Senator Byrd admits that he put a secret hold on S. 2590. (Via InstaPundit)
And read this week’s Lexingon column in The Economist:
Alaskan licence-plates may growl that this is the “The Last Frontier”, but urban areas—where four-fifths of Alaskans live—are amply stocked with espresso bars, broadband connections and all the comforts of modernity. Alaskans are, on average, slightly richer than Americans who live in the “lower 48” states. Yet they are wrapped in a thick mink coat of subsidies.
Federal spending supports a third of all Alaskan jobs, according to the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. Alaska’s representatives in Washington, DC have a hard-earned reputation for piping federal dollars back home. A proposed $229m “Bridge to Nowhere”, connecting the town of Ketchikan to an airport on an island with a population of 50, is the most notorious boondoggle. But the state is paved with pork—from its half-empty high-speed ferries to the $500,000 that the federally-funded Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board gave to Alaska Airlines to paint a giant king salmon on one of its aeroplanes. Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog, calculates that Alaska guzzles more pork per head than any other state.
Pretty appalling.