Alaskan Fruitcake

My dear friends from the UK - Brits & Blokes - have this yearly festival to test how well fruitcakes can withstand the muster, by loading the dense concoctions dreaded by the free world into the holding chamber of prehistoric type catapult machines, to see how well grandma’s recipe can withstand the G-force of free flight. OK, it wasn’t a “fruitcake” slinging contest, but close. But in Manitou Springs, the actual “Fruitcake Toss” is a favorite way to get rid of those Christmas cake gifts that disregard, mold and mildew. Now I have always been a fan of the “Fruitcake”, a delicacy during the holiday season, thanks to the rum high, but here in Alaska we seem to have a very special recipe for the “Fruitcake”. And it appears that this recipe is alive and well and exciting the Bozo Bus mentality. Of course we should be used to this mentality by this stage in the Corrupt Bastards Club realty game. Now one of the main ingredients in the Alaskan style fruitcake, we have before us Harold Heinze along with his efforts at finding a gig for the M.V. Susitna. According to officials, the Susitna is stuck in Ketchikan because there exists no suitable landing at the Port of Anchorage. See, Bill’s billion dollar dock boondoggle is wasting away with every outgoing tide change. Instead of the port growing, it is losing ground. So Bill gets the blame for the overdue ferry to arrive and provide service, as to what that “service” is supposed to offer remains a “Big” mystery. But the real reason the high speed amphibious assault vessel is MIA comes by this fact: There are no customers willing to buy a ticket at an unknown price and no place to dock! It is a magical mystery tour. Imagine showing up to a ferry terminal and the purser tells you here’s your ticket just leave your credit cards, pets, kids and PFD. But Harold wants to trump the millions already spent by the Denali Commission, to change horses in midstream. For those Alaskans that have no notion to Harold’s history here in Alaska, here is a tidbit. Harold was at one time head of one of the “Big Oil” producers here in Alaska, one that no longer exists. Harold once spoke out about ANWR, that “it was a flat, crummy place”. And when Harold was the boss, he found early retirement - abruptly - when he made it a point around the Sheffield circle that he wanted to build a bridge at the “Top of the World”. He honestly thought a bridge – called World Route 1A – could be built from Prudhoe Bay to Norway, and that is how Alaska got into the business and is today known as the state wanting to build bridges to nowhere. Thanks Harold! In KABATA dollars, that road – or 4000 mile bridge – would cost about $3 trillion bucks. And we didn’t stop at bridges, no, no, no as we now have a ferry going nowhere. Anyway Harold went on the record recently that it is time to use the Susitna to carry propane from Prudhoe Bay to the Yukon River for redistribution along the river’s watershed. Wait just a minute, is the Susitna an amphibious type craft? I know it was a NAVY design with stealth like capabilities and not only did the Pt. McKenzie Port Authority get the useless vessel for free, the “Authority” also received ownership of the “Intellectual Property”? But maybe there is something to this “Intellectual Property” thing. How much extra did that transfer cost the U.S. Taxpayers? And remember, this future mothball was paid for by the taxpayers. And the Denali Commission – courtesy the U.S. Taxpayers – has spent billions over the years upgrading the heating oil tanks and loading facilities at many villages around Alaska. To change now to propane, it takes an entirely different set-up. And I have an idea that could calm this ridiculousness. Take the M.V. Susitna and gather up all the failed projects so far still receiving funding – including Heinze’s gas pipeline project going nowhere - and pack it all on the deck, then take the floating rust-bucket out to sea and call on the NAVY, to destroy this boat the brass laughed at and didn’t want, as about the only thing it is good for is a terrorist target for practice. It all boils down to a fruitcake mentality here in the “Last Frontier” and it appears that the Bozo Bus is not having a problem with vacant seats. In fact, the Bozo bus is over capacity, but with state regulators asleep at the wheel, “Keep on Truck’n”. We just keep going on record trumping the ridiculous. Some of the things being thought up today are 30-years too late. But the Bozo bus mentality, wherein fruitcakes seem to realize that these projects provide a job for a lifetime, and there is no accountability because it is all a big pipe dream, it is the perfect stay-at-home job. It is fantasy land politics at its best. And like fruitcake, it keeps on coming and can withstand just about anything. We despise it, but we accept it anyway and just throw it aside hoping it will rot, go away and never come back. But that doesn’t happen with fruitcakes, just like funding for these ridiculous projects keeps on showing up. So maybe Alaska should join in with the Brits, as we have plenty of fruitcakes deserving a free ride, to nowhere! And just think if the chief Bozo did get that bridge to Norway constructed, it would have taken about 35-years to build, and when Heinze made this ridiculous suggestion at the Global Infrastructure Projects Conference in 1986, which was held in Anchorage, the bridge would have had its ribbon cutting ceremony just about now – in 2011. The same year a bunch of Alaska’s legislators went on a junket, to see how Norway “manages its oil wealth”! Just think, had the bridge been built, the Bozo Bus would have been able to go on a ride of a lifetime, the entire cast of legislators with Harold at the wheel. So when in the “fruitcake” mode, just tune into Alaska style ridiculousness, as it is one hell of a laugh, still the best medicine around, even for “Fruitcake” indigestion or better yet, fruitcake insurrection!