My spouse is in Fairbanks Alaska right now (where we met back in the dark ages) and he pointed me in the direction of this hilarious front page news story when I asked him what people were talking about in town right now:
A crane working on the Barnette Street Bridge crashed into the Chena River on Tuesday morning.
Witnesses described hearing a loud crashing noise just before 11 a.m. as the crane, with its base originally on the north side of the river near the Big I bar, fell on its side.
“I was running on Cushman Street, and I heard a loud boom,” said a man watching from a hill above the construction site. He would only give his name as William. “I said, ‘What is that?’ I thought it was something like a terrorist attack.”
What? You think it’s a long shot that terrorists would target a small town in Alaska? Well, it’s actually not that unusual that the citizens would believe such a thing* if you recall this post of mine from 2006:
From Anchorage it takes 90 minutes on a propeller plane to reach this fishing village on the state’s southwestern edge, a place where some people still make raincoats out of walrus intestine.
This is the Alaskan bush at its most remote. Here, tundra meets sea, and sea turns to ice for half the year. Scattered, almost hidden, in the terrain are some of the most isolated communities on American soil. People choose to live in outposts like Dillingham (pop. 2,400) for that reason: to be left alone.
So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up on Main Street. Each camera is a shiny white metallic box with two lenses like eyes. The camera’s shape and design resemble a robot’s head.
Workers on motorized lifts installed seven cameras in a 360-degree cluster on top of City Hall. They put up groups of six atop two light poles at the loading dock, and more at the fire hall and boat harbor.
By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.
Your federal tax dollars at work, folks. Bridges to nowhere and terrorist surveillance in remote arctic villages. This is how the Republican party keeps the nation safe, promotes small government and shows fiscal responsibility.
It makes me wonder: with all this endless blather about deficits, has anyone taken a good look at the Homeland Security budget? I’m guessing it’s still full of crap like this. I’m not against spending the money, which I’m sure states desperately need right now. But if it’s all earmarked for stupid anti-terrorist nonsense in small towns in Alaska, then it should be repurposed to useful state programs. An expensive police state apparatus is a wingnut “luxury” we really can’t afford.