Religions > Atheism > GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason)
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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Yang, AthD h.c, Kicking AWOLs Cocaine Snorting Ass" |
| Date: |
07 Sep 2005 09:57:23 AM |
| Object: |
GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
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Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 1.6 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -1891 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
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| User: "DH" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 12:57:48 PM |
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"Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's Cocaine Snorting *****"
<eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote in message
news:pnuth197csvtiijpbkpj1chqro9oni4sr7@4ax.com...
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
That's entirely untrue! There must be at least 50 people on that island and
it's only $250 million (read about this one elsewhere).
Let's see...
$250 million divided by 50 people = $5 million per person.
If every one of them uses this bridge every day for the next 40 years...
$9 million divided by (365 days per year * 40 years) = $342 per day.
And at two trips per day - that's over and back - just $171 per trip.
Actually, at $342 per day per resident, it might be much more cost-effective
to send each of the island's residents on a 40 year vacation to Disneyworld.
They couldn't stay in the top on-property hotel but a nearby suites hotel
could probably be obtained for $100/day. Let's assume we can do
double-occupancy, so it's just $50 per person per day. Park tickets
something like $50/day each (although if Disneyworld offers annual passes,
I'm sure we can do much, much better than this). If we give them a meal
allowance of $100/day, we'd be saving $142 per person per day or a project
savings of something like $100 million.
Somebody should go ask the island residents which they prefer.
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka
Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 1.6 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and
counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -1891 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
.
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 02:37:04 PM |
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"DH" <dh@stargate.com> wrote
That's entirely untrue! There must be at least 50 people on
that island and it's only $250 million (read about this one
elsewhere).
Careful. You're talking about the fed's share. The maximum
contribution to such a project that the feds will make is 80%.
Or at least that's what the max. used to be.
I believe in this case the federal; contribution amounts to
about 50% of the total cost.
So, yes, I do believe the total price tag on the bridge is
something like $500 million, with approximately 50% of
the cost taken up by the feds.
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| User: "Al Smith" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 07:20:49 PM |
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DH wrote:
"Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's Cocaine Snorting *****"
<eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote in message
news:pnuth197csvtiijpbkpj1chqro9oni4sr7@4ax.com...
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
That's entirely untrue! There must be at least 50 people on that island and
it's only $250 million (read about this one elsewhere).
Let's see...
$250 million divided by 50 people = $5 million per person.
To be fair, I'll be using the bridge when I go fishing. And I know
another guy who will be using the bridge a couple times a year. The
honest answer is the bridge isn't there to benefit only those 50.
However, since Ketchikan is land-locked, not many people from out of
town will be using the bridge either with their own cars.
If every one of them uses this bridge every day for the next 40 years...
$9 million divided by (365 days per year * 40 years) = $342 per day.
And at two trips per day - that's over and back - just $171 per trip.
I will guess there will be 250 people crossing a day, airport workers,
tourists, locals, etc. - still not very good, but much better than
Seattle's Sound Transit's Sounder which actually does costs over $62K
per rider per year.
Actually, at $342 per day per resident, it might be much more cost-effective
to send each of the island's residents on a 40 year vacation to Disneyworld.
They couldn't stay in the top on-property hotel but a nearby suites hotel
could probably be obtained for $100/day.
I rented a house in kissimmee for $100/night. Had a pool and a laundry
room which was nice. It was much better staying there than the Disney
Sports.
I'm sure that some of those 50 island residents were family members.
They could pool their money and stay at The Regatta Club.
Let's assume we can do
double-occupancy, so it's just $50 per person per day. Park tickets
something like $50/day each
It's over $60 for an adult.
(although if Disneyworld offers annual passes,
I'm sure we can do much, much better than this). If we give them a meal
allowance of $100/day, we'd be saving $142 per person per day or a project
savings of something like $100 million.
Somebody should go ask the island residents which they prefer.
I think people would gripe louder about a Disney freebie than the
bridge.
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| User: "DH" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
08 Sep 2005 08:47:29 AM |
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"Al Smith" <caddyshack_al@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1126138849.231093.181730@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
DH wrote:
"Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's Cocaine Snorting *****"
<eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote in message
news:pnuth197csvtiijpbkpj1chqro9oni4sr7@4ax.com...
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
That's entirely untrue! There must be at least 50 people on that island
and
it's only $250 million (read about this one elsewhere).
Let's see...
$250 million divided by 50 people = $5 million per person.
To be fair, I'll be using the bridge when I go fishing. And I know
another guy who will be using the bridge a couple times a year. The
honest answer is the bridge isn't there to benefit only those 50.
However, since Ketchikan is land-locked, not many people from out of
town will be using the bridge either with their own cars.
Can the tourists use the train that carries cars? I'm wondering if cars
brought in will hurt the local economy in the short term. I would imagine
that some of the local residents make some money ferrying or guiding the
out-of-towners around.
[snip]
If every one of them uses this bridge every day for the next 40 years...
$9 million divided by (365 days per year * 40 years) = $342 per day.
And at two trips per day - that's over and back - just $171 per trip.
I will guess there will be 250 people crossing a day, airport workers,
tourists, locals, etc. - still not very good, but much better than
Seattle's Sound Transit's Sounder which actually does costs over $62K
per rider per year.
So, we're actually looking at - $300 per trip or so? Yeah, that's bad.
However, to some extent, these projects can be justified in terms of
economic development. In the Seattle area, this might make some sense.
There might also be strategic goals of reducing congestion or reducing
dependence on fossil fuel. That also makes some sense in a city like
Seattle.
But when will we run out of places in Alaska that can be 'developed' cheaper
than this? There's an awful lot of Alaska up there; I'm aware of no
projected shortage.
Maybe the key thing we need to find out is, which of the key
Congresscritter's friends (*)
owns property on the island?
(*) - I believe this was Congressman Don Young's (R-Alaska) project and
fault. I don't have time to look up the details right now.
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| User: "torresD" |
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| Title: PROOF THAT LIBERALS ARE HUGE FUN TO LAUGH AT ==> GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 12:13:11 PM |
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On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 07:57:23 -0700, "Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's
Cocaine Snorting *****" <eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote:
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 1.6 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -1891 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
.
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| User: "DH" |
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| Title: Re: PROOF THAT LIBERALS ARE HUGE FUN TO LAUGH AT ==> GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 01:16:45 PM |
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"torresD" <torresd@N0SPAM.D0RIS.0RG> wrote in message
news:3t7uh19h2n4tl1r1p4ikj1h1ibmdvprhkh@4ax.com...
On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 07:57:23 -0700, "Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's
Cocaine Snorting *****" <eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote:
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka
Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 1.6 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and
counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -1891 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
Wow! I'm sure the liberals here feel sooo put down!
Here's the deal: Bush doesn't even have the minimal stones necessary to stop
a project that's 100% certifiably stupid. He's dug a $400 Billion hole this
year in similar fashion. That's leadership inaction.
No, there's no typo there.
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| User: "The Secretary of HomIntern" |
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| Title: Re: PROOF THAT LIBERALS ARE HUGE FUN TO LAUGH AT ==> GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 11:08:35 PM |
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I was busily flonking away in alt.politics.homosexuality, when The Goddess
Eris Herself suddenly made me reply to torresD:
On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 07:57:23 -0700, "Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's
Cocaine Snorting *****" wrote:
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
D, you're not even remotely in touch with reality, are you? A
half-billion-dollar bridge serving less than a hundred people in Alaska is
more important than keeping up the New Orleans levees? Nice sense of
priorities.
--
___________________________________________________________________________
Hail Eris! "The personal _is_ political."
Bent Depraved N. Deviant *****-Smoker, Esq., Superfaggot
"Stupidity excuses nothing. It's only a reason...." -- Phxbrd
Economic Left/Right: -7.63 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.38
"The whining has just begun." -- John Wentzky
Killfiled by: directory; Anim8rfsk
"It's not nice to misrepresent Mother Nature."
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| User: "Scott Richter" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 11:27:58 AM |
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Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's Cocaine Snorting *****
<eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote:
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
Come on, it was only $223 million, not $450 million. And it serves 50
people.
So, what is all the fuss about? After all, I doubt any of those 50
people are poor and black...
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 02:32:37 PM |
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"Scott Richter" <scottrichter422@yahoo.com> wrote
Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's Cocaine Snorting ***** wrote:
A bridge serving no one in Alaska.
Come on, it was only $223 million, not $450 million. And it
serves 50 people.
Almost. It was actually two bridges, one to be named after the
committee chairman who pushed the pork through. The federal
government's share for the two bridges tops $400 million.
So, what is all the fuss about? After all, I doubt any of those 50
people are poor and black...
The total price tag is literally enough money to buy every resident
on the Island their own private jet.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: GOP Cronyism: $450 Million for a Bridge in Alaska, $0 For Levee in New Orleans (GOP The Party of Treason) |
07 Sep 2005 07:47:39 PM |
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An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of
the Welfare State
Robert Tracinski
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure
out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them,
because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is
going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if
you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just
a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you
bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate
refugees to temporary shelters; you sendengineers to stop the flooding
and rebuild the city's infrastructure.
For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the
heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work
and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being
taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have
to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if
they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself
included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind,
and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by
federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane
Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television
channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not
happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four
decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be
confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave
in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved
in other emergencies.
That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that
this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what
we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion.
They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously
organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in
America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own
initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care
of us.
I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town
whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to
get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing
cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous
response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a
description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists,
knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets;
and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen
poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and
gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened
Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with
shoot-to-kill orders.
"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,'
she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These
troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do
so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this
article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests,
riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a
rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling
at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for
an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs
to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing
the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes
people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super
Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing
further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying
to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a
sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox
News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She
studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is
located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert
Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in
America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for
uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since,
mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a
whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the
nformational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news
channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the
residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane,
and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the
city's public housing projects.
Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports
from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating
all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of
them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two
populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to
live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when
the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of
people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state,
people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and
self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on
whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of
wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of
the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of
the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary.
But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city
officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and
patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly
evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In
fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush,
for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New
Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan.
The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and
Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American
"individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos
was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of
the welfare state.
What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is
normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to
pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by
fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the
difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the
government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a
disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about
saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own
anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their
businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried
about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But
living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains
and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral
ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no
one is reporting.
******************************************************
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