Seamus wrote:
> It's not the force of nature that GW is to be blamed, but rather in
> that the ACOE requested $240M for levee and flood control work, and
> the administration (and Congress) saw fit to budget $40M. Meanwhile
>
> " At $286.4 billion, the highway bill just passed by Congress is the
> most expensive public works legislation in US history. ... The bill
> funnels upward of $941 million to 119 earmarked projects in Alaska,
> including $223 million for a mile-long bridge linking an island with
> 50 residents to a town of 8,000. Another $231 million is earmarked
> for a new bridge in Anchorage, to be named -- this is specified in the
> legislation -- Don Young's Way."
>
> Half a billion for bridges in Alaska ? $40M to protect a major city ?
> You don't see the problem with this ?
>
> Never mind, GW taking his time to come off of vacation ....

I'm about to take a trip, too. I should feel bad about that, I suppose, but
I don't. WTF does this have to do with rescue efforts in a predicted but
nothing you can do to prevent it situation? An act of Congress (Congress,
you might recall, was originally the House of Burgess') takes months of
debate. A hurricane takes a matter of hours to figure out where it's going
and all the weather watching and warnings in the world can still only
vaguely predict where it was going. The legislation you cite was a long
time in the making, well before Katrina.

As for the highway bill, I really don't think much about Alaska but I was
once engaged to a man whose family was on an island in south Louisiana.
They didn't get a bridge to the mainland until 1973. Paddled a pirogue to
get to school. Hunted, fished, kitchen garden, wood stove, the whole
pioneer thing. So no, I don't object to some isolated folks in Alaska
getting a bridge. It will help them immensely

Jill