Your Tax Dollar At Work

I’ve got to remember to read the whole article if the headline or picture catches my eye!

Ten days ago the Alaska Airlines salmon plane was plastered all over the papers. For instance here is the Seattle PI article and here is a picture of the plane.

Well, Alaska Air has had interesting paintings on its planes for may years so when I saw this picture I thought: “Wow, they’ve gone a bit overboard with this but it does look pretty cool.” And turned to the next page of the paper assuming that this was Alaska Air marketing to the fine salmon loving citizens of the northwest. As they say:

“This airplane celebrates Alaska Airlines’ unique relationship with the people and communities of Alaska and underscores our air transport commitment to the state’s seafood industry,” said Gregg Saretsky, Alaska Airlines’ executive vice president of marketing and planning.

Alaska Air may have been marketing as noted but they were not doing it on their own.

What I missed by so casually skipping on was that this little marketing campaign was funded by you and I. Not, though, by buying airline tickets. Rather, we funded this through federal taxes:

Alaska Airlines covered about $75,000 of the tab, company spokeswoman Amanda Tobin said.

The federally funded Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board paid for the rest of the roughly $300,000 project, said Bill Hines, the board’s executive director.

The airline is using the remainder of the marketing board’s $500,000 grant for bookmarks that will be passed out to passengers as part of an educational campaign about the state of Alaska’s fishing industry , Hines said.

Wouldn’t you rather have bought your kids new shoes or been able to pay the heating bill next January or donated more to Hurricane Katrina or Pakistani earthquake victims?

Reminded about what I missed by the Coyote Blog.