The Anti-Advertising Agency » taxes

Smart License Plates: A Very Dumb Idea?

Steve Lambert — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:08:18 +0000

Do you think the idea of California license plates than can show electronic ads is:

1. A great idea, about time.

2. Possibly questionable, but let’s study it.

3. One of the top ten worst ideas of all time.

If you answered yes to #1, don’t bother reading further. If you answered yes to #2, you’re in line with 25 California State Senators who voted to do just that, study the idea. If you answered yes to #3, you can spend the rest of the day (or evening) pondering how woefully befuddled those legislators are to even spend a minute contemplating the idea.

The perpetrator-in-chief is Los Angeles area Senator Curren Price, who apparently sniffs some revenue for a state in perpetual budget crisis as well as perpetual paralysis between cutting spending and raising taxes. How much revenue? Who knows? In numerous news articles on the subject, Price is quoted as saying that he’s only proposing a study of the idea, and that the study will not be funded by the state? Huh? Who will fund it, then? And how will that affect the objectivity of the study’s conclusions?

Here’s the legislative analysis of the proposal. And below is one of the TV news pieces on the issue, with pros (gulp) and cons.

Consumer Reports: California considers ads on car license plates

Steve Lambert — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:51:52 +0000

Facing a $19 billion deficit, California is seeking creative solutions to its budget shortfall. The state legislature is considering a program that would allow advertising on license plates, according to the Associated Press. The bill would require new, digital plates, with ads appearing in the space currently occupied by the familiar numbers and letters. The ads would only appear once the vehicle had been sitting still for four seconds.

Smart Plate, a San Francisco startup, is reportedly developing a digital license, though it does not have a model that is production ready.

A CNN story suggests that these plates could display paid advertising and public service announcements (PSAs). Further, the new plates could benefit the Amber Alert system, with notifications flashed on plates across the state to apprehend criminals. It’s conceivable, though, that some drivers may not agree or endorse an advertised product or PSA.

In a nation already overrun by advertising, and with distracted driving fatalities and injuries on the rise, it seems like a no-brainer to defeat such legislation that could only make our roads more dangerous.

And California, as opponents to the ads point out, already has some of the worst traffic jams in the country. It stands to reason that ads popping up on cars will only add to driver distraction.

I understand that desperate times call for desperate measures, but it strikes me that this fanciful idea could create more problems than it solves.

What do you think? Post your thoughts and alternative suggestions in the comments below.

via Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Budget brainstorm: California considers ads on car license plates.

Corporate Sponsored Pothole Repair!

Steve Lambert — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:59:40 +0000

Guest post from AAA Reader James Ewert:

A certain greasy chicken franchise is adding another item to its menu: pothole patching. In Louisville, KY and potentially in a town near you, what was once a city service paid for by tax payers might become another avenue for advertising. The fried chicken restaurant extended an offer to mayors across the country to have the restaurant fill the city’s potholes and in return be allowed to affix a chalk logo to the newly paved asphalt. I know it’s a recession and all, and municipalities are feeling the pinch when it comes to typical city services like snow plowing and pothole patching, but come on; do we really need a fried chicken restaurant filling potholes for us? – James Ewert

Thanks James! If you’re concerned about corporation sweeping into rescue us from tax cuts, see these previous posts:

Demand a Read/Write City

Steve Lambert — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:18:23 +0000

This is graffiti:

it’s spray paint
it’s done without permission on someone else’s property
it’s illegal
politicians hate it

It’s the expression of a citizen (or small group of citizens) in public space speaking to fellow citizens. Anyone, willing to take the legal risk, can do it.

This is advertising:

it’s printed vinyl
it’s done with permission from the city
it’s legal (When it’s not legal there’s often little to no consequence.)
legal or not, it makes money – though often not enough
politicians love it

It’s the expression of a corporate interest. A small number of people who have thousands of dollars, a specific and narrow interest and some influence can do it. They speak to people as consumers, not citizens.

For the first time, the MTA is turning the outside of their trains over to advertising company, Titan Outdoor. It will start with the Times Square shuttle in a test program. But with the potential for more (my emphasis added):

If this test at Grand Central/Times Square stations is successful, other high-traffic stations could easily be included for similar sales packages.

In addition to the above efforts in the GCT/Times Square Area, in the first quarter of 2009 Times Square Shuttle tunnel will also become the home of the first in-tunnel advertising installation. The shuttle riders will be able to view a full motion video presentation through the window of the shuttle car. The MTA is also planning to pilot test a digital dominated station concept at two of the NYCT stations, Grand Central Shuttle Station and 42nd and 6th Avenue Station mezzanine (Bryant Park).

To further expand the advertising revenue base, MTA in partnership with Titan Outdoor (its MTA bus and commuter rail advertising contractor), will be pilot testing digital advertising on one of its NYCT buses and, if successful, hope to expand the program to approximately 200 buses. In addition, a similar digital advertising pilot test is planned for in car commuter rail displays in the near future.

One thing I’m sure of – this install will be amazing. This will likely be bold, and inventive and incorporate amazing new technologies. It will be novel and smart, maybe funny. People will be impressed, if not wowed. And why wouldn’t they be? There will be some of the most creative people in the world working on it with years of research and experience and millions of dollars behind it.

So what’s wrong with this?

First, as usual, it’s not a worthwhile deal for the city. With an annual budget of 11.5 billion, the MTA hopes to bring in another 20 million in ad revenue with the program during the next year – a whopping total of .17% of their budget.

The MTA and New York City are becoming outdoor advertising companies themselves, turning over the captive eyes of commuters for a handful of revenue. Many don’t realize this conflict of interest is making it difficult for the city to regulate advertising, even when it’s clearly illegal.

Another point is that it creates a “read-only” culture. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lawrence Lessig talks about “read only culture” versus “read/write culture.” He uses this analogy to talk about copyright, but I’m going to radically extend his argument to the city.

Our city is read-only. You’re free to read advertising, business signs, and city signs. But dare you write or hang anything of your own; you will be labeled as a criminal – a graffiti vandal. In many cities it’s even illegal to hang a sign for a garage sale on a light pole. If you happen to have a several thousand dollars, you might be able to say what you want – as long as it’s not too political.

But this is public space. You’re free to say whatever you want in public space, but freedom of speech does not extend to the visual environment. The visual environment is pay to play. Public visual space has become commercial space.

The visual environment is read only.

Why is read/write better? Because you can consume, process, and respond. This is how we think critically. This is how we learn. You can talk back. You can express yourself. You don’t just consume expression, you create expression.

Read/write is how democracy works.

There’s a reason kids want to write their names on walls. There’s a reason why people take graffiti seriously. Granted, graffiti writers don’t always know how to direct this energy, but I’d argue there’s some overlap with the reasons one writes their name on a wall and the reasons one runs for the school board. Being able to write means being able to affect your environment. To change it. You exist in the world not as a consumer, but an active citizen.

Read only culture creates apathy.

So how could the MTA do it right? Strip all the advertising from the transit system. Demand more tax revenue for public transit. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of brilliant ways that to raise money that will also make the city more livable, like increasing parking meter rates to raise $5 billion dollars. Use the surplus money to fund better, more dynamic, and temporary art in transit programs. Create an open application process and let some of New York’s great artists and designers wrap a car. They’ll liven up the system and speak to riders as fellow citizens.

Yes it sounds impossible, but as the Situationists said, “Be realistic, demand the impossible!“

To give more credit, beyond Larry Lessig, I’m also synthesizing some ideas from artist Brett Cook-Dizney and others I can’t think of right away.

Sorry Amber, for Calif. Republicans you’re just not as important as this precious, precious money.

Steve Lambert — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:00:57 +0000

The L.A. Times is reporting Clear Channel has its eye on 674 state owned digital billboards on California Highways. The billboards were installed to alert drivers to road hazards and for Amber Alerts providing “urgent bulletins in the most serious child-abduction cases.”

But now the state is listening to Clear Channel.

Apparently California needs money. In the Governor’s budget it says, “chronic underinvestment has increased congestion and has resulted in California having some of the most distressed highway and road conditions in the United States.”

Of course, this is the neo-liberal fantasy:

the government under-funds infrastructure
infrastructure falls apart
Conservatives claim that government can’t be trusted and we need private industry and competition!
Conservatives then make private, exclusive deals with corporations so they can sweep in to the rescue/for the profit.

I can’t imagine this proposal going very far, but the whining about being broke and the publicity that follows may be intended to prepare voters for a comparatively less disgusting option.

As argued in the L.A. Times story, yes it’s an eyesore, yes it might be dangerous to drivers, yes it will train people pay less attention to a sign designed to help abducted children and tell them about emergencies – thereby nearly nullifying it. But more important that that, it’s public space and public property that belongs to us, not corporations.

But perhaps you’re more fiscally minded. This is another bad deal made by politicians with advertising and marketing companies. (Politicians who are most likely being lobbied by and receiving campaign donations from Clear Channel.) Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) says the money will be used for highway repair and _potentially_ may be “tens of millions of dollars.” The California Transportation Commission’s annual budget is $28,466,000,000.

Another drop in the bucket. Sorry Amber.

Thanks for the tip from reader Sam.

Advertising wont solve economic problems for NYC

Steve Lambert — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:35:48 +0000

Another bad deal to trade public space for money from The New York Sun:

Council Member David Yassky of Brooklyn is calling for the city to begin allowing advertising on municipal trash cans and suggested that such a move, which he estimated could bring $2.5 million in revenue, would help during difficult economic times. “We need to be as creative as we can about finding sources of revenues to ease the burden on taxpayers,” Mr. Yassky said yesterday. “We sold advertising on newsstands and bus shelters and other so-called street furniture. There’s just no reason not to extend that to trash cans.” Mr. Yassky’s push for trash can ads is the latest in a series of moves to expand public advertising, a lucrative source of income for the city. Council Member Melinda Katz introduced legislation last year that would allow advertising rights to be sold for construction sheds and scaffolding, many of which are currently covered with illegal posters. The bill, which has more than 30 co-sponsors, has not been brought to the floor for a vote.

Ad Sales Seen as Answer to City’s Economic Woes – September 15, 2008 – The New York Sun

2.5 million sure sounds like a lot of money to help with these difficult economic times, but let’s look at what the residents of this city get when Council Members like David Yassky and Melinda Yatz hand over public space and city property to corporations. NYC’s budget for 2009 is $59,100,000,000 and putting ads on trash cans would raise 2.5 million. Since those numbers are so large, I created this visualization:

It wasn’t easy to create a chart because the 2.5 million amount is so relatively small. Can you see the dot down at the bottom? At 0.004 percent of the current budget, it’s not a lot of money.

Additionally, the city can’t afford to shoot itself in the foot anymore after making billion dollar deals with CEMUSA to put ads all over town. They’ve since been tied up in courts with advertising bandits FUEL outdoor, who have placed illegal signs all over the city. When FUEL was called on it, they claimed the city was in the advertising business themselves (citing the CEMUSA deal) and therefor in a conflict of interest. As brilliant an argument as it is sleazy.

Regulating illegal activity to capitalize on it wont make the city more livable. Council members Yassky and Katz need to remember, people don’t want more ads. They want trees. Times Square is an interesting place to visit, but no one wants to live there. If the city wants to make money, enforce laws against illegal advertising, increase the fines, and make a more livable city at the same time.

If the city wants to make some real money, they could make billions if they’d expand their current plan and increase parking meter rates. Selling public space to advertisers is not the answer.

In Florida, Billboards Trump Trees : NPR

Steve Lambert — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:00:11 +0000

excerpted from – In Florida, Billboards Trump Trees : NPR

Highway 192 used to be exceptionally plain. It was lined by weed-filled ditches, with no sidewalks and poor lighting. It was drab.

So the property owners voted to tax themselves $29 million to make the roadway safer and prettier.

“Look at it today,” says Lizasuain. “We have 10-foot sidewalks on both sides of the road. We have bicycle paths, well-lit bus shelters, information-filled kiosks. And that’s not even mentioning the beautiful landscaping that we have out here.”

Trees Vs. Billboards

The landscaping included 360 palms, 300 oleanders and 1,400 loquats, among other trees. But as the county made these improvements several years ago, some people were not happy.

“We alerted [the county] that … we’ve got a problem,” recalls Craig Swygert. He heads the Orlando division of Clear Channel Outdoor, which owns billboards along Highway 192.

“The billboards were there first, and the trees started popping up, and they were done so in a way that they would block the view of the billboard,” he says. He argued that by planting the trees where it did, the government was acting unfairly. “It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you a permit to be in business, but then we’re going to take it away after you’ve already invested all this money.’”

Clear Channel and other billboard companies complained that beautification projects on a number of Florida roads threatened their business, so they lobbied the state Legislature for protection.

Who Controls The View?

The public outcry wasn’t just about trees. It was about a larger issue: Who gets to control the view? Why should a private industry dictate what the public sees on a public highway?

“The issue of billboard companies seeking to cut down public trees is something that’s happening all over the country,” says Bill Jonson, who serves on the board of the advocacy group Scenic America.

Jonson calls this industry lobbying effort inappropriate — “because they’re public trees” — but it has been effective. Several states now have laws that give billboards precedence over beautification projects, and those laws often leave local communities powerless to save their trees.

Read the rest: In Florida, Billboards Trump Trees : NPR

New York City’s Struggle to Take Down Illegal Billboards

Steve Lambert — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:00:02 +0000

from the Village Voice with IllegalBillboards.org‘s own Jordan Seiler.

City government and citizen vigilantes wage a losing battle against Clear Channel and illegal ads

By Elizabeth Dwoskin

Over the past seven years, Jordan Seiler estimates that he’s taken down hundreds of billboards, posters, and other signs to replace advertising in public places with his own artwork.

Armed with a screwdriver and anti-vandal bits, Seiler commits his acts of vandalism both as an ongoing art project and as a political statement: Thousands of billboards in the city, he says, are technically illegal.

And he’s right. According to the city, all billboards within 200 feet of “arterial highways”—the West Side Highway, the FDR, the BQE, and major thoroughfares such as Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway—have been illegal since the 1940s. All ads put up on scaffolding and construction sheds are illegal, too, unless they’re advertising the business whose signage has been covered up.

As Seiler has discovered, once you know the rules, you realize that illegal ads are, literally, everywhere: on building walls, sidewalk sheds, phone kiosks, and alongside highways. There are so many of them, it makes you wonder if that city has given up on enforcing its own laws. The city hasn’t given up—over the past two years, New York has been fighting what amounts to a sign war with outdoor advertising companies. The Department of Buildings claims the ads are a threat to public safety and a major cause of visual pollution. The advertisers argue that the signs can’t really be so bad if the city has neglected to take them down for decades.

In 2000, Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that the city would be cracking down on the hundreds of illegal billboards lining the highways. The City Council raised the criminal fines for an illegal billboard from $5,000 to $25,000 and put size limits in place. Until then there had been no limit at all, and most advertisers had considered the fines to be “a small cost of doing business,” according to city lawyer Gabriel Taussig. Billboards in high-traffic areas are estimated to draw more than $50,000 each month. Some can draw hundreds of thousands in revenue.

Eight years later, however, not a single billboard has been removed. After the zoning resolution went into effect in 2006, Clear Channel sued the city, saying that the laws infringed on its First Amendment rights. (According to SEC filings, the company had more than 16,000 advertising displays in New York that year.) Until the lawsuit is resolved, the buildings department can’t take down any illegal billboards.

In 2007, the city was also sued by another advertiser: Metro Fuel LLC, which is owned by the hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital, has erected 360 illuminated “panel signs” throughout the city. By the company’s own estimate, 90 percent of its signs are technically illegal—their brightness is considered a safety hazard, and their locations violate zoning ordinances. (Panel signs look like rectangular flaps or flags and are attached to the signs of buildings.) Jacksonville-based attorney Bill Brinton, who has fought more than 30 cases against advertising companies in the past two decades, says Metro Fuel is following a pattern around the country: putting up illegal signs and, when a city objects, challenging the constitutionality of sign laws. The strategy worked in Los Angeles, where a district court, ruling in favor of the company, struck down the city’s outdoor-advertising laws (Los Angeles appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court. Oral arguments were heard in June). Fuel Outdoors, which is involved in another pending lawsuit in San Francisco, hired a mighty legal team in the Los Angeles case: Harvard constitutional-law expert Laurence Tribe and the politically connected Washington law firm Akin Gump.

As in the case of the highway billboards, the panel signs will stay up during the legal battle.

Like Clear Channel, Metro Fuel contends that the city has been inconsistent— and not only because it’s been lax in enforcing its own laws over the years. The company’s lawyers also claim that New York operates under a double standard, attacking privately owned outdoor- advertising companies while profiting off the city’s own ads—ads that Metro Fuel argues violate the very same regulations.

And New York makes a lot of money on public advertising. The ads placed on the city’s 13,000 public-phone kiosks— many of which contain phones that no longer work—bring in more than $13 million each year for the city. That’s triple the amount of revenue that comes from the phone calls themselves.

But the real moneymaker is the city’s 2005 contract to build thousands of pieces of street furniture, including bus shelters, newsstands, and public pay toilets. The Spanish company Cemusa—which beat out Clear Channel in its bid to build the structures—secured rights to place advertising on every piece of furniture, and has promised the city half the gross revenues from the ads: $1 billion over the 20-year life of the contract.

“The city has shot itself in the foot by putting up all this coordinated street furniture,” says Vanessa Gruen, special projects director for the Municipal Art Society, which has been campaigning against illegal billboards since 2001. “They’re breaking their own regulation—obviously. Sooner or later, some advertising company was going to come along and say, ‘If they can do it, I can do it, too.’”

Seiler, the anti-advertising artist, has joined a group of activists who have been reporting suspicious ads to the city. “I don’t have issues with advertising, but with your ability to turn it off,” says the 28-year-old, whose day job is a freelance photographer for fashion magazines. Making his way back to his Chelsea studio after prowling for illegal ads, Seiler used his Verizon Key—a special key that the company makes to prevent vandalism, which he’d bought from a Verizon worker on the street a few years ago—to remove a movie poster from one of the company’s phone kiosks.

“I have no remorse,” Seiler says cheerily. “I think we can all agree that public advertising is a manipulative, powerful medium that isn’t in the best interest of the general public. It takes up my mental space, and it’s assaulting.”

With billboards, cities are facing the digital decision

Steve Lambert — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:22:45 +0000

By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Ah, for the good old days, when billboards were merely a blight you could avoid, sort of, by averting your eyes.

Now the outdoor advertising companies have us right where they want us: stuck in traffic or at a red light, facing a digital sign that changes about every seven seconds. At least at home, zombied out in front of our televisions, we get a little programming with our digital ads. With digital billboards, we just get ads.

“We’re there 24-7,” Clear Channel Outdoor chief executive Paul Meyer told the Washington Post last year. “There’s no mute button, no on-off switch, no changing the station.”

He says that like it’s a good thing.

And for the billboard industry, it’s a very good thing, as the fast-changing ads are bringing booming profits.

But for the rest of us — those who do not own billboard companies or have stock in them or accept money from them to fund our political campaigns — digital billboards represent a significant ratcheting up of the industry’s assault on the American landscape.

Lamar Advertising, which wants to erect a 60-by-20-foot digital sign Downtown, filed for permits to convert 42 billboards around the city — including 10 Downtown — into digital ones, hoping to beat a moratorium imposed by City Council as it considers legislation that would give council a vote on all sign replacements.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl complained that the legislation “created a chaotic position now for us to be in, in that we have to consider 42 LED billboards.”

Another way to look at it is that now we all know the scope of Lamar’s digital dream.

From Connecticut to California, digital billboards are becoming an increasingly hot issue as outdoor advertising companies seek to convert existing billboards to digital and erect new ones. State and local governments are struggling with how to regulate this bold new breed.

In September, the Federal Highway Administration gave digital billboards its blessing when it issued a memo stating that they conform to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, even though the act prohibits flashing, intermittent or moving lights on billboards — and even though the FHA’s study of the safety of digital billboards won’t be completed until next year. States have the last word on whether they want them, though, and so far they’re legal in 38 states.

A bill in the Missouri Senate would allow existing billboards to be converted to digital ones, currently prohibited by the state transportation department. The legislation has rekindled a long-running local battle between outdoor advertisers and scenic advocates, writes the Springfield Business Journal.

Beginning June 1, Texas will allow digital billboards along state highways, even within cities, if municipalities want them. Houston, Dallas and Austin have bans on new billboards, but San Antonio’s city council voted in December to allow 15 digital signs as permanent “experiments,” to the dismay of the San Antonio Conservation Society, Scenic San Antonio, the American Institute of Architects and neighborhood groups. What would Lady Bird think?

With billboard regulations written before the advent of digital signs, cities are looking around to see how other places are regulating them. In Reno, Nev., where digital billboards are not allowed, the planning commission is studying other cities’ ordinances after a proposed change to permit them.

Beaufort County, S.C., banned construction of new billboards 24 years ago, but now Atlanta-based Adams Outdoor Advertising is lobbying it to permit conversion of existing billboards to digital ones.

“Tell them no,” wrote the Island Packet newspaper in an editorial. “We want the existing signs gone, not replaced with signs even more garish and distracting. Let’s preserve some semblance of the Lowcountry aesthetic we cherish.”

In Long Beach, Calif., three neighborhood groups are fighting the construction of six digital billboards along local freeways; each sign would be 40 feet high, with a 30-by-20-foot screen.

The Long Beach City Council’s budget oversight committee endorsed the billboards in January, but council will hold hearings on the proposal in a few weeks. The budget committee has good reason to favor the billboards: Their owner would split the revenue with the city, bringing in an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million annually, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Profit-sharing is just one tactic outdoor advertisers are using to get municipalities to warm to digital signs. They’re also using existing billboards as leverage to reduce their number in exchange for permission to erect digital ones, as Lamar hopes to do here by removing 11 billboards in exchange for the Downtown digital billboard. In San Antonio, twice as much square footage must come down for each digital billboard that goes up.

Other selling points across the country are that the digital billboards can be helpful during Amber Alerts, as “wanted” posters identifying criminal suspects and communicating emergency information during disasters.

Helpful as those may be, such infrequent uses won’t compensate for the powerful negative impact an onslaught of digital billboards will have on the natural landscape and the built environment.

The digital decision is one they don’t have to make in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont, where all billboards are banned. Pittsburgh’s vistas are every bit as worthy of preservation as theirs.

Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590. First published on March 26, 2008 at 12:00 am

The Golden Gate Billboard

Paul S. — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:35:06 +0000

There was an article in the NY Times today discussing the possibility of getting some sort of “sponsorship” for the Golden Gate Bridge. You know the idea of slapping advertising on everything has gotten bad when people are seriously discussing slapping ads on national treasures. What’s next? I giant “Monster.com” sign below the Mount Rushmore heads? A huge Virgin Airways banner on the Washington Monument?

Kevin Bartram, a sponsorship consultant hired by the bridge’s overseers, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, said any sponsorship would be tastefully done. “It will be appropriate and understated,” Mr. Bartram said. “But visible.”

Uh huh, I’d say that there is absolutely no advertisement which would be “appropriate” on the Golden Gate Bridge. Here’s the problem, the conservative anti-government types have starved the government of funds, and now our elected officials are at a loss about what to do. You see, people all agree with the cut-taxes mantra, but sure don’t want any services to be cut! Of course the fact that taxes go towards things that we all want and need such as infrastructure and bridges that don’t collapse isn’t explained when politicians talk about tax cuts. So now, the Golden Gate Bridge district is going hat in hand to big corporations, who have got very low corporate tax rates, so they can fund a small portion of the expensive bridge maintenance. Of course, that advertising money which is paid to the Golden Gate Bridge will be a tax-deductible advertising expense to those corporations!

The bridge district, with a 2007 operating budget of $150 million, has a projected deficit of $80 million in the next five years. A 2002 toll increase — it now costs $5 to enter San Francisco — was passed by the bridge’s board, and bus and ferry fares have also been steadily increasing. If approved, Mr. Bertram said, corporate sponsorships could bring in as much as $4 million a year by its third year.

So we sell off the visual beauty of one of our nation’s landmarks for a paltry sum, and the bridge still can’t make enough to cover expenses. I’ve got an idea, how about we start taking in enough money in taxes to fund our basic infrastructure. Agreed?

image courtesy of flickr/Chealion