The Phoenix rail huggers lead by Mayor Phil Gordon desperately want to extend the light rail system to the number one most visited site in Arizona, which site was some how overlooked by the nit-wits who planned the initial 20 mile long $1.4 billion Phoenix-Tempe-Mesa light rail system. Today the federal government laid the bad news on the Phoenix area rail huggers – the federal government will give the discredited community organizer Acorn almost $4 billion, instead of funding any portion of the estimated cost of $1 billion to extend the Phoenix light rail to Sky Harbor airport.
The Department of Transportation announced today that Phoenix will not get any of the $1.5 billion of federal stimulus money going to state and regional transit and transportation projects. With their heads completely in the sand so they could ignore Phoenix’ $244 million deficit, the layoffs of hundreds of police and fire personnel, closing and reducing of services and the $300 million owed on the new convention center money pit, Phoenix officials responded that they were not going to let a little thing like lack of money stop (it’s now being built) the construction of the $1 billion people mover to the airport. You gotta love their spunk.
How is it that Acorn gets almost $4 billion and Phoenix and needy states and cities get the shaft? Democrat mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix lobbied the federal government for money for the people mover, but was not successful. Maybe he could pull some strings with his homies in the the party and get Phoenix some of that Acorn money.
Didn’t Congress pass legislation last year removing Acorn from the public dole? The following is from an editorial in the Investor’s Business Daily:
You’d think a group implicated in dozens of electoral fraud cases, theft of funds and, most recently, helping criminals interested in bringing child prostitutes to the U.S. would have been ruled ineligible for federal aid long ago. But think again, because these aid rats are experts at survival. FrontPage magazine reports that federal Judge Nina Gershon ruled that Acorn is eligible for the Obama administration’s proposed $4 billion in Housing and Urban Development grants within the $3.83 trillion federal budget proposal for 2011. That cancels the ban Congress placed on Acorn funding late last year after at least five of the group’s offices willingly aided undercover reporters posing as a pimp and prostitute to get federal funding for a brothel and cheat on their taxes.
See the story in the Arizona Republic called “Phoenix misses out on stimulus transit money.” The story says:
The first leg of the system, connecting light rail, the east economy parking lot and the heavily used Terminal 4, is scheduled to carry its first riders in 2013. The second phase would extend the train to the rest of the airport terminals and the rental-car center by 2020.The stimulus money would have accelerated project construction, connecting all three terminals to light rail and the parking lot by 2013.
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.