In the long sordid history of nanny-state enviro-fascism, this may take the prize as the biggest waste of taxpayer dollars and most breathtaking example of leftist bureaucratic insanity:
City of San Francisco to squander $150,000 to determine if sailboats scare birds.
No, I am not making this up:
To keep the big America’s Cup contest afloat, San Francisco has agreed to spend $150,000 to study whether the racing boats — and their towering sails — will scare birds on the bay.
The study, which will be conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, is part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by a group that included former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.
“It’s not that we’re trying to head-shrink the birds,” said Mike Lynes of the Golden Gate Audubon Society. “But when they take off because they are frightened, they expend energy, and that can affect their health.“
Oh, the humanity! The poor birds may simply die of exhaustion having to to take flight every time they see a scary sailboat!
I mean, it’s not like seagulls would normally spend 18 hours a day flying around in powerful winds or anything. They are a retiring and sedate species!
In defense of SF’s city government, it wasn’t their idea originally to embark on this worse-than-useless study: they only did so to fend off a lawsuit by extremist environmental groups (headed up, ironically, by a former city supervisor) who goal is to stop the America’s Cup race at all costs, because activities that are fun and enjoyable for human beings are verboten.
But the city should not have caved. They should have called out the “green” activists and refused to accommodate their lunacy. The goal of the nuisance lawsuit is not to actually succeed in legally stopping the America’s Cup, but rather to create such a bothersome gauntlet of expensive legal actions, protests and negative publicity that the boosters who brought the race to San Francisco will simply give up trying in the future, fearful of repeat lawsuits.
If you give an inch to the bureaucratic terrorists, they’ll take a mile, and then your whole territory. Unfortunately for the taxpayers of San Francisco, there are a substantial number of local politicians who openly sympathize with the extreme environmentalists’ agenda, so they were more than happy to waste money, as an object lesson in what happens when you violate Gaia.
Lesson for other local governments: Fight back!
Why in hell didn’t the judge sua sponte throw this lawsuit out?
Answer: This is San Francisco, remember.
In San Francisco, nuisance lawsuits succeed, while legitimate legal complaints get tossed out of court.
The Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals is headquartered here, don’t forget. I don’t need to run down the litany of insane rulings they’ve issued. And Kamala Harris used to be our Attorney General — she who released illegal alien rapists back on the street where they could murder people, all because it “violated their civil rights” to deport them.
Totalitarianism through the courts is how things work around here.
Welcome to America’s future.
Oh, I know. I’m a law librarian and I see all sorts of lawsuits that not only should be tossed, but be subject to Rule 12(b) sanctions. I just wish there were judges who’d enforce it.
– Harris IS our A.G., having been the D.A. of S.F. Next stop: USSC.
Yes, that’s right – I mixed up the terminonology of the office title. She was the District Attorney of SF, before becoming the Attorney General of CA.
– faulted; the Long Count of votes, as happened following the primary months before, was highly suspicious.
I think they are right. Why take a chance on scaring some seagulls? Move the race to Texas.
I remember from a number of years ago when the SF city council was debating what the city’s official song should be: either keep “San Francisco” or change it to “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”. After some time they decided to keep “San Franscisco” as the official song and make “ILMHSF” the official *ballad*.
They’re overpaid, folks.
Back in the Nineties, I think.
The WSJ reported that the SF EPA office had refused a license to an abalone farm which was going to locate in one of the piers at Monterey. They said the sea water would have to be filtered after being passed through the abalone-growing tanks.
As if Monterey Bay wasn’t already contaminated with abalone poop.
Thank heaven the era of clipper ships is long past, or the tea trade would be in serious trouble…
I don’t know about sailboats, but I know damn well seagulls and pelicans aren’t afraid of cars. They used mine for target practice all the time when I lived on the Gulf Coast.
I suppose they could have used that money to research how WIND MILLS not only scare birds but kill them. (They do, in large numbers.) But that’s something they’d rather not look into.
Sailboats? What maroons.
Maybe San Fran should just cancel Fleet Week, since there will be those big scary Navy ships and planes.
http://www.fleetweek.us/page_events.html
Actually Fleet Week is wildly popular here in SF. Except for perhaps the World Can’t Wait people and sundry spoiled Occupy dudes, pretty much all flavors of ideology are united in their love of Fleet Week.
Many many years ago I was on the roof deck of a friend’s apartment watching the Blue Angels. It’s safe to say all I was with were conventional leftists and hated Reagan etc. but were oohing an aahing over the airshow.
The lawsuit was NOT brought to stop the race because “activities that are fun and enjoyable are verboten”, it was because this particular activity is enjoyed by wealthy people. If this was an event by and for the “economically disadvantaged”, it would have been just fine, no matter how much filth and waste was created, or how many birds were “scared”. Environmental wackos are not nearly as concerned with the environment as they are with wealthy people existing in the environment.