Tag Archives: bridge

Quote of the Day: What Mysterious Force is Preventing Passage of a Roads Bill?

by PollyGandy Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx, at a meeting of the Business Roundtable with President Obama:

Why not, before the Congress goes home for December, just pass a bill that takes the two bipartisan bills that I just mentioned, up, and solves the problem?

Smith is referring to a couple of bills that would restore the gasoline tax to its old level and increase funding for transportation projects. He raises a good question. I suppose there could be several reasons it’s hard to pass either of these bills:

Democrats are in thrall to labor unions, who are opposed to funding more infrastructure projects.
All our roads and bridges are in pretty good shape and we don’t really need more money for them.
As a socialist, President Obama opposes these bills because they would increase the profits of billionaire construction company CEOs.
Vladimir Putin has threatened to invade Nova Scotia if we pass these bills.
Santa Claus is coming to town and we’re all hoping we’ve been good enough to get the bridge repairs we asked him for.

Or, of course, it could be because Republicans are less afraid of letting our roads crumble into dust than they are of Grover Norquist saying mean things about them if they were to maintain the gasoline tax at historical levels. Because, you know, taxes.

Nah. That’s ridiculous. It’s probably the Putin thing.

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Quote of the Day: What Mysterious Force is Preventing Passage of a Roads Bill?

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Video: What We Saw Before Being Kicked Out of the SWAT Convention

by LonniePerron Posted on September 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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This weekend, my colleague Prashanth Kamalakanthan and I attended Urban Shield, a first-responder convention sponsored by over 100 corporations and the Department of Homeland Security. The five-day confab included a trade show where vendors display everything from armored trucks to sniper rifles to 3D printable drones. (We documented a few of the more remarkable offerings here.) It also involved the largest SWAT training exercise in the world. Some 35 SWAT teams competed in a 48-hour exercise involving 31 scenarios that included ambushing vehicles, indoor shootouts, maritime interdiction, train assaults and a mock eviction of a right-wing Sovereign Citizens group. The teams came from cities across the San Francisco Bay area, Singapore, and South Korea and included a University of California SWAT team, a team of US Marines, and a SWAT team of prison guards.

But on Sunday, at a competition site near the Bay Bridge, our coverage was cut short. A police officer confiscated our press badges, politely explaining that his captain had called and given him the order. The captain, he said, told him we had been filming in an unauthorized location, though he could not tell us where that location was. (We’d been advised earlier that it was okay to film so long as we did not go on the bridge itself.) After several phone calls from both me and my editors, no one could tell us exactly what we had done wrong, but Sgt. J.D. Nelson, the public information officer for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department (which hosts the Department of Homeland Security-funded event) made it clear that we could not have our passes back.

We’ll have a more in-depth report, and a lot more images and videos, in a few days.

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Video: What We Saw Before Being Kicked Out of the SWAT Convention

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Good News for August

by Cesar2853jg Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Hey! Rick Perlstein’s final (?) volume in his account of the rise of the modern conservative movement, The Invisible Bridge, is coming out on August 5. How did I not know this until now?

In any case, this is good news. I’ll have something good to read in August. And so will you.

UPDATE: I just got an email from Rick:

not final….

Just signed contract to write fourth and final volume taking story through 1980 election.

Hmmm. This is sounding very Game-of-Thrones-ish. It keeps expanding. When volume 4 is released, will we learn that Rick decided the 1980 election really deserved a book 5 all of its own?

In any case, I’ve long felt that that the 70s are one of the most underrated decades. An awful lot of what’s happened since was germinated in the froth of the 70s. It was a decade in which a lot of things—political, cultural, and economic—were in flux; and whether we knew it or not, we were making choices that determined which direction we were going to take over the next few decades. I’m looking forward to Rick’s take on this.

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Good News for August

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The Noose Tightens Yet Again Around Chris Christie

by Ludie69E Posted on January 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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David Wildstein, the executive who was said to be Chris Christie’s “eyes and ears” at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is deeply implicated in last year’s scheme to close the Fort Lee lanes of the George Washington Bridge in order to conduct a “traffic study.” He has since resigned, and the Port Authority is refusing to pay his legal bills. Apparently this has pissed him off. Today he sent a letter asking them to change their mind, which included this lovely little nugget:

Even if it’s only a threat, Wildstein can hardly refuse to provide this evidence now that he’s publicly said it exists. That just can’t be good news for Christie.

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The Noose Tightens Yet Again Around Chris Christie

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No, There Was Never a Legitimate Traffic Study About the Fort Lee Lane Closures

by N0bodyh56 Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby has been doing yeoman’s work on the Fort Lee lane closures, pointing out that some liberal pundits have gotten a little too far over their skis on the scandal. I’d say that’s fair. However, he also takes issue with the allegation that the “traffic study” offered up as the reason for the closings was merely a pretense made up after the fact. Technically, he’s right: there’s plenty of evidence that bridge authorities talked about the study before the lanes were closed. But that doesn’t mean the study wasn’t a pretense, only that it was a pretense made up prior to the closures. There’s a ton of evidence suggesting that this supposed study was never anything more than a tissue-thin charade:

Most traffic studies don’t involve actually doing anything to traffic: “Traffic engineers will assess the existing flow by counting cars….Then they’ll take standard calculations for what the proposed change would introduce, and plug them into formulas provided by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. It’s a pretty automated procedure, with little impact on traffic.”
If traffic is affected, it’s usually for a single day, not multiple days.
Yes, data was being collected while the lanes were shut down. However, as Somerby points out, it was tolls data. This is collected every day automatically. Nothing special was done during the Fort Lee lane closures.
No serious planning document has been produced. When the general manager of the bridge was asked if “traffic experts or engineers” had been consulted about the plan, he replied, “We had talked about gathering data….” That was it. This is hardly the hallmark of a genuine study.
Several managers at the Port Authority were flummoxed about what this study was all about. They asked why it was being done, and apparently received no credible answers.
A few weeks before lane shutdowns, one of Chris Christie’s senior aides, Bridget Anne Kelly, gleefully emailed David Wildstein, a top Christie executive at the Port Authority, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” This is obviously damning. In the first place, it doesn’t seem likely that a Christie aide would have any role to play in a legitimate traffic study. And if she did, she certainly wouldn’t take a tone like that.

Put all this together, and it’s hardly likely that the traffic study was ever genuine. The folks involved obviously knew that they needed a public story, and so they made one up. I agree that everyone should get their tenses right on this, but at this point I think it’s going too far to remain agnostic about whether the Fort Lee lane closures were ever part of a legitimate traffic study. If they were, we’d know it by now.

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No, There Was Never a Legitimate Traffic Study About the Fort Lee Lane Closures

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New Christie Bridge Scandal Email: Cops Forced to Direct Traffic Instead of Responding to Emergencies

by Ivan Nutter Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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More MoJo coverage of Chris Christie’s bridge scandal


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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official


Chris Christie’s Not in the Clear Yet. These Text Messages Show Why.


Here Are the Chris Christie Emails Everyone Is Talking About


9 Times Chris Christie Denied Using a Bridge for Political Revenge


VIDEO: David Corn on What Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal Means for 2016


5 Unanswered Questions About Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal


New Bridge Scandal Emails: Port Authority Official Said Christie Team’s Lane Closure “Violates Federal Law”

The massive, four-day September traffic jam orchestrated by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s deputy chief of staff as an act of political retribution caused police in Fort Lee, New Jersey to spend their time directing traffic instead of responding to local emergencies, according to an email released on Friday by state investigators probing the scandal.

On September 9, the first day of the traffic problems, Robert Durando, the Port Authority’s general manager of the George Washington Bridge, wrote to Cedrick Fulton, the Port Authority’s director of tunnels, bridges and terminals: “Traffic conditions required Ft Lee police to remain out on corners, managing traffic instead of attending to public safety issues.”

The email is more evidence of the public safety consequences of September’s traffic jams. On Wednesday, a Fort Lee borough councilman told Mother Jones that the traffic slowed the police search for a missing 4-year-old child. NorthJersey.com reported that the traffic doubled EMS response times in two emergencies on September 9. In a third instance, emergency responders “took nearly an hour to arrive at a building where a person was experiencing chest pains.”

Members of Christie’s inner circle appear to have considered the potential public safety ramifications of the traffic jam while it was ongoing. In one exchange released on Wednesday, Port Authority official David Wildstein, a Christie appointee, waved away complaints from the Fort Lee mayor that school buses filled with children were stuck in traffic. “Bottom line is he didn’t say safety,” Wildstein wrote.

Durando’s message was part of an email thread, “Angry Patron,” describing locals’ reactions to the traffic problems. In a separate email, Lisa Herrera, an employee of the Port Authority tunnels, bridges and terminals division, said she received a complaint from a woman whose husband arrived 40 minutes late for his first day of work at a job he landed after being unemployed for a year. The women accused the Port Authority of “playing God with people’s jobs,” Herrera wrote.

A New Jersey legislative panel investigating the bridge scandal released these emails Friday as part of a collection of hundreds of private emails and text messages related to September’s lane closures. Read those documents here.

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New Christie Bridge Scandal Email: Cops Forced to Direct Traffic Instead of Responding to Emergencies

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Chris Christie Needs to Talk to Bridget Anne Kelly Pronto

by Raisacjayv Posted on January 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Recent political scandals have given us a whole new set of colorful euphemisms for dodgy behavior. Wide stance. Walking the Appalachian trail. Drunken stupor. And now, We’re doing a traffic study.

More MoJo coverage of Chris Christie’s bridge scandal


Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal, Explained


Chris Christie: I Am “Heartbroken” And “Embarrassed” About Bridge Scandalâ&#128;&#148;But Not Guilty


Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official


Here Are the Chris Christie Emails Everyone Is Talking About


9 Times Chris Christie Denied Using a Bridge for Political Revenge


VIDEO: David Corn on What Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal Means for 2016


5 Unanswered Questions About Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal


Bridgegate Edges Closer and Closer to Chris Christie Himself

And speaking of Bridgegate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie held an epic press conference today about it. Actually, “held” is the wrong word. As I write this, it’s still going on. He’s apologized repeatedly, denied that he’s a bully, claimed that he’s embarrassed and humiliated, and fired a couple of his close aides. He’s doing pretty well, and if he’s telling the truth that he knew nothing about any of this before it happened, then he might be able to put it all behind him eventually. Still, I was struck by this:

Q: I’m wondering what your staff said to you about why they lied to you. Why would they do that? What was their explanation? And what about Mr. Samson? What role did he play in this?

GOV. CHRISTIE: I have — I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out. And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I’m, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment.

Bridget Anne Kelly was one of Christie’s top aides, and very clearly someone who was rather gleefully involved in planning the pre-election lane closures on the George Washington Bridge as retribution against the mayor of Ft. Lee. But Christie wasn’t interested in talking to her directly to find out what was going on? Really? That sounds like a guy who either (a) already knows what she’d tell him, or (b) is afraid of what she might tell him.

A friend of mine also emails with this:

Here’s something I haven’t heard yet, and it seems kinda obvious to me:

Bridget Anne Kelly: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

David Wildstein: “Got it.”

Does this exchange sound like it’s between two people who are suggesting a new and novel way to screw their political opponents, or between two people who have clearly done this before?

If I’m working in the governor’s office1 and someone sends me an email saying “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee!” I’d probably email back something like, “What are you talking about?” or “What happened in Fort Lee that’s causing all the traffic?” Instead, Wildstein knows what she’s getting at right away, and what he’s supposed to do. Then he does it.

It would surprise me less if this turns out to be the only time they’ve done this than if we discover two or three more incidents of politically inspired “traffic problems.”

Maybe that’s what Christie is afraid to find out?

1Actually, Wildstein worked at the Port Authority. But you get the idea anyway. “Wildstein was known as the Governor’s eyes and ears inside this massive agency,” says one reporter, and he’s a longtime friend and confidante of Christie’s.

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Chris Christie Needs to Talk to Bridget Anne Kelly Pronto

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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official

by EdWampleriipwu Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Private messages released on Wednesday strongly suggest that a top adviser to Republican Gov. Chris Christie orchestrated a massive traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as political retaliation against the city’s Democratic mayor.

READ MORE: Gov. Christie’s bridge scandal, explained. Future-Image/ZUMA

Calling the messages “astonishing” and “unconscionable,” members of the Fort Lee borough council described the mid-September traffic disaster, caused when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey unexpectedly closed two of the town’s access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, as having dire consequences.

“There was a missing child that day. The police had trouble conducting that search because they were tied up directing traffic,” says Jan Goldberg, a Fort Lee councilman who works with local emergency personnel. Police found the missing child, a four-year-old. “But with the streets in the condition they were, I would venture to say that the search took longer,” Goldberg says.

Ila Kasofsky, a Fort Lee councilwoman, tells Mother Jones that ambulances and other emergency vehicles could not get through the gridlock. In the aftermath of the lane closures, Kasofsky says she spoke with a Fort Lee resident who couldn’t get over the bridge to support her husband through major surgery. Another Fort Lee woman was unable to pick up her son after his dialysis session.

Police Chief Keith Bendul cited these problems when he spoke to New Jersey press in September. “On Monday, while all this was going on, we had to contend with a missing four-year-old, a cardiac arrest requiring an ambulance, and a car running up against a building,” he said. “What would happen if there was a very serious accident?”

Christie aides appear to have considered the potential public safety ramifications of the traffic jam. In one exchange released on Wednesday, Port Authority appointee David Wildstein waved away complaints from the Fort Lee mayor that school buses filled with children were stuck in traffic. “Bottom line is he didn’t say safety,” Wildstein wrote.

Goldberg called the messages revealed on Wednesday “outrageous,” saying, “It’s unimaginable that they could stoop to that level.”

“I was furious,” adds Kasofsky. “To affect the lives of thousands and thousands of people, their safety, their basic quality of life—how could anybody do such a horrible thing?”

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Christie Administration’s Bridge Lane Closure Slowed Search for Missing 4-Year-Old, Says Official

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Minnesotan towns say ‘no’ to a fracking sand mine

by Sylvesterax6 Posted on March 14, 2013

Minnesotan towns say ‘no’ to a fracking sand mine

By John Upton

Mulad

The main strip in the city of St. Charles, Minn.

The fracking industry can’t seem to buy itself any love.

While lawmakers in New York, Vermont, Fort Collins, Colo., and elsewhere consider or implement bans on hydraulic fracturing, companies that mine the sand that’s used by frackers are also finding themselves rejected. And dejected.

Minnesota Proppant is one such company. It wanted to open one of the world’s largest frac-sand processing and rail-loading facilities in St. Charles Township in rural southeastern Minnesota (population 629). Sand in that area is highly prized by the fracking industry: It is just the right size and strength to be pumped with water and chemicals at high pressure into gas-rich shale, where it wedges into cracks that are opened up and holds them open, allowing natural gas to escape.

Unfortunately for the company, townsfolk weren’t too keen on the pollution it was expected to produce. Nor were they thrilled that well water would be liberally pumped out of the ground by the miners. Concerns were raised about lung diseases that could be caused by airborne silica. And they worried that the local tourism industry could take a hit.

Do you suppose company officials took a hint and moved on?

They did not.

Instead, the company looked to the next city over. It promised abundant jobs and economic progress to the city of St. Charles (population 3,735) if lawmakers there would just annex the potential sand-mining land into city limits, and permit the proposed mine to open.

But on Tuesday evening, the city council rejected that proposal. From the Star Tribune:

Mayor Bill Spitzer said the issue was tearing the community apart. His biggest reason for saying “no” to the project, he said, was to stay on good terms with the township. “Once you start destroying relationships, you can’t move forward,” Spitzer said.

What Spitzer perhaps didn’t realize was that his city’s move would destroy other relationships — those precious relationships of onetime business partners who had joyously come together to scoop sand out of the ground so it could be sold to frackers. From a followup story in the Star Tribune:

The collapse of a major frac sand proposal in Winona County has caused a split among investors in the project, with one faction pulling out in frustration over Minnesota’s anti-frac sand sentiment.

“Me and my partners split up. They went to Wisconsin,” said Rick Frick, one of two remaining principals in Minnesota Proppant LLC. “Were they fed up? Yes, that had a lot to do with it.”

Wisconsin, he said, has embraced the industry more warmly than Minnesota has — to the point where some communities are “tickled pink” about upswings in jobs and taxes. In the past four years, the nation’s oil and gas fracking boom, which relies on silica sand as a main drilling ingredient, has coincided with the permitting of almost 100 new mining facilities in Wisconsin.

Take it easy there, buddy. Not everybody in Wisconsin loves your kind. Just last month the town of Bridge Creek, Wis., rejected plans to open a similar frac sand mine there.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Minnesotan towns say ‘no’ to a fracking sand mine

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Adorable little Michigan town has big plans for cutting carbon emissions

by Myrna Posted on December 18, 2012

Adorable little Michigan town has big plans for cutting carbon emissions

By Philip Bump

Ann Arbor is a small town in Michigan that, like so many small towns across the Midwest, has been hard-hit as industry has increasingly moved away or overseas. A pleasant place with small hills and tree-lined streets, Ann Arbor has never had any distinguishing characteristic: no classic architecture, no famous music hall, no museums of note. Just a standard small town with a little main street, like so many other thousands littering the region.

But now, at last, Ann Arbor has done something to help it stand out, something of which — after so many years! — it might rightly be proud.

mike_miley

This is the town’s train station! Adorbs.

From AnnArbor.com (it doesn’t even have a real newspaper!):

The Ann Arbor City Council took action Monday night to adopt a Climate Action Plan, a 188-page document that outlines dozens of ways to reduce the community’s carbon footprint.

Building on previous environmental goals set by the City Council, the new plan recommends three targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

That includes a goal of reducing the entire community’s emissions by 8 percent by 2015, by 25 percent by 2025, and by 90 percent by 2050 — all relative to 2000 baseline levels.

I mean, first of all it’s cute that such an insignificant town has a city council! Just goes to show you that democracy can take root in even the driest soil.

But, second, this is a good idea. The city’s plan includes improved energy efficiency, transitioning to renewable energy production (right now, I believe they use an old coal furnace out back of Doc Bridge’s), increasing food labeling so that residents know how much carbon dioxide was produced for each item, and reducing recycling and garbage pickup. Interesting steps that could probably only fly in such a small backwater.

The city has already seen a drop since 2000 in the amount of carbon dioxide produced in its commercial and industrial sectors — a success that it hopes to increase across the board.

“This is one more step in a long history of action that we’re taking and recognizing that a global problem like climate change is more than we can handle on our own,” [Council Member Chuck] Warpehoski said.

I mean, how great is that? It’s like when they have a big pledge drive on TV and a little kid sends in a quarter from her piggy bank because she wants to help. Ann Arbor, you are the cutest little thing. Let’s hope that this, if nothing else, gives you something to be proud of.

P.S.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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