The Alaskan Connection

(originally posted on 6/8/07)

There were many intersting articles in the Times today, but none taht I care to rant on at the moment. Yesterday there was a story about an Alaskan representative in the U.S. Congress diverting funds to feed developers' interests in south Florida in spite of warnings of probable environmental damage from the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife service, and the Federal Highway Administration. This particular Alaskan representative, Don Young, was famous a couple of cycles back for diverting $200 million to build a "bridge to nowhere" to service an island with a population of 80. The Florida project would extend Coconut Road in Ft. Myers to I-75 and add a Coconut Road exit, making the land on the road (1000 or so acres of which are owned by developer and Republican fund raiser Daniel Aranoff) very valuable. If you doubt that interstate exits raise land value, I invite you to look at the development of the University Parkway and Fruitville Road corridors in Sarasota over the past five years.

It stinks to high heaven that a representative who has no constituents in Lee County would stick an earmark like this into a transportation bill that he authored. Representative Connie Mack (of Lee County) hasn't done anything except congratulate Young and claim noninvolvement. I hate people who play "the game".