Expressive Tax-Funded Art

Fox News reports on a publically-funded art project in Berkeley, California:

Dogs do the darndest things.They poop, they hump and they sniff in all the wrong places.

And now you can see them do all of the above every time you cross the pedestrian bridge over Interstate 80 in Berkeley, Calif., thanks to the largesse of the taxpayers.

Artist Scott Donahue of Emeryville, Calif., was paid $196,000 by Berkeley's public arts program to create two large statues, which feature small, artistic medallions that show dogs doing what dogs do best.

"Various things," Donahue said. "Biting each other, chasing each other…. One dog is defecating, two dogs are fornicating."

But with the country in a deep recession and California on the verge of bankruptcy, some taxpayers are questioning the money Donahue got for his work. His total budget was $196,000 — 1.5 percent of the total budget for building the pedestrian bridge. And all of it came from taxpayers.

At least it doesn't take an Art-History major to interpret what the dogs in this particular piece are doing. Or what Berkeley did to its taxpayers.