two woment at soccer

I was listening to two women at my granddaughter's soccer game this Saturday, they were talking about the current “crisis” in the mortgage industry, it seems one of them was a realtor. The non realtor asked ”how are people buying houses?” the other responded that people had to have good credit and had to actually make the down payment, that they aren’t letting the seller make the down payment anymore. I was amazed, this seemed ridiculous to the realtor that people would have to have good credit to buy a house, the nerve of those lenders and their regulators.

Palin and a bridge

Gravina Island Bridge


wiki reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

heritage foundation

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm889.cfm

In opposing Senator Coburn’s amendment to defund the bridge, one prominent Senator told a closed-door meeting of conservatives that the plan was simply impractical. Many of the earmarks, he claimed, are counted towards a state’s equity bonus and thus are part of the state-by-state allocation formula. Defunding the bridge, he said, would direct at most $75 million to Louisiana, with the remaining $148 million returning to Alaska as money the state could use at its discretion for road projects.

a washington post article from 2005

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001931.html

One of the Alaska bridges, dubbed the "Bridge to Nowhere" by its critics, would connect one small town to a tiny island. It received $223 million in the highway bill that Congress passed this summer. The second bridge, named "Don Young's Way" in honor of its patron, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska), received about $230 million -- but that is just a down payment on a cost that could hit $1.5 billion.

Coburn had wanted to shift all the money to the I-10 rebuilding project, which is expected to cost $500 million to $600 million. Because of restrictions in the way highway dollars are distributed, Coburn's amendment would have redirected $75 million to the Pontchartrain bridge while unfunding the two Alaska bridges.

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