Palin tries new tactic to unload hated jet (4/22/2007)
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The title is the headline from the much quoted Anchorage Daily News. The story is by Kyle Hopkins.
The state has tried selling its unwanted jet online four times and failed. So last week, the Palin administration signed a contract with an Anchorage aircraft broker who thinks he can succeed where eBay couldn't The eBay thing didn't work out very well, said Dan Spencer, director of administrative services for the Department of Public Safety. He's the person charged with trying to get rid of the infamous Westwind II.
The administration made a deal last week with Turbo North Aviation, promising the broker a 1.49 percent cut of the selling price.
Former Gov. Frank Murkowski bought the jet, which cost the state about $2.6 million, over the protests of the Legislature and used it to fly around the state, sometimes mixing campaign errands with government business.
After he defied almost everyone to acquire it, the jet became a political albatross for Murkowski. Gov.
...One of her campaign promises was to sell the plane and she's been trying to unload it for months.
...The state's definitely not going to give this plane away. If that was the case, then they would have sold it on eBay Heckmann said.
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on wikipedia
According to wikipedia, it was sold in August 2007 for $2.1M. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwind_II
I thought I saw more ADN coverage where they claim she costs the state more by flying business class and selling the plane at a loss.
I saw an article that said
I saw an article that said her travel costs were actually lower than previous administrations and her hotel fees. Well, compared to Murkowski's.
yep
see hipparchia comment below with linky
From AK website
http://gov.state.ak.us/archive-1111.html
Insider knowledge
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/us/25j...
timeline
Dec->Apr ebay, ebay, ebay (one bid)
Apr->Aug brokerage firm (no sale)
Sold-Aug Speaker Harris->Valdez,AK->Reynolds bids
compared to everybody's
it looks like [lower travel expenses].
yes she spent less
But selling the plane at a loss cost the state 5 yrs worth of travel. I'm not saying blame Palin or anything, but that does factor into keeping the plane and annual travel costs.
Depends on how the lease was structured
Just quickly poking at the numbers, the state might have had to put up another $160K or so on top of the sale price to pay off the lease. Since Palin wasn't using it, the $62K per quarter lease payment plus storage plus upkeep was a dead loss. Even at the lower sell price, the additional lump-sum payout would have been covered in three quarters.
Maybe they should have used Craig's List.
"Maybe they should have used Craig’s List."
Zing!
Data!
Thank you, all.
And so much cleaner, and more effective, than uterine inspections for 17-year-olds!
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Except for the part where I didn't think it through properly
Rolling the numbers around again, if the state got the same sort of deal you or I would have to take with say a car lease then the early payments wouldn't have had as much effect on the capital amount owed as would later payments. It may be that the amount still owing on the original price plus prepayment penalties would have left the state with a balance of several hundred thousand dollars after the $2.1 million they got for the plane. Still, shelling out $62K++ every quarter for no benefit it wouldn't take very long - maybe eight or ten quarters - to get to breakeven. It was a good idea to sell the thing off.
A neither-here-nor-there story, really; the whole state wanted the plane gone.
I'm a lot more interested in discussing the degree of culural transformation that leads to a teenage boy whose only claim to accomplishment is getting his teenage girlfriend pregnant standing up on stage at the Republican Convention with the Presidential and VP nominees during a standing ovation. Have we come a long ways as a nation or what?
not quite
BIO,
Except the plane was primarily used to transport prisoners as they have few better alternatives because of FAA, and it was saving fueling stops and they had more seats.
The real valid reason to sell it was that it could only land at a few airstrips in AK, so from that point of view it makes more sense to go with something more practical.
The idea of selling at a loss probably wasn't a good idea since some idiot already forced the state to pay for something they didn't need. But since her campaign ran as his wasteful airplane as a key item they had to do something about it.
I still can't believe the media lets her get away with "i put it on eBay". What a gimmick when you consider that eBay was a horrible idea and didn't even work, so why keep bragging about it.
Well, kinda sorta semi anyway
Pretty plush for moving prisoners, and AK is full of charter services so commercial airline restrictions are less of an issue there than in the lower 48. Airplanes depreciate in value, I don't have a chart at hand but this decline doesn't seem out of line. To the extent that the cost of prisoner transport was less with the state-owned plane than with charter, that would provide another cost offset. But with an operating cost of IIRC six grand per hour the state plane was not cheap to fly.
Everyone ran against Murkowski's arrogance and financial excesses, which is why he came in third in the R primary. Basically he and businessman John Binkley split the old-bull corruption vote and Palin, falsely running as anti-corruption, won with the leftovers. She is the Accidental Governor now become the Accidental VP Nominee. The same "lucky" tag has been put on Obama, but if this election has come down to Blessed Barry vs. Providential Sarah then my bet is on the Chicago crew and not some gaggle of AK rednecks.
she should offer it to Obama
; >
in AK, you have to fly tho, no?
esp in winter?
it's like Hawaii in a way--state officials have to fly to get everywhere.
Alaska and Flying
Yes, Amberglow. I do believe that Alaska has the highest percentage of pilots in the United States, or something to that effect.