What the hell is up with this "Bridge to Nowhere"

[Fear_Itself]

@Chefguy

Ah, but are you aware that there is a proposal in the works to build a road from Juneau to Skagway?

Don’t get me started! As boondoggles go, this one tops them all. It looks like they cannot build the road all the way to Skagway, so it will leave an 18 mile gap that still must be traversed by ferry.

A $300 million road proposal connecting Juneau with the continental highway system will now dead-end 18 miles short of Skagway because the original route would have cut through a national historic landmark.

The National Park Service says the state’s proposed 68-mile road would have gone through part of the Skagway and White Pass National Historic Landmark before reaching Skagway and linking with the highway into Canada. After a round of discussions between the Park Service and federal and state transportation officials, the Federal Highway Administration decided federal money could not be spent on a road to Skagway if a feasible alternative exists.

What the hell is the point of that?

[Enderw24]

This article was on the front page of the Kansas City Star a few weeks ago. Justified or not, I’ve never seen such a blatant attempt at editorializing from a mainstream paper’s news section in my life.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12330596.htm

[slaphead]

Japan. Specifically the LDP and its infamous relationship with special interests (particuarly construction) that left Japan dotted with vastly expensive white elephants and eventually did a lot to strangle the japanese economic miracle. Hugely expensive bridges to remote islands that only carried a few dozen cars a day were a particular favourite.

[BrainGlutton]

@slaphead

Japan. Specifically the LDP and its infamous relationship with special interests (particuarly construction) that left Japan dotted with vastly expensive white elephants and eventually did a lot to strangle the japanese economic miracle. Hugely expensive bridges to remote islands that only carried a few dozen cars a day were a particular favourite.

What, the same LDP that just got returned to power in a landslide? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_general_election%2C_2005

[slaphead]

@BrainGlutton

What, the same LDP that just got returned to power in a landslide? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_general_election%2C_2005

Yep. That would be the one. Arguments about party reform notwithstanding, the LDP is a great example of how pork-barrel politics and gerrymandering can lead to electoral success in the midst of economic ruin. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about US politics

[Steve_MB]

@Sam Stone

So what happens is that the budget gets put together, then members of congress start tacking on all their little pet projects. Then the budget goes into committee, and horse-trading starts in which powerful committee members haggle over which earmarks stay and which ones go. Eventually, the budget comes out of committee, and the President has to sign the whole thing or reject it. So the President is somewhat powerless to stop this kind of pork, unless he’s willing to hold up the entire budget. Reagan did that to make a point, and he got absolutely slammed by Democrats, some Republicans, and the media, for ‘shutting down government’.

So the earmarks continue. ‘Reform’ politicians come along regularly, promising to trim waste, fraud and abuse. Then they get attacked by their own constituents for not bringing home the swag, or in the next election their opponents run on a platform of, “vote for me and I’ll be better for our state than this guy, who couldn’t even get our bridge to nowhere built”, and the guy gets thrown out of office. In the meantime, if he makes too much noise on Capital Hill he might find that he can’t get any juicy committee appointments and is shut out of the process entirely.

The whole system is corrupt. It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing. But to be fair, the Republicans at this time need to take the brunt of the criticism, since they’ve held all three branches of government for quite a while, and because they claim to be the party of smaller government. So throw the bums out.

In addition, the problem is exacerbated by the concentration of benefits and the diffusion of costs – a few people are highly motivated to fight for their bit of pork, but nobody is highly motivated to fight to save a few dollars per taxpayer by killing it.

Maybe we should set up a system of distributing the savings for pork trimming by national lottery – people might be more interested in a chance of winning $10,000 than a certainty of saving $10.