Well, here in the San Francisco Bay Area we are just recovering from the weeklong closure of the Bay Bridge after some repair work done over Labor Day failed last week. The bridge had been shut down over Labor Day to connect a re-routing section, and during that time they found some cracks in a nearby area. So some emergency bracing was done.

Now you'd think someone would periodically check the repair work, but that would be another of those incorrect assumptions.
No, better to ignore it, and let the 5000 lb brace fall to the roadbed. They were lucky no one was killed. If they keep this up they will rival Boston's Big Dig Fiasco.

Now, why wouldn't Caltrans keep a closer eye on this. Hmmm. Well, it appears Caltrans has better things to do with its money and personnel. Things like,.... oh I don't know, perhaps spending over a quarter of a million dollars sending over 52 Caltrans employees to a 4 day convention at a luxury resort.
Whadya mean there's a billion dollar state deficit?


Link to the news story is below. Thanks to Andy Frazer at www.gorillasites.com for alerting me to this.

Caltrans

I have noticed that over the last five or ten years, there have been more and more news stories from England about the government overstepping its boundaries. In some cases it's a "nanny state" type of thing, in others just trampling on personal liberties. They are worse than the US government. I have a bunch of clippings from previous REASON magazine issues that I'll probably post at some point.

Latest story is about Operation Rize, where the government went "judge shopping" for a year or so, finally getting a warrant approved to go into several safe deposit box facilities and blindly open up every single box. Initial claims before and after the operation were that up to 90% of the boxes would or did contain proceeds from criminal pursuits. It was only months after the operation that the real figures came out that only 5 to 10% of the boxes were related to any criminal activity. Maybe even less. In the meantime, cash and jewelry and other valuables went missing from the seized contents, and box owners were forced to prove where they got things and where and how they got the money to pay for them.

Just a real horror story for those victims involved, and a gigantic warning story about how bad government can get. Link is below:

England Operation Rize

David Sirota had a good article today about "TARP on Steroids". Included in the Obama administration Wall Street "reform" bill is language that will let the administration initiate unlimited bank bailouts without Congressional approval, and also language that will limit bailouts to the big banks (thus screwing over many smaller and community banks). And if you were hoping for more oversight or limits on executive pay, you weren't paying attention to the lobbyists lined up outside the door, and that stuff is nowhere to be found in this new bill.

This tends to make me believe that the banking crisis is not over, but going to get bigger. In addition, this makes it obvious that those in power intend to rake off even more taxpayer money for themselves. Full speed ahead, ethics be damned I bet. Obama will stand tall mouthing platitudes while Congress continues to rape the American taxpayer.

Link to Sirota's article below:
David Sirota

New Zealand researchers have looked at the carbon footprint of family pets, and the conclusion is.....Eat Fido and save the environment!
Interesting idea, and I'm sure they'll get a lot of publicity.

Link is below:
Eat Your Pet

I was in Vegas in September, and the hotel I was at gave you USA Today every morning. Now most of the time I don't read it if I have a local paper alternative, as the local papers do a much better job of reporting actual news. While USA Today has been successful targeting travellers, it usually is a news-lite version of a real newspaper.

However, the Sept 17 issue really surprised me. They had a front page cover story on little used airports, and all the wasted money associated with them. Very nice investigative piece, I was really surprised. I think 60 Minutes also profiled one of these airports in Pennsylvania. Anyway, link is below:

Airports