "the most liberal Senator," who's a "far-left radical."
It's just not true; it wasn't true then, and for anyone who isn't asleep, the fact that "the most liberal senator" keeps shifting every four years to just magically match whoever the Democrats nominate for President, ought to demonstrate quite clearly that this is simple, manipulative GOP bunk. Don't buy it.
...Blowin' down the back roads, headin' south
...Blowin' every time you move your mouth
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has sturck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging
No, not a single Democrat ever received money directly from Jack Abramoff. Not one.
What you have is a list of Democrats who ever took any money from any CLIENT of Abramoff's - and the lists I've seen have turned out to include having taken money from these clients BEFORE they even worked with Abramoff. Washington's not that big a place. People lobby. But guilt-by-association, by trying to link Democrats to Abramoff by suggesting that having ever - at any time - taken money from anyone who ALSO worked at some point with Abramoff - is ridiculous.
Not surprising, but ridiculous.
If you follow the link to the "NewsBusters" site, what you'll find is that it's nothing more than a copy-and-paste from a list generated.....by the NRSC: the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And it's not like THEY would have any interest in trying to make people believe that Democrats are "just as guilty" as Republicans of dealing with Abramoff.
Get this: Jack Abramoff is a former head of the College Republicans. He was an integral player in Tom DeLay's K-street machine which rewarded ONLY Republicans with lobbying gigs, etc. Abramoff was/is a partisan Republican. He virtually never dealt with Democrats unless he absolutely had to, because he wanted "his team" to prosper, and to win. That's why the list is so lopsidedly represented by Republicans. Name me ONE Democrat who's even been INDICTED in the Abramoff scandals. Can't? Oh, yeah....that'd be BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY.
Oh, and? That list which NewsBusters uncritically copies-and-pastes from the NRSC's propaganda paper on Abramoff? The link from NewsBusters to it is mysteriously broken now. Seems the NRSC might just have had to remove it. Heh.
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has sturck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging
And yet that's still not what she's saying...
She said, "Thanks" for the money, but "No Thanks" to the bridge and spent the money on other infrastructure that was not so wasteful.As a matter of fact, she's going out of her way to avoid saying that because it would ruin the image she's trying to conjure up.
No apology necessary btw.
I didn't say these Democrats did anything wrong, I don't know if they did, but they were associated with Abramoff, WHILE they were accepting these donations. Guilt by association? Perhaps. Then why is it not also "ridiculous" to blame these organizations simply by dropping the name Abramoff? Is that not guilt by association, too? None of them were ever convicted of anything. I see a double standard, but, hey - that's not new.
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has sturck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging
She isn't going out of her way to avoid anything. In fact Charles Gibson asked her about it. She didn't back down at all. Her answers were strong. When the details are revealed she only looks better, not worse.
You know, I think that Democrats seem to always think their voters are dumber than they actually are, and Republicans seem to always think their voters are smarter than they actually are. They both misjudge the intelligence and awareness of the voters.
I think Sarah Palin should do more and more interviews so that the public can hear all the details and decide. I do think that John McCain should have a film crew with him for every one of them, though, so that his campaign can correct the selective editing of the interviews.
Pages