First, the bridge to nowhere, and now this...

Apparently, U.S. Rep. Don Young and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens from Alaska need to be reigned in and quit costing US taxpayers so much fricking money to feed their over-inflated egos. Geezus...

Alaskans want Seattle ship

By Alicia Mundy
Seattle Times Washington bureau

WASHINGTON — It's difficult to nab a 420-foot ship and its crew and whisk them 2,100 miles away. But U.S. Rep. Don Young and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens are trying to do just that.

Alaska's lone congressman and its senior senator have been quietly pushing to move the Coast Guard cutter Healy from the Port of Seattle, where it has been based since its launch in 2000, to Anchorage.

The maneuver represents a "potential grab of yet another federal government ship from Puget Sound," a Todd Pacific Shipyards executive e-mailed the Coast Guard's congressional liaison Dec. 20. The shipyard is contracted to maintain the Healy, the nation's newest and most-advanced icebreaker.

The Coast Guard opposes the move because it would keep crew members away from their Seattle families an additional two months a year and would cost taxpayers an extra $8 million or more a year, according to an internal Coast Guard analysis. Neither Anchorage nor any other port in Alaska has a facility large enough to handle an icebreaker the size of the Healy. FULL STORY