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Message |
    
Jan C. Nielsen
Member
Username: jcnielsen
Post Number: 552
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 - 2:09 pm: | 
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Want to buy a hull? There's one in Pascagoula, Mississippi looking for a home. In one of the worst examples of wasteful government spending, the United States guaranteed loans for American Classic Voyages, a cruise ship company, under so-called "Project America." The company started to build two big cruise ships in the U.S., instead of Europe, purportedly to re-generate American ship-building. American Classic went bankrupt last year, after spending $187 million on the ship. Now we have an empty hull that no one wants.
The New York Times reported:
Today, the project is being derided as an example of political pork gone wrong. What remains of Project America is an unfinished hull the size of two football fields and pieces for a second ship lying around. The hull is not floatable; it has neither a completed bow or stern; and its future is in doubt. The price to the government for the failed project is $187 million — money the government is trying to recoup by putting the half-finished hull on the market.
In typical fashion, when the project faltered Congress tried to sell it to the Navy --- supposedly as an R & R for weary sailors. What kind of Navy maintains a cruise ship for sailors?
This "corporate welfare" is going on all over the place -- with off the balance sheet loan guarantees to airlines, sugar industry price supports, and you name it. Locally, we have the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a relic of the Cold War and the Military Industrial Complex, with a $5 billion annual budget. It's building a laser for nuclear testing. I guess that's something we really need. It makes me sick.
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John Meeks
Member
Username: john_m
Post Number: 101
Registered: 4-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 3:00 am: |
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Hi Jan..
Don't feel alone!
Come to beautiful British Columbia! We have three or four pretty damned useless 'Fast Ferries' here for sale too!
Cost us $40,000,000 each (or something) a few years ago....don't work!
Going for 10 cents on the dollar!
Only in Canada, eh!
Regards,
John M
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Steve Smith
Member
Username: steves
Post Number: 34
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 1:14 pm: |
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...and if your hull isn't long enough there's a nice new middle section of a cruise ship here in the UK that nobody wants.
It was built and launched ready to extend an Italian liner - the owners of which cancelled the contract at the very last minute. The shipyard went bust as a result.
Politics and shipbuilding don't mix! |
Daniel Bentley
Member
Username: danb
Post Number: 15
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Monday, January 9, 2006 - 2:17 am: |
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Do what has been done for decades:
Target practice/artficial reef. |
