It Can Be One Or The Other But Not Both

I thought we had this big traffic congestion problem, so why the need for speed cameras? Another gadget, I guess:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg will push state legislators to allow the city to install cameras equipped with devices to capture speeding motorists, similar to the ones already installed at dozens of red lights.

The big “I love it! Island roads are too dangerous and we need to do something”/”I hate it! That technology does nothing but take money out of the wallets of unsuspecting drivers” poll in the Advance is running two-to-one against the idea . . .

As far as it being a big money-making mechanism, that tends not to turn out as well as some think it will.

Some Things I Learned Today . . .

1) A Vallone is making it that much more difficult for me to spray paint.

2) Cops walk around with fake badges, or “dupes” so that this way, when they’re “going to go get boxed” on a Friday or Saturday night, they don’t have to say they lost their shield while out drinking.

3) Few people apparently trust a 36-year-old with a $1 billion-a-year city agency, even ones busy “tending to the people’s business” (but why so much Benjamin Button hatred?).

It’s Like The Guy Who Insists That He’s Not So Much “Anti-Black” As He Is “Pro-White”

Because when you go down that debate-club road, you start wondering why we should bother with hate crime laws at all:

Police said that they are investigating the strange Nazi-runic graffiti in the hopes of tracking down who’s leaving the coded messages — most recently on the pedestrian foot bridge on East 14th Street and Shore Parkway back on May 13.

While many residents ignored the iron crosses, the number 88 — a code number among neo−Nazis for “Heil Hitler” — and the phrase “Triumph of Will” on the pedestrian bridge, a few concerned citizens in Sheepshead Bay called authorities — especially since the graffiti was found a short distance from Holocaust Memorial Park on Emmons and West End avenues, the only city park dedicated to victims of the Holocaust.

Members of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force are on the case, although sources said that the graffiti could not be considered “bias” because it wasn’t solely directed to any ethnic group.

The graffiti was more pro-Nazi than anti-Jew, officials said.

Band Of Vikings On Loose In Greenpoint

And they have cans of spray paint:

Even ardent neo-Nazis would have a hard time figuring out the bizarre graffiti cops are investigating in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (above). It seems to be written in an obscure alphabet by someone interested in obscure occult ideas that inspired some of Adolf Hitler’s followers.

The characters in the peculiar graffiti tags look like runes, the ancient alphabets of pre-Roman tribes in central and northern Europe. Some people associate runes with magical powers.

One tag says: “Das Geheinns der Runen,” German for “The Secret of the Runes,” a book by Guido von List, an Austrian occultist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Explain Me, Please

Twelve-county payroll taxes, fare increases, toll increases — fine: everyone pays a little, whatever. But in a time when elected officials use taxes as both a way to change behavior and raise massive amounts of money (through either congestion pricing or tolls — and then actually via plastic bags), what exactly is the point of a 50-cent surcharge on taxi rides? To punish people who don’t own cars? To force women to take subways late at night? To mess with the TLC?

And are taxi riders really paying for “upstate” highways? How far upstate exactly?