Alaska's Pork

Don Young has delivered a lot to Alaska as chair of the transportation committee, Alaskans must love him for this, but the rest of us have good reason to despise him. The New Republic explains.

the planned bridge connecting Anchorage, Alaska, with the sparsely populated section of land across the Knik Arm Channel will be anything but modest. Named in honor of the House Transportation Committee chairman who helped push the project through Congress as part of last week's transportation bill, the two-mile span will rival the Golden Gate Bridge in length, and the $229 million in federal funding approved for it is expected to be just the tip of the iceberg. The bill, in which Alaska received almost $1 billion in pork-barrel projects, also included $220 million for another huge bridge connecting the city of Ketchikan (population 8,000) with nearby Gravina Island (population 50).

$220 million for a bridge from Ketchikan to an island of 50 people? We could buy them all boats for a lot less than that. The unbelievable amount of pork Alaska gets is absolutely appalling. This is the kind of crap that gives pork a bad name.