[IP] The Bridge to Nowhere Lives!
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 11, 2006 4:43:54 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Bridge to Nowhere Lives!
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note: This item comes from friend John McMullen. DLH]
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 10, 2006 4:58:28 PM PDT
To: "johnmac's living room" <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: USA Talk List <USAtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dewayne Hendricks
<dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Bridge to Nowhere Lives!
Thanks to Jim Connors -- I thought that this ****en boondoggle had died
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Odensedk@xxxxxxx
To: johnmac@xxxxxxx
Subject: Bridge to Nowhere
If it's fair to say, I think you were a bit appalled when I mentioned
that the multi-million dollar, infamously irresponsible Alaskan
"Bridge to Nowhere" did not in fact go away.
As confirmation, William Safire's column in the NY Times Magazine
today reminds us that it was to have connected the megapolis of
Ketchikan (population less than 8,000) with Gravina Island
(population less than 50) for no seeming reason other than political
pork. Although the measure ostensibly was squelched by front-page
publicity, Safire confirms my recollection that the appropriation was
reinserted, without directing where it must be spent. The bridge was,
or is being, built.
Alaska is a state that has no income tax and annually distributes a
multi-thousand dollar check to each of its residents as oil income
largess.
This is a bi-partisan thing. If you travel through West Virginia, You
can't possibly avoid seeing a Robert Byrd Throughway, Bridge,
Municipal Building, One-Way Street or Barbeque Pit.
-------------------------------
Safire's Column -- <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/
08wwln_safire.html?
ex=1317960000&en=15991fbe1c880ada&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>
On Language
Bridge to Nowhere
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Keith Ashdown was a few beers into a night at the Hawk n Dove, wrote
Tory Newmyer in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, when he came up
with the phrase that sparked a national debate over Congressional
spending. Reaching for some way to get people worked up about
earmarks directing taxes collected by the federal government into
obscure local construction projects, the lobbyist for the
unassailably named Taxpayers for Common Sense was struck by what he
recalled was a moment of sheer focus.
He came up with a moniker for a proposed costly bridge to a sparsely
populated island in Alaska. At first, no reaction; but three years
later, the atmosphere became charged with scandals of political
influence-peddling, and The Washington Post reported that the Bridge
to Nowhere became a national symbol of porkmania.
Ashdowns Bridge to Nowhere was the phrase that launched a thousand
editorials. On the left, Salon noted with scorn that Alaskas Gravina
Island (population less than 50) will soon be connected to the
megalopolis of Ketchikan (pop. 8,000) by a bridge nearly as long as
the Golden Gate. On the right, the Heritage Foundation denounced the
planned span to the Ketchikan International Airport as an object of
national ridicule and a symbol of fiscal irresponsibility.
Did Ashdowns sheer focus lead to a shiny coinage? No; a bridge to
nowhere was not only the title of a 1986 movie about kids finding a
mysterious hermit but was also in minor headlines in The New York
Times in 1981 and 2000. It is the unofficial name of the concrete-and-
steel span connecting Middle and Lower Hooper Island in Chesapeake
Bay, Md. In a 1960 feature in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mel
Seidenberg wrote of the Fort Duquesne Bridge that calling it a bridge
to nowhere may be cutting the truth a bit short, since drivers were
likely to wind up on some obscure back street of the lower North
Side. Chris Potter of the Pittsburgh City Paper reports today that
the bridge certainly gets used a lot. Steelers fans use it on game
days; Heinz Field is nearby.
Opponents of vital infrastructure projects have used this term to
describe other bridges, the press aide to Senator Ted Stevens of
Alaska informs me. These include Louisianas sunshine bridge across
the Mississippi, originally hooted at as the bridge to nowhere, as
well as the Astoria-Megler Bridge over the Columbia River in Oregon,
which like the proposed Gravina Island span replaced a ferryboat
and is now known as the Bridge to the World.
The feisty Stevens, a longtime Republican leader and stalwart on
mental-health appropriations, threatened to quit the Senate if his
state was stripped of aid to this and another bridge to spur
development. A compromise was reached to send the money to Alaska for
local decision making, but as testimony to an apt tropes power to
marshal bipartisan media ridicule without earmarks directing where
it must be spent.
I can empathize with the lobbyist Ashdown in the face of all the
antedatings of his coinage. Only last month, in a fit of lexical
triumphalism, I gleefully claimed to have minted e-maelstrom to mean
a storm of e-mails only to be brought low by the Gotcha! Gangs
pajama-top patrol citing five previous usages and going nyah-nyah.
[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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