Just in Time for Mother's Day- Entire Montana Town for Sale for $1.4 Million

Stuck for gift ideas for mom, dad or the graduate in your life? Flowers, neckties and gift cards have pretty much been done to death- so why not try something out of the ordinary and bid on an entire town?

The southern Montana town of Pray will be hitting the auction block next month and is expected to fetch an asking price in the neighborhood of $1.5 million. Now, I know this isn't the first time I suggested purchasing an entire town as a gift idea. However, unlike Currie, NV, the town of Pray has about 10 full time residents and is not considered a ghost town.

Barbara Walker owns all five acres of Pray, Montana. She collects rent from the ten other people who live there.

"I'm a one woman show," Walker said. "So I decided OK, if I have to be the maintenance man and garbage man and sanitarian then I'm going to be the mayor too!"

Founded in 1909, Pray is named after a Montana congressman. Walker's family has run it since 1953, and not much has changed. The general store seems frozen in time. Before a new highway was built, this was a popular stop on the road that leads to Yellowstone National Park.

Walker lost her husband Johnny to cancer in 2006. Trying to revive the town alone was just too much work. She's selling the entire town, including her house at action next month.

Pray is like a lot of frontier towns, built on big hopes as the railroads pushed west. Many of those towns are now long gone, but Pray has kept its name on the map for one single reason - the post office.

"A zip code. That's it, plain and simple," Walker said. "It was the reason for Pray becoming Pray in 1909 and that's the reason it's called a town today."

When you pull into the tiny town of less than a dozen people, the post office is the first thing you notice. The zip code on the front of the building is a point of pride for people

Pray is located to the north of Yellowstone National Park and about 20 miles south of Livingston, MT- a railroad town and flyfishing destination. Some 40 miles northeast of Pray is the college town of Bozeman, home of the Montana State University campus.

Pray is not the first town in the region to be put up for sale. The tiny town of Buford, WY sold to a Vietnamese buyer in an online auction for $900,000 back in April. During the summer of 2011, a Filipino church purchased the South Dakota Badlands town of Scenic for $700,000.

Massachusetts Backing Away From Proposed School Bake Sale Ban

With new nutritional standards from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Departments of Public Health and Education set to go into effect that would basically outlaw school bake sales beginning in August, the state legislature and Governor Deval Patrick have reportedly backed away from the proposed guidelines.

The state legislature was also drafting a budget rider that would leave the decision regarding bake sales and sweets up to the individual school districts

The regulations were reportedly drawn up to curb childhood obesity and would prevent sweets from being sold on school grounds while classes were in session. Gov Patrick and Commonwealth Public Health Commissioner John Auerback said that the ban will be reversed before its even set to take effect. The regulations will apply to sweets sold in school cafeterias during lunchtime.

State Senator Michael Knapic (R-Westfield) also noted that the proposed guidelines will also have an adverse effect on Bay State dairies since they also are applied to chocolate milk.

"The dairy farmers say they’re not equipped to make the type of milk (the state is asking for) and it could turn into a total ban on chocolate milk,” Knapik said, adding that legislators also are considering intervening on behalf of chocolate milk.

Although school health officials said they supported even further limiting access of sweets to schoolchildren to battle childhood obesity, word of the regulations once again made the Bay State a laughingstock and poster child for government overreach by liberal busybodies

Today's Train of Thought- Gypsum Rose, May 8, 2011

Today's Train of Thought takes us to the rolling hills and grasslands of southwestern Oklahoma and tiny Hollis and Eastern shortline. The 15-mile pike got its start in the late 1950s after purchasing the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) line between Altus, OK and Wellington, TX, ripping out the rails on the line between Hollis, OK and Wellington, TX almost immediately. Besides grain from elevators along the line, the major source of traffic for the Hollis and Eastern has been the wallboard plant at Duke, OK. In 1971, the Republic Gypsum company purchased the Hollis and Eastern and by the late 1990s, both the Hollis & Eastern and the Duke plant were purchased by American Gypsum. With imported Chinese wallboard cutting into the Duke plant's production during the latter part of the first decade in the 21st century, American Gypsum decided to divest themselves of the 15 mile pike in 2009. After soliciting bids for operating the Hollis & Eastern in early 2010, WATCO's Stillwater Central was selected as the new operator of the Hollis & Eastern. Prior to WATCO's takeover, the Hollis and Eastern also interchanged with Farmrail and the Witchita, Tillman & Jackson in Welon and the BNSF and Stillwater Central in Altus. Here, railpictures.net contributor Chris Paulhamus caught Hollis & Eastern GP10 #8710 trundling past some wildflowers at Martha, OK with heads east with a trainload of wallboard on a sultry July 6, 2006. The #8710 is half of the Hollis & Eastern motive power fleet, with an SW1 handling switching duties at the gypsum plant in Duke.

Blue State Graft Watch- Former Kilpatrick Appointee Under Federal Indictment for Fraud, Extortion While Detroit City Pension Loses Millions

A Detroit city treasurer appointed by ousted former mayor and convicted felon Kwame Kilpatrick has been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on charges of extortion and wire fraud and could face decades behind bars

Jefferey Beasley, a Kilpatrick appointeee who served as City Treasurer between 2005 and 2008 is accused of demanding charter cash, jet flights, Las Vegas concert tickets, limousine service, massages, golf clubs and other favors from companies that wanted to business with the city's pension system. Some deatils from the indictment include:

“’Company G’ was an investment manager for the Police and Fire Retirement System, managing over $150 million in properties owned by the System…” In addition to $50,000 in donations to the Kilpatrick Civic Fund (at the request of Beasley), “Beasley asked the principal of ‘Company G’ to include Kwame Kilpatrick, Beasley, and three other associates on a private jet flight that ‘Company G’ had chartered to Las Vegas over the weekend of April 13, 2007, for a golfing trip. The cost of the flight was approximately $43,000. In addition, ‘Company G’ paid for greens fees, lodging, meals, limousine service, concert tickets, and massages for Kwame Kilpatrick, Jeffrey Beasley, and the three other associates at a cost of approximately $23,000 which was not reimbursed. In July 2007, Jeffrey Beasley asked a principal of ‘Company G’ to charter a private plane for Kwame Kilpatrick to fly to Tallahassee, FL. At a cost of more than $24,000, ‘Company G’ then chartered the private plane so that Kilpatrick could go on a trip to Tallahassee over the weekend of July 20, 2007. One of the passengers on the flight to Tallahassee was the son of Jeffrey Beasley…”

On Friday, the City of Detroit's pension board fired Motor City-based Mayfield Gentry Realty Advisors- reportedly 'Company G' in the Federal Indictment. The firm had reportedly used $3.1 million of retiree's money on two strip malls in California without transferring the deed to the city's pension.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the pension fund's total losses since February 2008 exceeds $480 million. The firms and middlemen who brokered some of these money-losing deals on behalf of the pension fund have drawn scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Comission.

In case you were wondering, the convicted parties or those who were appointed by the convicted parties are all Democrats.

[Hat tip- Russel Mead, Lonely Conservative]

Happy Cinco De Mayo from Not Another New England Sports Blog!

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, where an outnumbered and poorly-trained militia halted the advance of some 8000 French troops just outside the town of Puebla, southeast of Mexico City. The French troops were garrisoned in French-occupied Veracruz and were marching towards the capital at Mexico City.

Although the Mexicans won the battle on May 5th, 1862, France's Napoleon III would eventually win the war, and with the help of 30,000 reinforcements the French were eventaully able to take Mexico City the following year and install Maximilian as ruler. Althought the Monroe Doctorine of 1823 viewed European attempts to colonize the Americas to be countered with military intervention, the United States was embroiled in the Civil War at the time. Mexico itself was still reeling from the Mexican American war of 1848 as well as a prolonged civil war of their own when France invaded in 1861. Some historians theorize that Napoleon III had planned on using Mexico as a springboard for France to re-take territory ceded to the USA in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase as the US Civil War dragged on. However, after the US Civil War, America was able to provide arms and munitions to Mexico and Maximilian was deposed and executed by forces loyal to Mexican President Benito Juarez in 1867.

Despite what many believe, Cinco de Mayo IS NOT Mexico's Independence Day- Mexico's Independence Day is observed on September 15th, the day on which preist-turned-insurrectionist Miguel Hidalgo issued the 'Grito de Dolores' [Call of Dolores]- a call to arms against the Spanish colonial government from the village of Dolores in what is now the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico back in 1810.

This lovely señorita above is actually penned by Scandinavian pin-up artist Knute O Munson. Although little was known about Munson's early life, his family emigrated to Michigan as a teenager. Muson reportedly drew his first comission to study art when a local doctor paid him to draw medical charts. He would go on to attend the Academy of Fine art in Chicago and in addition to several stand-alone pieces of artwork, would do work for clients such as the Ice Capades, Lucky Strike and Goodrich Tires. Like some of Munson's other works, the focal point is surrounded by smaller sketches

Faux-cohontas: Massachusetts Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren Claims of Native American Ancestry Under Scrutiny

Bay State Democrat Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren's campaign is facing questions over whether she had embellished claims of being of Cherokee ancesrty this week. At issue is whether or not the Harvard professor, one-time nominee by President Obama for the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and self-professed creator of 'Occupy Wall Street' leveraged claims of her native American background to get preferential treatment from school.

The Harvard Law professor is now claiming she knows she has American Indian blood because a female relative told her that her grandfather had “high cheek bones like all the Indians do.”

The Democratic candidate’s troubles began last week when it was revealed that Harvard once described Warren as a Native American minority. Warren doesn’t publicly refer to herself that way.

Warren listed herself as Native American in Harvard's law-school directories from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. Aside from the alleged family lore of high cheekbones, a noted genealogist found an Oklahoma marriage certificate from Warren's great-great-great grandmother that listed her as Cherokee- baiscally accounting for 1/32nd of her total ancestry. For Harvard's most recent diversity census report, the university listed only one Native American as a member of the faculty but delined to clarify whether or not it was Warren.

While numerous individuals were having fun attempting to come up with Indian names for Warren a spokeswoman from the Warren campaign took the opportunity to rip Sen Scott Brown for 'sexism' over the inevitable follow up questions posed by Warren's own fudging her ethnic background.

Although the most recent available polls were taken before the Warren flap was made public, polling showed both Warren and Brown in a virtual dead heat. The Massachusetts Senate race is shaping up to be the costliest US Senate Campaign in the USA this election year.

Sports Chowdah Update- Junior Seau, 1969-2012; Dream Weaver in OC; Caps, Rangers Triple Down; Pierce Soars Against Hawks;

NFL- Former San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots linebacker Junior Seau was found dead in his Oceanside, CA home on Wednesday. Seau was killed by what police believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. According to a statement from Oceanside police chief, Seau's girlfriend called for help after finding him unresponsive shortly after 9:30 AM Pacific time.

Born and raised in Oceanside, Seau attended college at the University of Southern California. After sitting out his freshman year, Seau garnered the attention of pro scouts with his defensive play and he became a first round draft pick of the San Diego Chargers in the 1990 NFL Draft. The locally born and raised Seau became the face of the Chargers franchise throughout the 1990s and made 12 consecutive Pro Bowl appearances and was on the team for San Diego's only Super Bowl appearance- a 26-49 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Superbowl XXIX.

In 2003, Seau was traded from San Diego to the Miami Dolphins and after two season in Miami, Seau announced his retirement before the 2006 NFL season. However, within days, he was coaxed out of retirement by the New England Patriots, appearing in 10 of 11 games with the Pats before breaking his arm in a contest against the Chicago Bears in November of that year. Seau returned to the Patriots the following year, where they went 16-0 in the regular season only to lose at the last minute to the New York Giants by a 14-17 final in Super Bowl XLII. Seau returned to New England for two more seasons before announcing his second retirement  in January 2010.

In a November 2011 ceremony during a Chargers home game against the Broncos, Seau was introduced by Hall of Fame Quarterback Dan Fouts to a sold-out crowd at Qualcomm stadium as the linebacker was named to the Charger's Hall of Fame.

Even before being traded to Miami, Junior Seau opened up a restaurant bearing his name in San Diego's Mission Valley. In 2009, he hosted a TV show on the Versus network called Sports Jobs With Junior Seau which documented such behind-the-scenes jobs in sports such as Indycar pit crew member or pro-golf caddy. In fact, one episode brought Seau to the TD Garden in Boston so camera crews could document the rink from a Bruins game being converted to a hardwood floor for an upcoming Celtics game on the same day.

In 2010, Seau was at the wheel when his SUV plunged off an embankment in Carlsbad, CA. He was later treated and released from a La Jolla, CA hospital. The accident came less than a day after Seau was arrested and released by Oceanside police for domestic battery charges.

MLB- As woeful a start as the Red Sox got off to in April, they seemed absolutely scorching compared to the Angels, who made perhaps the biggest off season free agent signing in Albert Pujols when he left St Louis for Orange County.

But the Angels made headlines on Wednesday night for reasons other than their shitty start after starting pitcher Jared Weaver threw a no-hitter against the Minnesota Twins at Angels Stadium. Weaver threw 121 pitches, struck out nine and walked just one in the Angel's 9-0 win. Aside from the one walk, the only runner to reach base for Minnesota was 1B Chris Parmalee, who broke for first after a passed ball on strike three by Angels catcher Chris Ianetta.

In the top of the 8th inning, Twins 3B Trevor Plouffe came tantalizingly close to going yard before the ball hooked foul past the left field pole by a few feet.

This is the 10th no-hitter in the history of the Angels franchise and the second for the club in less than a year. On June 27 2011, Ervin Santana threw a no-no against the Cleveland Indians at Jabobs Field.

RED SOX- After an impressive 6-1 road trip through the Midwest- including an impressive 1-0 pitchers duel between Jon Lester and Jake Peavy on Chicago's South Side on Saturday- the Red Sox returned to Fenway on Monday to rout the Oakland A's by a 11-6 final.

However, after falling behind on Tuesday night, a late Boston rally fell short and the Red Sox were hung with the 5-3 loss while on Wednesday night, Oakland's Brandon McCarthy gave up only one run in 6⅔ innings in Boston's 4-2 home loss.

With Thursday off, the Red Sox will face the Baltimore Orioles who have won four out of their last five games. This will be the first regular season meeting between Baltimore and Boston since the O's ended the Red Sox season on September 28, 2011 with a walk-off Robert Andino RBI single against Jonathan Papelbon at Camden Yards. Wei Yin Chen [2-0; 2.22 ERA] goes to the mound for the O's against Jon Lester [1-2; 4.65 ERA] on Friday night at Fenway.First pitch is at 7:10 PM ET and the game will be televised on NESN.

OTHER RED SOX NEWS- 3B Kevin Youkilis has been placed on the 15 day DL with what's been described as a sore lower back. The Red Sox have called up 3B Will Middlebrook and Clay Mortenson from AAA Pawtucket. Middlebrook is batting .358 with 9 homers and 27 RBI in 81 plate appearances in the International League this season.

Mortenson, who was part of the January trade that dealt Marco Scutaro to Colorado, has a 0.90 ERA batting average while with Pawtucket.

Meanwhile in AA Portland, Daisuke Matsuzaka went 4 and ⅔ innings in a rehab start for the Portland Sea Dogs, allowing 3 hits and one earned run. Matsuzaka's next scheduled start is set to take place on Monday night at McCoy stadium in Pawtucket when the PawSox host the Rochester Red Wings.

EVEN MORE RED SOX NEWS- Items from Ted Williams' baseball and military career went up for auction at Fenway Park over the weekend. Some of the items included a baseball autographed by Babe Ruth for Ted Williams ($195,000), Williams' bat from the 1960 All Star Game ($81,000), Williams' Hall of Fame Ring ($109,000) and his 1949 American League MVP plaque ($299,000).

New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees participated in the auction via telephone, purchasing Williams' flight logbooks from when he served as an aviator in WWII and the Korean War for $35,600. Brees said he intends to loan the items to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

NBA- A strong defensive 4th quarter proved to be the difference maker for the Celtics on Tuesday night as they held that Hawks to 14 points in the 4th quarter at downtown Atlanta's Phillips Arena.

With Rajon Rodno suspended for one game after bumping an NBA official, Paul Pierce basically torched the arena with 36 points, 14 rebounds and 4 assists in Boston's 87-80 win over Atlanta. This includes going 11 for 13 from the free throw line.

Kevin Garnett had 15 points and 12 rebounds while Avery Bradley had 14 points in Game 2. The series head to the Garden and Rondo returns to the hardwood for Game 3, which is set to take place on Friday night and will be televised on ESPN. The series, which is tied at 1-1, will resume at 7:30 PM Friday Night.

NHL- Marian Gaborik broke a 1-1 deadlock between the Washington Capitals and New York Rangers in the 3rd OT of Game 3 in the Eastern Conference semifinals to take a 2-1 series lead. The Rangers converted on one of only four power play opportunities while Washington went 0-3. New York netminder Henrik Lunqvist turned aside 45 of 46 shots faced while Braden Holtby made 47 saves on 49 shots faced. The series between those two teams resumes on Saturday afternoon at 12:30 ET. The Rangers currently hold a 2-1 series lead.

Elsewhere in the NHL on Wednesday, Nashville shut out the Phoenix Coyotes by a 2-0 final for their first win in the Western Conference Semis.

On Thursday night, Philadelphia and New Jersey will resume their series which is knotted at 1-1 will get underway from the Prudential Center in Newark while Los Angeles and St Louis heads to the Staples Center with the Kings holding a 2-0 lead over the Blues.

Today's Train of Thought- Look What the April Showers Dragged in, May 2nd 2012

With just a few days to go before the 138th Kentucky Derby, today's train of thought takes us to the Bluegrass state. Even though the city hasn't seen regular passenger service since 2003, the rails around Louisville, KY will host office car specials from Norfolk Southern, CSX, RJ Corman Kentucky Lines and an Amtrak charter as guests and VIPs are ushered into the area by train for the annual Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs [NASDAQ- CHDN].

The former L&N Old Road line between Lexington and Louisville, KY was acquired by contractor RJ Corman from CSX in September 2003. Under CSX, that portion of the old L&N saw traffic in the form of corn syrup, bricks, peanuts, plastics and fertilizer- since then, Corman has not only kept most of the shippers from CSX days but also added carloads of sand dredged from the Ohio River to be made into cement and an almost-daily unit train of aluminum ingots between AlCan's Berea, KY recycling plant to Logan Aluminum in South Union, KY [according to the RJ Corman homepage, one aluminum ingot is made up of more than a million cans, a little something to think about the next time you're knocking a cold one back- NANESB!]. The line also recieves more than 100,000 annual carloads from SJ Smucker's [NYSE- SJM] Jif Peanut Butter plant in Lexington- the largest such facility in the world.

Here, with less than a month to go before the 2012 Kentucky Derby, railpictures.net contributor Bo Gray catches RJ Corman Lines SD40T-2 #8799 charging past the dogwoods in bloom at the gates of the cemetary outside of Midway, KY with a westbound ingot train on a sunny Easter afternoon. Technically this wouldn't be then end result of the old saying April showers bring May flowers, since the photo was taken in April, but I thought Bo Gray tied this scene togather very nicely.

Obama Rips Right-to-Work States in Speech to Big Labor, Ignores Recent Jobs Created in Those Very States

Speaking before Union leaders in Washington DC for the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference, President Obama took the time to attack right-to-work states before his Big Labor audience.

"I believe when folks try and take collective bargaining rights away by passing so-called 'right to work' laws that might also be called 'right to work for less,' laws, that’s not about economics, that’s about politics," Obama told the AFL-CIO today. "That’s about politics." He then credited the AFL-CIO for creating American prosperity, saying "unions like yours made sure that everybody had a fair shake, everybody had a fair shot."

The speech comes about a year after the National Labor Relations Board blocked Boeing [NYSE- BA] from shifting production of components for their 787 Dreamliner from Washington state to a facility outside of Charleston, SC. The NLRB's move was applauded by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka along with the Obama Administration and senior Democrats even though such actions would stifle further development.

While it might play well for an audience that includes Trumka or Jimmy Hoffa Jr, it seems to ignore the harsh reality for unions and the Obama Administration that the new industrial and manufactuing jobs that have been cropping up recently have done so in right-to-work states.

For instance, with international demand skyrocketing, American locomotive manufatcurers Caterpillar [NYSE- CAT] and General Electric [NYSE- GE] have either retrenched or expanded to right-to-work states. Caterpillar subsidiary EMD recently shuttered their London, Ontario plant in Canada after a protracted labor dispute with the Canadian Auto Workers union, shifting production to their recently opened Muncie, IN facility earlier this year. In 2011, General Electric announced that they would expand production to a 500,000 sqare foot facility outside of Ft Worth, TX slated to open up later on this year. This is in addition to their current facility in Erie, PA- although curiously this move by General Electric's Jeffery Immelt [as well as the Obama Administration's jobs czar- NANESB!] was not challenged by the NLRB like Boeing's similar expansion from Washington State to South Carolina.

And locomotives aren't the only thing General Electric will be manufacturing in a right-to-work state. In late October 2011, GE Aviation broke ground on an Auburn, AL plant that will make jet aircraft components. Production scheduled to begin in 2013 and the Auburn plant is expected to employ anywhere from 300 to 400 people. Meanwhile, Volkswagen continued a recently-established tradition of foreign automakers setting up shop in the deep south with the 2011 opening of their Chattanooga, TN plant which will primarily make Passats for the North American market. Right up the I-24 and outside of Nashville is Nissan's Smyrna, TN plant which was among the first foreign automaker to set up shop in the USA nearly 30 years ago.

Although construction was halted due to the international economic crisis in 2008, Toyota resumed work on a massive new facility in Blue Springs, MS in 2010 that is expected to go into full production later on this year, rolling out an estimated 150,000 Corollas annually. In 2009, KIA begain rolling out cars from a newly-opened factory in West Point, GA- a down on its luck former textile mill town.

Some enterprising individuals in right to work states like Georiga have even begun marketing chopsticks to overseas markets in Asia, where there is a shortage of wood to manufacture them locally in any significant numbers.
And these are some of the most recent examples I can cite- since the late 1990s, foreign automakers like BMW, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Honda have set up shop throughout Dixie- all right to work states. I just figured I would point out some of the jobs created by manufacturers setting up facilities in right-to-work states since President Obama has been in office, since he made it clear in his speech to big labor this week that he washes his hands of anything having to do with right-to-work. However, I have absolutely no doubt that Obama would try to take credit for every last job created in a right to work state over the last 3 years while he's campaigning.
However, perhaps the biggest headache for Democrats in right-to-work states doesn't come from the industrial or manufacturing sector, but rather the upcoming 2012 Democrat Party Convention in Charoltte, NC. Apparently to be awarded the convention, Obama ally and Charlotte's Democrat mayor reportedly had to agree to terms that union workers would be brought in from out of state, leaving local businesses in the lurch after Foxx promised his constituents the convention would be an economic boom. Although Foxx denied steering contracts to out-of-state union businesses, a number of local companies were told by the DNC to look elsewhere for business if they were non-union while as many as 3000 union workers from a Maryland company called Hargove were expected to show up in Charlotte this summer in prepeartion for the convention.

Feds Arrest Members of Occupy Movement In Plot to Detonate IEDs Along Ohio Bridge

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Train Passing Under Route 82 Bridge in October 2008. The FBI arrested five anarchists affiliated with the Occupy movement for reportedly planning to detonate IEDs along the span. Photo- Dave Hyman

FBI agents arrested five men on Monday evening after they planted what they believed were explosives under a highway bridge in northeastern Ohio.

The five men were “self-proclaimed anarchists,” who intended to detonate two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) under the bridge in Sagamore Hills, but had purchased the inert devices from undercover FBI agents, officials said.
Members of the group actually "placed the devices at the base of concrete pillars ... and attempted to detonate them at a remote location" on Monday, but what they thought were bombs were actually "intert devices," the FBI said in a news conference this morning.

WJW-TV identified the five men as Brandon Baxter, 20; Anthony Hayne, 35; Joshua Stafford, 23; Connor Stevens, 20; and Douglas Wright, 26. Baxter was active with the Occupy Cleveland movement and both Baxter and the other suspects listed Occupy Cleveland as their employers on their respective Facebook accounts.

In the weeks leading up to Monday's arrests, the Occupy movement had been speaking of shutting down bridges in New York and San Francisco as well as sit-ins and a general strike to co-incide with May Day marches worldwide.

Closeup of Brecksville-Northfield High Bridge. Jonathan Maxwell photo via Bridgehunter.com

According to affidavits, the five were provided with inert materiel they were told was C-4 plastic expolisves. The FBI reportedly got wind of the plot from an informant on probation for drug posession and passing bad checks in Lorain and Cuyahoga Counties. The group had also reportedly discussed targetting courthouses and the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland, additional highway and railway bridges in Northeastern Ohio and cargo ships on the Cuyahoga River. Members also discussed setting off smoke bombs on the Veteran's Memorial Bridge in Cleveland to distract police while they knocked down bank signs from atop larger buildings in downtown Cleveland.

The five span bridge that carries Ohio Route 82 over the Cuyahoga River and Cuyhoaga Valley Scenic Railroad is 1,130 feet long and was completed in 1931 and links Cuyhoga county with Summit County. The bridge also spans the Cuyahoga Valley National Park while route 82 itself skirts the southern suburbs of Cleveland, starting in Lorain County in the west and ending near the Pennsylvania state line to the east.

[Hat tip 3rd Base Politics; Bridgehunter.com]