Flying fish
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Boeing Blogger-in-Chief Randy Baseler http://www.boeing.com/randy/ seems tickled by Alaska Airlines’ “Salmon-Three-Salmon” jet.
Key Quote: “When you live in this part of the world you’re never very far from salmon.”
However, not everyone is amused by the project. Inside the Beltway, some are calling it a piece of flying pork — the bulk of the budget for the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board, according to ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Politics/story?id=1183436, comes straight from the federal government. (This was a surprise to me. I’m familiar with produce marketing boards from my days as a reporter covering the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Committee, and most produce marketing boards I know of are financed through assessments paid by growers and/or processors.)
Key Quote: “‘Only Congress can turn fish into pork,’ said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. ‘Paint jobs for private airplanes are one thing, but Uncle Sam should not be paying for it.’”
Needless to say, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., hates it. He told ABC that “I don’t know what the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board is except that I know that it continues to receive earmarked funding in the multimillions of dollars every year.”
Speaking of the paint job, here’s the story I did about that. http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/10/03/100bus_flyingfish001.cfm The fish is the creation of Mukilteo artist Mark Boyle, and the work was done at Goodrich’s Paine Field paint hangar.
