The NAPA Wine Train

Back in 2003 on our honeymoon in California, while Lynda and I were enjoying a picnic at the V Sattui winery in Napa Valley, we were excited to hear, and then see "The Wine Train" pass by. The Wine Train is a tourist attraction that meanders from Napa to St Helena. There are many different packages to be had, but the basic one costs about $50 per person for a 3 to 4 hour experience, for which money you get a 3 hour train ride through the Napa Valley, food and wine extra. We made up our minds that we would do that sometime; no driving, some of the best wines in the world, good food, what's there not to like?

Well it seems that POTUS has pledged $54M of his "Stimulus Package" to The Wine Train. Why GovUSA would spend $54M of the taxpayer's money to prop up this private tourist extravaganza is difficult to comprehend, but it gets murkier that that. The contract was not tendered, but instead offered to Suulutaaq Inc. of Anchorage Alaska, a company founded by Alaska natives enjoying access to federal contracts. The new CEO of Suulutaq is Samuel Boyle, previously with South Carolina dot-com Sailnet, now bankrupt. In addition Suulutaaq employs very few Alaska Natives and has sub-contracted much of the job to Peter Kiewit for about $28M, and keeping about $20M for itself for doing not very much actually.

As Pajama Media says at Zombie » Wine Train Stimulus Scam Gets Even Uglier With No-Bid Set-Aside Swindle;

So, basically, a white wheeler-dealer got himself appointed CEO of a shell company that’s legally classified as an “Alaska Native corporation,” then, using this unique privileged status, finagled a no-bid contract to get $54 million in taxpayer funds for a construction job — and then used a small portion of that money to hire subcontractors to do the actual work, while pocketing the rest as pure profit.

What should we do? By being US and Californian taxpayers, we've already paid our share of The Wine Train, should we now fork out extra hard-earned cash to make a trip? What do you think?