The Charleston Daily Mail today published a compelling piece, entitled "Wasteful Spending Has No Defense Now." The editorial is about the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, which has received millions of dollars in federal funding. Here is an excerpt:
The airport is just outside Johnstown, population 21,000. Thanks to Murtha, it has all kinds of federally funded goodies - a new terminal with a restaurant, an $8 million high-tech radar system that has never been used, a helicopter hangar, a motorized baggage carousel - and a taxpayer subsidy of $147 per passenger, double the national average.
Not that there are many passengers.
The airport has only six flights a day - all to the same location, Washington, D.C. - and each flight carries an average of only 20 passengers.
"Inside the terminal on a recent weekday," the Post reported, "four passengers lined up to board a flight, outnumbered by seven security staff members and supervisors . . . . For three hours that day, no commercial or private planes took off or landed."
Yet when Democrats passed the $787 billion "spendulous" bill earlier this year, what project should get another $800,000?
Murtha's airport, which will have its second runway repaved.