Freeway American Flag Painted Over-deemed Graffito by CALTRANS

Freeway Flag UPDATE: Governor Criticizes Removal - News Story - KTVU San Francisco

American flag and a pair of power line towers follow a ridge line above Interstate 680. The next exit is Exit 18B, Sheridan Road.

Posted: 10:05 pm PDT July 1, 2010Updated: 5:30 pm PDT July 2, 2010

SUNOL, CAlif. -- UPDATE: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that he was unhappy that the California Department of Transportation has painted over a mural of an American flag on a concrete slab near the Sunol Grade section of Interstate Highway 680 in unincorporated Alameda County near Sunol.

In a prepared statement, Schwarzenegger called the flag patriotic and meaningful.

He said that to remove the flag, "only a few days before we celebrate our independence and reflect on the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy in America is unconscionable. I extend my apologies to the artists whose mural inspired drivers along 680 for over eight and a half years."

Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Andrea McCarthy said the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which oversees Caltrans, "will work with the community and the artists to try to reach a resolution."

Interstate 680, in and out of the Silicon Valley, is one of the bay area's busiest freeways. And everyday for the last eight and half years there was a hillside mural motorists passed on the Sunol grade.

"It just made me feel really patriotic, just seeing it everyday," said motorcyclist Dave Freely.

Until Wednesday, motorists saw a 35 foot mural of the American flag painted on a concrete retaining wall.

On Thursday, it was just gray concrete painted over by Caltrans.

"It was put on the list for graffiti removal and yesterday morning they painted over it with grey concrete paint," said Allyn Amsk of Caltrans.

"It should not be classified as graffiti. I mean it was a well done flag and and I felt like it's part of America," objected the flag muralist Eric Noda.

About a week after 9-11. Eric Noda was photographed roller painting the flag mural. It took him three hours to finish.

He and friends R.J. Waldron and Thomas Hanley picked the spot to express their patriotism after the terrorist attack.

"It's kind of a landmark for me and it reminds me of that day and the time in the wake of 9-11," said Noda.

But why did Caltrans wait so long to remove the flag?

"Maintenance wasn't aware that it was on the state right-of-way or you know it would have been removed sometime in the past," said Amsk.

Regular 680 commuters said they were upset.

"I don't know why they would consider it graffiti. We live in America. It should be a patriotic symbol that everybody should enjoy," said Joseph Gross of Tri-Valley Towing.

Sandy Kraft said, "I drive this every day and to not see it up there waving at me, even though it doesn't wave, it's still waving at you."

The flag muralists say they plan to approach Caltrans for permission to repaint the flag in time for the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

A Caltrans spokesman said they can apply through proper procedures for what they call transportation art.

Copyright 2010 by KTVU.com and Bay City News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

There much more to this story though. The Flag paining was vandalized with 'gang-style' offensive graffiti. Unfortunately CALTRANS didn't deem that as offensive gang graffiti, not wanting to 'offend', so a guy from Idaho, then several locals and the original painter repaired the flag.

No, the State paintied over the 'offending' flag. Question: why is not CALTRANS painting over the 'rainbows' on the entrances to the Marin County Waldo Tunnels on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge?

From Wikipedia: Waldo Tunnel is the unofficial name of a tunnel on U.S. Route 101 between the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito. It is named after Waldo Point along Richardson Bay between Sausalito and Mill Valley. Waldo Point is named after William Waldo, who ran unsuccessfully as a Whig candidate for governor of California in 1853.

The first bore of the tunnel was completed in 1937 and the second in 1954. The archways at the ends of the bores were painted in rainbows by a Caltrans employee, Robert Halligan, and for this reason the tunnel is occasionally referred to as the Rainbow Tunnel.

Hawaii – Land of Crony Capitalism » Obama's First Home in America

Hawaii – Land of Crony Capitalism » The Antiplanner

Hawaii – Land of Crony Capitalism

Travels |June 28, 2010

Wikipedia defines crony capitalism as an “allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businesspeople and government officials.” Crony capitalism has sadly played an important role in state and, especially, local government for just about ever. But Hawaii suffers from a particularly strong case.

Hawaii’s history of crony capitalism dates back at least to the mid-1950s. Before then, the future state was run by an oligarchy consisting of the Big Five land-owning companies and a sixth company that was mainly involved in construction. The oligarchy ran the political, economic, and social system of the entire territory in a system that would be considered more feudal than crony capitalistic. Nearly all of the private land in the islands was owned by one of these companies or a relative handful of other families, companies, or trusts, leaving only about 3 percent of the state available for fee simple ownership by ordinary residents.

That began to change in 1954, when reform-oriented Democrats, bolstered by the votes of children of immigrant workers from Japan, China, and the Philippines, took control of the legislature for the first time in the territory’s history. Among other things, the Democrats promised land reform so that more land and opportunities would be available to the average person.

As George Cooper and Gavan Daws showed in their classic 1985 book, Land and Power in Hawaii: The Democratic Years, the main beneficiaries of the reforms imposed by the legislature were the legislators themselves, not their constituents. The Big Five may have lost political power, but they continued to control the land and development by including powerful Democrats in every land deal. Cooper and Daws painstakingly reviewed thousands of development projects and found that traditional developers simply partnered up with the Democrats in deal after deal. In some cases, the legislature would pass a law benefitting one of the oligarchs and, within days, the members of the legislature who worked hardest on the bill would have their names included in a new deal.

One of those legislators was elected U.S. Senator when Hawaii became a state, and today is thesecond-longest serving senator in history. From his post as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Inouye makes sure that plenty of pork reaches his state.

Evidence of Hawaii’s crony capitalism can be seen in Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hanneman‘s push for a horrendously expensive and totally unnecessary 20-mile rail line that is projected to cost more than $200 million per mile. Since all of Honolulu’s electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, the rail line will do nothing to save energy or reduce pollution. But Mayor Hanneman hopes that it will propel him into the state governor’s office, for which he is running right now.

Saddle Road on the island of Hawaii.

The Antiplanner may have enjoyed another example of Hawaii’s crony capitalism on the Big Island. During a long bike ride from Hilo to Waimea, I could not help but notice that the state was widening the two-lane road into a road that must have been 60 feet wide but was still striped for only two lanes. I certainly enjoyed the extremely wide shoulders that, even with rumble strips, could comfortably fit four cyclists riding abreast. But why did they need so much asphalt when, say, 44 feet — two fourteen-foot lanes and two eight-foot shoulders — would have been more than adequate. Even in the unlikely event that traffic should someday justify four lanes, the rumble strips mean that the state would have to repave them before restriping them. It makes me suspect that this project (described on page 3 of this document) is somehow a gift to local contractors.

Crony capitalism presents a problem for liberals and libertarians alike. Left-wing reforms give government more power, which gives incentives for corporations and the wealthy to manipulate that power to their own benefit, with the result that the reforms have exactly the opposite of the goal of bringing power to the people.

Libertarians believe government should consist of a few basics, such as police and courts, needed to protect people and their property, leaving everything else the private sector. But places with minimal governments — such as America in the nineteenth century — saw plenty of crony capitalism. Meanwhile, Transparency International’s corruption perception index lists several big-government countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, among the least-corrupt countries in the world. (The United States is ranked 19; note that the index only measures perceptions of corruption, not corruption itself.)

To the extent that the index is meaningful, perhaps it means that corruption has less to do with the size of government than with the other checks-and-balances built into the government. If so, then someone should identify which checks-and-balances do the most to minimize crony capitalism and push to build those in to our system.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Regional planning,Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, ortrackback from your own site.

Honolulu’s Rail Plan

posted in Transportation, Urban areas |

Yesterday, in response to the Antiplanner’s post about crony capitalism, Scrappy commented that Honolulu needs rail transit to “reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and get us off the maddening addiction to cars.” He added that, “the environmental community in Honolulu is strongly behind rail.”

I appreciate Scrappy’s comment and don’t want to discourage him from participating in this forum, but I find it sad that my former colleagues in the environmental movement have become so innumerate that they would support a turkey like the Honolulu elevated rail plan. The final environmental impact statement for that project is now available. Let’s see what it says about saving energy, carbon, and driving.

Start with energy. Table 4-21 of the FEIS says the project will save 396 million British thermal units (BTUs) of energy each day, or 144,540 million BTUs per year. Sounds great, except that page 4-206 says project construction will cost 7.48 trillion BTUs. That means it will take 52 years of savings to pay back the energy cost. Long before 52 years are up, huge energy investments will be needed to replace rail cars, worn out track, and other infrastructure. So there is likely no net energy savings.

How about reducing our carbon footprint? According to page 68 of the Department of Energy’s State Energy Guide, more than 90 percent of Hawaii’s energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Scrappy points out that “the local power utility is making a big push to use renewables in its fuel mix,” but good intentions are not enough. Even if it can find some renewable sources of energy, it would be better to use that electricity to offset some of the electricity now being used by Oahu residents, not to create a new source of energy demand.

Page 4-113 of the FEIS predicts that the project will save all of 171 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per day, or about 62,415 tons per year. Page 6-2 says construction will cost nearly $4.3 billion, which amortized out at a generous 4 percent works out to $245 million per year. Add the anticipated $72 million in operating costs (p. 6-8) and divide by the tons of CO₂ saved and you get a cost of just over $5,000 per ton. Since the going rate for carbon credits right now is less than $20 per ton, and McKinsey says we can meet carbon reduction targets if we spend no more than $50 per ton, anything that costs $5,000 per ton should absolutely be rejected by people who care about our carbon footprint.

Note that the FEIS did not estimate the tons of CO₂ that will be released during construction, which will offset much if not all of the projected savings.

Will the project help “get us off the maddening addiction to cars”? The Antiplanner isn’t even sure that this should be considered a benefit, since cars are less expensive, more convenient, and really have no greater environmental impact than transit. Even so, the FEIS predicts that the project will reduce the number of regional auto trips per day by 51,200 out of 3,003,400 trips under the no-build alternative. That is a 1.7 percent reduction. That means Honolulu would only need to build 59 more rail lines, at a cost of more than a quarter of a trillion dollars (roughly the cost of the entire Interstate Highway System), to eliminate the city’s addiction to autos.

Of course, all of the FEIS’s estimates of energy, carbon, and other savings depend on its projection that the 20-mile rail line will carry 116,300 riders per day (page 3-5). That’s more than San Diego’s 51-mile light-rail system, almost twice as many as Miami’s 28-mile elevated rail, and more than twice as many as St. Louis’ 48-mile elevated light-rail system. So there are reasons to be skeptical of the Honolulu projections.

Scrappy did not say anything about congestion, but he mentioned that the region’s voters supported the rail plan (by a tiny margin). One reason they did so is that rail supporters emphasized that the project would “ease traffic congestion.” Of course, they lied when they said this, as page 3-51 of the FEIS says that traffic delays will be worse at every intersection with the project than without it. “Mitigation,” meaning widening roads and improving traffic signals, will help at a few intersections, but then why can’t they just do the mitigation and not the rail project?

The environmentalists who support this wasteful project are the Baptists of a Baptists and bootleggers coalition that is promoting rail transit throughout the country. The bootleggers, of course, are the crony capitalists who will make tens or hundreds of millions in profits building this unsightly monstrosity. I hope in the future more environmentalists will open their eyes and support things that are truly good for the environment, not just feel-good projects that cost a lot of money.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Transportation, Urban areas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Obama gives us the bird-- pushes immigration reform, seeks broad support

UPDATE 1-Obama pushes immigration reform, seeks broad support | Reuters

Save the Planet and Die! The Case Against Reusable Shopping Bags

The Case Against Reusable Shopping Bags - Planet Gore - National Review Online

The Case Against Reusable Shopping Bags June 30, 2010 2:30 PM By Greg Pollowitz Telegraph: Tests on shoppers’ bags revealed half contained traces of E.coli, a lethal toxin which killed 26 people in Scotland in 1996 in one of the worlds worst food poisoning outbreaks. Scientists also found many were contaminated with salmonella. Reusable plastic shopping bags have become increasingly popular in Britain thanks to supermarkets and other retailers giving out millions of free ones to shoppers in the last three years. It is estimated that there are “hundreds of millions” of bags for life in use in Britain, according to sources within Wrap, the Government’s anti-waste watchdog. Because the vast majority of people do not wash their bags after each shopping trip, they could be putting themselves at risk. The tests were undertaken by the University of Arizona, whose researchers stopped a total of 84 shoppers to check the state of their bags. The researchers warned the levels of bacteria they found were high enough to cause a wide range of serious health problems and even death. Children may be in the greatest danger, they added, as they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of organisms such as E.coli. Many of the bags for life are made from jute or woven polypropylene, helping to reduce the amount of so-called “virgin plastic” used in carrier bags by 40 per cent in just the last three years. But while they are better for the environment, the new research suggests they could be harmful to health if not cleaned regularly.

You have to love the do-gooders. We used paper and brown bags, then plastic bags to wrap our groceries. Fish and babies born in Taxicabs were wrapped in newspapers. Why? The paper was sanitary!

The eco-self righteous now demand that we use Reusable Shopping Bags to save the planet... and die!?

NO WASPs Allowed!!! : The Banality of Elena

The American Spectator : The Banality of Elena

EMINENTOES

The Banality of Elena

By George Neumayr on 7.1.10

The chummy, Happy Jack Squirrel time atmosphere of Elena Kagan's confirmation hearing is a little hard to take. Yes, she is "likable enough," to borrow Barack Obama's phrase about Hillary Clinton, but that won't make her any less destructive on the Supreme Court. If anything, it will make her more so.

Though generally pleasant, she has seemed a bit cocky and dishonest at times during the hearing. Notice that she is quite the confident expert on conscientious judging for someone who has never done any. And somehow Thurgood Marshall's doting pupil has suddenly become an "originalist."

She offered up several apple-polishing disclaimers about judicial restraint to a few skeptical senators, but she never actually repudiated her staggeringly inane tribute to Thurgood Marshall in the Texas Law Review. "Our modern constitution is his," she burbled with approval in that article. It is a "thing of glory."

Even in the hearing on Tuesday, where she was clearly working hard to fog up fundamental issues as much as possible, she asserted that the meaning of the Constitution can change "outside" of the amendment process. In other words, activist judges can change it. To the extent that she articulated her understanding of "originalism," it sounded very slippery: not fidelity to the meaning of the Constitution, but to the "intent" of it.

What, exactly, does "intent" mean? Anything Thurgoodian justices want it to mean. True, she said that judges are bound by the specific requirements that the Founding Fathers placed in the Constitution, such as the Senate's age requirement of 30 (yet one wonders: Isn't 30 the new 20? Shouldn't that requirement "evolve" too under the superior understanding of modern justices?). But she also implied that judges can freewheel with less obvious parts of the Constitution when the country is likely to enjoy the results of that activism (as with civil rights).

This elastic approach explains her inexplicable comment that a judge can be at the same time an originalist and a living constitutionalist. It is not an "either or" proposition, she said to Senator Herbert Kohl, who is an owner of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Kohl's questioning, by the way, was impressive in its workmanlike stupidity. His baldly simple questions to Kagan sounded like the sort of questions he probably asks of concession-stand applicants at his arena. I almost expected him to ask her, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" But a better question in her case is: Where do you see the "living" Constitution in five years? Or thirty, for that matter. She is sure to roost on the court for decades.

Don't be surprised when the polished and polite Elena Kagan finds a constitutional right to gay marriage within the shadows and penumbras of Thurgood Marshall's Constitution. As the dean of Harvard Law School, she made it clear that she thinks homosexuals have an inalienable right to change the ethos of the United States military. If that's a right in her mind, then marriage, which is an even more basic claim than access to soldiering, has to be one too.

The sparring with Senator Sessions over her decision as Harvard dean to kick military recruiters off the main campus due to what she considered the "moral injustice" of Bill Clinton's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was amazingly dishonest and oily. She loves the "military," Kagan insisted to Sessions, and no one should use her Harvard policy to infer differently.

So, as it were, she hates a military policy but not the military; she hates the sin but not the sinner. When have gay-rights activists ever accepted that line of reasoning before? She treated military recruiters in the two-faced way she claims conservative segments of society treat homosexuals -- giving them second-class status while professing respect for them. This outrageous treatment of the military would have sunk a nominee in the past; now almost no one seems to care.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report and press critic for California Political Review.

He Just Won't Debate- So this is what Gore meant by Global Warming, now he's getting some well deserved Climate Change! Al Gore case reopened

Al Gore case reopened - PATRICK GAVIN | POLITICO CLICK

Although former Vice President Al Gore has denied three-year-old sexual-assault allegations made against him by a Portland massage therapist, the Portland police have decided to reopen the investigation. They did not explain why, however,according to the Associated Press.

In a statement, a Gore spokeswoman said, "Further investigation into this matter will only benefit Mr. Gore. The Gores cannot comment on every defamatory, misleading, and inaccurate story generated by tabloids. Mr. Gore unequivocally and emphatically denied this accusation when he first learned of its existence three years ago. He stands by that denial."

The masseuse alleges that Gore made unwanted advances in October 2006 at a Portland hotel. At the time, Gore was in town for a speech on climate change.

The woman approached Portland police after the incident but subsequently canceled follow-up meetings to investigate the case. When it was reopened in 2009, detectives deemed there to be insufficient evidence to pursue the woman's charges further.

TAGS:

• Sexual Assault,
• Al Gore,
• Tipper Gore,
• Portland

Arms Liberty at Last

FrontPage Magazine » Arms Liberty at Last

Arms Liberty at Last

Posted By Thomas Sowell On June 30, 2010 @ 12:00 am In FrontPage |

Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect?

Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn’t be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves.

When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence.

Many people who are opposed to gun laws which place severe restrictions on ordinary citizens owning firearms have based themselves on the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But, while the Supreme Court must make the Second Amendment the basis of its rulings on gun control laws, there is no reason why the Second Amendment should be the last word for the voting public.

If the end of gun control leads to a bloodbath of runaway shootings, then the Second Amendment can be repealed, just as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist for people, not people for laws.

There is no point arguing, as many people do, that it is difficult to amend the Constitution. The fact that it doesn’t happen very often doesn’t mean that it is difficult. The people may not want it to happen, even if the intelligentsia are itching to change it.

When the people wanted it to happen, the Constitution was amended 4 times in 8 years, from 1913 through 1920.

What all this means is that judges and the voting public have different roles. There is no reason why judges should “consider the basic values that underlie a constitutional provision and their contemporary significance,” as Justice Stephen Breyer said in his dissent against the Supreme Court’s gun control decision.

But, as the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, his job was “to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not.”

If the public doesn’t like the rules, or the consequences to which the rules lead, then the public can change the rules via the ballot box.

But that is very different from judges changing the rules by verbal sleight of hand, or by talking about “weighing of the constitutional right to bear arms” against other considerations, as Justice Breyer puts it. That’s not his job. Not if “we the people” are to govern ourselves, as the Constitution says.

As for the merits or demerits of gun control laws themselves, a vast amount of evidence, both from the United States and from other countries, shows that keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens does not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It is not uncommon for a tightening of gun control laws to be followed by an increase— not a decrease— in gun crimes, including murder.

Conversely, there have been places and times where an increase in gun ownership has been followed by a reduction in crimes in general and murder in particular.

Unfortunately, the media intelligentsia tend to favor gun control laws, so a lot of hard facts about the futility, or the counterproductive consequences of such laws, never reach the public through the media.

We hear a lot about countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States that have lower murder rates. But we very seldom hear about countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States that have higher murder rates, such as Russia and Brazil.

The media, like Justice Breyer, might do well to reflect on what is their job and what is the voting public’s job. The media’s job should be to give us the information to make up our own minds, not slant and filter the news to fit the media’s vision.

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/30/arms-liberty-at-last/

David Hockney on a Pad

Artist creates masterpiece on an iPad

This portrait looks like an oil painting you would see in an art gallery, but it is in fact a finger painting created using an Apple iPad.

New York artist David Kassan, 33, paints his life models using a simple £5 app called Brushes.

This three-hour sitting has been condensed into a five-minute timelapse video during which Kassan using a variety of virtual brushes. You can watch the painting take shape from blank screen to finished artwork from 6'20.

Comedian Stephen Fry, an Apple aficionado, tweeted about the video to his followers on Tuesday night after spotting it on YouTube.

David Kassan is not the first artist to use the iPad for his work.

David Hockney, 73, has long been a convert to Apple's products. Last year he started doing pictures on his iPhone, stating: "BlackBerries are for secretaries and clerical workers while the iPhone is used by artistic people."

His iPhone paintings have been exhibited at the Tate Gallery and Royal Academy in London and in various Los Angeles and German locations.

Hockney's main tip for painting with a touch-screen device like the iPhone is to "stroke the screen very softly".

And it will cost you an extra £1 to sit down---in the lav.

Ryanair to sell £5 tickets for standing-room only flights

Ryanair is planning to run flights where passengers stand during the journey at a cost of just £5 per ticket.

Michael O'Leary, the airline's chief executive, will set out proposals today that include charging customers to use the loo.

A standing area with "vertical seats" will be introduced at the back of its fleet of 250 planes.

He said that charging customers £1 to make use of facilities would encourage travellers on one hour flights to use lavatories at the airport instead of on the aircraft.

The Irishman said he intended to introduce coin-operated loos and added: "The other change we've been looking at is taking out the last 10 rows of seats so we will have 15 rows of seats and the equivalent of 10 rows of standing area."

A Ryanair spokesman said that Boeing had been consulted over refitting the fleet with "vertical seats" which would allow passengers to be strapped in while standing up, which would cost between £4 and £8 per person.

Safety testing will be carried out next year.

However, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said the plans would struggle to meet safety requirements.

He said: "It's aviation law that people have to have a seat-belt on from take-off and landing so they would have to be in a seat. I don't know how Mr O'Leary would get around that one. During turbulence passengers also have to have a seat-belt on."

Mr O'Leary was interviewed for ITV's How to Beat the Budget Airlines which airs on Thursday night at 7.30pm.