The Best Christmas Pork is in Alaska
by Marvin Wolf, Esq.

Looking for Pork? Try Alaska. Congress loves to spend your money, and in Congress, when it comes to pork, Jimmy Dean has nothing on Alaskan Rep.Don Young.

So far, Alaska has received three times the amount of Homeland Security funds per resident than did New York. In fact, Alaska has an excess $2 million dollars in homeland security funds it can’t figure out how to spend. Homeland Security won’t let them buy a plane with the money, so they’re back to the drawing board figuring out what to do with money they don’t need but don’t want anyone else to have.

One Alaskan pork-barrel project, labeled the “Bridge to Nowhere” was just stripped of its funding. Originally, the bill planned to build two bridges in Alaska at a cost of one half billion dollars. One bridge would have cost $230 million and connected the Alaskan mainland with a tiny island called Gravina Island. The population of Gravina Island? Fifty people. That’s comes out to a transportation subsidiary of $4,600,000 per person. Don’t you wish New Jersey was as friendly to its citizens? Imagine what New Jersey could do with an extra half billion. Imagine what you could do with an extra $4,600,000.

Did I mention that Don Young chairs the transportation committee?

Did I mention that one of the bridges was to be named after Don Young?

Anyway, the Congressional funding for the bridges is now gone.

Except for one catch.

Did I mention that Congress, in its wisdom, decided that Alaska gets to keep $454 million and spend it on any project it chooses?.

Hmmm. Think maybe they’ll build a bridge? Or two?

Marvin Wolf is a Newark attorney who specializes in consumer and bankruptcy law, real estate transactions and immigration. He practices in New Jersey and New York, and is admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, the Union, Essex and Middlesex County bar associations and has served as a volunteer consumer case arbitrator for the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York. This article is intended to convey general legal information and should not be considered legal advice.