CHICAGO: AS CITY CYCLING GROWS, SO DOES BIKE TAX TEMPTATION

CHICAGO (AP) -- Early blasts of snow, ice and below-zero temperatures haven't stopped a surprising number of Chicago cyclists from spinning through the slush this winter, thanks in part to a city so serious about accommodating them that it deploys mini-snow plows to clear bike lanes.

The snow-clearing operation is just the latest attention city leaders have lavished on cycling, from a growing web of bike lanes to the nation's second largest shared network of grab-and-go bicycles stationed all over town. But it also spotlights questions that have been raised here, a city wrestling with deep financial problems, and across the country.

Who is paying for all this bicycle upkeep? And shouldn't bicyclists be kicking in themselves?

A city councilwoman's recent proposal to institute a $25 annual cycling tax set off a lively debate that eventually sputtered out after the city responded with a collective "Say what?" A number of gruff voices spoke in favor, feeding off motorists' antagonism toward what they deride as stop sign-running freeloaders. Bike-friendly bloggers retorted that maybe pedestrians ought to be charged a shoe tax to use the sidewalks.

Via: AP

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$140,000 in Art Grants Went to Group that Features Vagina Videos

A Los Angeles-based art group that has received $140,500 in taxpayer funding is promoting an obscene video on its website that ends with a man screaming into a vagina.

The Center for Individual Freedomreports that the video is one of six displayed on the homepage of ”L.A. Freewaves.” The National Endowment for the Arts has given the group 10 grants, and most recently paid $50,000 for Freewaves to create “bus art.”

The National Endowment for the Arts did not finance the vagina video.

“When it’s not assaulting the senses of L.A. bus riders, Freewaves uses tax dollars to feature controversial videos such as ‘Between,’ which is currently on the home page of the group’s website,” the Center for Individual Freedom said.

“The clip, which would offend many of the taxpayers who helped to subsidize its creation, shows blurry close-ups of various body parts over a bed of muffled talking and electronic whirs, until it concludes with a man yelling repeatedly into a nude woman’s vagina.”

In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, cofounder of Freewaves Anne Bray said the video did not receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“This particular video comes from Brazil in 2002 as part of our Latin American Freewaves,” she said. “It was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA) one day and in a private gallery for one month. NEA funding was not applicable to either of those events.”

Via: WFB

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