A ferry to nowhere, and a duplicate effort on the war on drugs, get "honors" from a Wisconsin congressman. Janesville Republican Paul Ryan's bipartisan Boondoggle Award aims to shed light on wasteful spending. Remember the "bridge to nowhere?" Ryan says an Alaska Senator slipped the ferry into the Defense budget as a navy test vessel, to replace the infamous "bridge to nowhere."
Ryan says that will reduce a two hour drive to a half hour ferry trip — for the benefit of forty people at a cost of some $70 million. And then there's the House member with a thirty nine million dollar earmark for something called the National Drug Intelligence Center, which Ryan says duplicates two other agencies that already exist. Ryan gave an honorable mention to the 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill — which passed nearly three months overdue and included nearly nine thousand earmarks at a cost of seven and a half billion dollars.
