You just knew this was coming, didn’t you?

With the state and federal governments looking for ways to jump-start the economy, a New Jersey businessman has an ambitious public works project he says will create more than 5,500 jobs and provide $500 million or more to local contractors.The businessman is Zygi Wilf, principal owner of the Minnesota Vikings.

The project: A $954 million, state-of-the-art stadium for his football team in downtown Minneapolis — to be constructed using more than $635 million in public money.

“Why not? The Vikings are a public asset,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ vice president in charge of stadium development. “This is going to create an economic boost

Of course, stadiums create no more of an economic boost than, say, light rail.

Kiiiiiiing?

Whether it was that the MinnPost is doing stories that sound like they could have come from the “Around Town” column in a small-town weekly…:

Sources close to the 400 Bar are reporting that a squirrel recently got into the historic West Bank music landmark and did serious damage to the top row of the liquor shelf behind the bar.

…or the details of the actual damage done:

Co-owner/manager Tom Sullivan is telling friends that the club lost several high-end bottles of Scotch in the little rodent’s raid. Sullivan couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday, but a good bottle of Chivas Regal goes for hundreds of dollars (not this much, we hope) and, as this edition of MinnPost went to press, police liked this guy as a suspect.

This is the same 400 Bar I played back in ’86-88?   The place where ordering Michelob got you branded an effete pansy?

Either they’ve moved upmarket, or west-end rock-bar barflies have a lot more money than they used to…

What do you get when you put an attraction for (among others) yuppies with more money and concern for Mother Oerth than common sense in the middle of the second-worst neighborhood in the Twin Cities?

Oh, what do you think?

The Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD) Third Precinct has issued an alert regarding a series of robberies/assaults taking place on the Midtown Greenway bike trail and the adjacent Hiawatha light-rail transit (LRT) trail.

According to the MPD, victims have been surrounded by groups of 2–3 or more younger males, pushed off their bikes and robbed of wallets, backpacks or purses. The assaults have occurred after dark. In some instances, knives and guns have been used.

They’re talking about the Midtown Greenway – the old railway trench converted into a cross-Minneapolis bike path – and the trail along the Ventura Trolley.

“Conservative” anti-bike activists please note – both areas were vastly higher-crime before the bike path.

Still, there’ve been some ugly incidents:

The most recent attack took place on Dec. 4 at around 8:30 p.m. along a dark and secluded stretch of the Hiawatha trail just south of the Franklin Avenue LRT station. The victim told the Midtown Greenway Coalition that three young men “formed a pattern” in his path, ordered him off his bike and onto the ground and then stole his backpack. Afterwards, a gun was held to the victim’s head and, the man with the gun said “I’m going to shoot this nigger.” The assailants were gone soon after.

Another victim was referred to using that word in a separate incident on Nov. 21, in which the victim was threatened with a box cutter after stopping along the trail near Minnehaha Avenue.

I’ve ridden the Greenway – never later than dusk in the summer. It goes through some dodgy areas. The LRT bike path – which allows you to ride from the Metrodome to Fort Snelling (and thence to points south across the Mendota Bridge) – is a nice ride, but it goes through some of the worst parts of Minneapolis. I remember riding south from the Riverside Park apartments (the hideous multicolor “New Town” towers on the West Bank that look like they were transplanted from some hideous Egyptian public housing idea) south to Franklin, where the path runs between the backs of warehouses and the LRT line, and silently crossed it off my night-time biking “to do” list.

In response to this ugly, violent crime, the Twin Cities’ perpetually-enraged community proposes to respond with…well, the usual: ineffective symbolmongering:

Take Back the Greenway
Saturday, Dec. 13, 4 p.m.
The ride begins at the Midtown Greenway entrance near Calhoun Beach Club, travels the greenway past the Sabo bridge, then turns onto the Hiawatha LRT.. trail and finally ends at Grumpy’s Bar, 1111 Washington Ave. S. in Downtown East.

…and lumpen passivity:

The MPD and Midtown Greenway Coalition offer these prevention strategies:

— Avoid the Greenway after dark. [That’s right. We merely citizens need to know our place. Everyone knows the city belongs to the scum after dark – Ed.]
— Ride and walk with others, rather than alone. [ “Hell is other people – Sartre]
— Look for a “Bluelight” phone on the Greenway that will connect you directly with 9-1-1. [ Right. Because a bunch of thugs who’ve staked out an ambush will be happy to let you pedal back to a “blue phone”- Ed.]
— Carry a cell phone and call 9-1-1 if you need help. [ Ditto – Ed.]
— Pay attention to your surroundings. Exit the Greenway at the nearest ramp if you feel comfortable or nervous about people you see ahead of you. [ At last, common sense. Of course, that’s always good advice, wherever you are – Ed.]
— If you are assaulted, try to stay calm and give the attackers what they want. The more you resist, the more likely it is that you will be injured. [ Actually, people who don’t resist are about four times as likely to be killed as those who do; SEVEN times as likely as those who resist with lethal force – Ed.]
— Wear a bike helmet while riding to reduce considerably your chances of injury. [ That’s just common sense, given how awful Minnesota drivers – “The Cairo drivers of the West – are. Ed.]
— When calling 9-1-1, give the operator your location. The Greenway is now listed as a street: Midtown Greenway East is the name of the stretch east of Nicollet Avenue to the river. [ Not dumb, obviously – Ed.]
— Take time to familiarize yourself with the addresses of the cross-streets over the trail to help ensure quicker police response. [ Again, not a bad idea – subject, of course, to your having time to call in a report. Which, likely, will be after the perps are gone – Ed.]

Another idea; get your carry permit. And then you, the trained, authorized, permitted citizen, carry while you ride.

Remembering this event last summer – where scads of permit-holding Minnesotans held an Open Carry picnic at Lake Harriet – perhaps a more effective “Take Back The Greenway” idea would be for a gathering of permit-holders on bikes to have a ride. Carrying openly. Or perhaps just doing bounding overwatch.

That’ll get the thugs’ attention.

A few years back, I had a contracting job in downtown Minneapolis – which was, as it happens, a long-time wanna-have of mine.  I’ve always loved the hustle and thrum of downtown Minneapolis, and after my harrowing year of gross underemployment in 2003, it felt good to not only get back into working, but get back into it in a place that throbbed with energy.

And one of my favorite places in the city, especially for lunch-hour decompression while working a fairly tense set of projects, was Peavey Plaza – a sunken water-garden down in the teens on Nicollet Mall.  The Plaza features concerts and street fairs for most of the summer and, almost better, is a relatively placid oasis in the middle of Minneapolis’ throbbing financial district the rest of the time (frequent approaches by bums and panhandlers notwithstanding).

Rumors for years have held that the Plaza was in danger – so, on the one hand, it’s good to hear that people are taking note…:

The sunken-plaza park, on the Nicollet Mall between 11th and 12th streets, was named one of the “Ten Most Endangered Historic Places” by the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota earlier this year.

…and, on the other hand, disconcerting to hear the kind of note being taken:

Now, it’s been included on the list of 12 modern landscapes — “Marvels of Modernism” — that are in danger of being lost, as selected by the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Ugh.

Oh, well.   “Modernist” label aside – I favor excising much “modernism” from our cities, and especially indiscriminate carpet-bombing of all Bauhaus architecture – I’m rooting for the Plaza.  Every little bit helps.

 Lori Sturdevant remains the DFL Party’s primary unpaid PR flak among the Twin Cities’ mainstream media (although Rachel Stassen-Berger at the PiPress is closing in fast). 

In yesterdays’ column, she pines for “Instant Runoff Voting” because – why else? – it would have put more DFLers in power:

Play the what-if game that’s the rage among Minnesotans who are sick of plurality-rule elections:

(…a subset of voters that includes poli-sci grad students, a few newspaper columnists, a couple of math majors who love to design “cool new systems for running society” in their spare time, and Twin Cities’ third-party members, who believe they’re everyone’s “second choice” for power.  Really – Ed.) 

What if last week’s plebiscite had been conducted under the vote-by-number system called instant-runoff voting?

For more on IRV, read here.  And I mean read carefully.  It’s  a system that only a math major could love or, for that matter, really understand.  I’ll leave the listing of IRV’s disadvantages to that piece, for now.

Here’s my opening bid:

•The Senate race might still be headed for a recount. But there’s a decent chance that it would be with DFLer Al Franken, not Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, in the leader’s spot.

[smug, self-serving speculation removed for brevity’s sake]

And how would the Senate race have changed in message, tone and maybe outcome if the voters’ second choices had mattered all along? Might the fight have been more about, say, health care, and less about old comedy sketches? (See how delightfully speculative this game can be?)

And the “Recount” would be done entirely by machine, centrally, at the Minnesota State Department, managed almost entirely by sorting algorhithms, far too complex for people – indeed, there’d be almost no way for actual humans to follow it.  Odd, really, considering that among IRV’s most ardent supporters are the same people who thought Diebold and the other electronic balloting operations were in the tank for the GOP (who’ve been curiously silent for the past two cycles). 

•U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann would not be headed back to Congress. The outspoken Republican culture warrior wound up at 46.4 percent on Tuesday. Every other vote cast in the north suburban Sixth District, I’ll venture, was an anti-Bachmann vote. 

I’ll venture that Lori Sturdevant was huffing paint when she wrote this piece.

No, I have just as much evidence as she does.

Seriously.  Was “every vote” cast for Jesse Ventura in 1998 an “Anti-Norm Coleman, Anti-Skip Humphrey” vote?  Of course not.  Many were “ignorant nutslap who think it’d be fun to vote for a wrestler” votes.  Many more were “Lower fees on my jet-ski” and “Hey, $1,000 back from the government!” votes.  Many many more were “I don’t care much about politics, but I saw Jesse Ventura’s ad, and it made me laugh” votes. 

In the Sixth?  I suspect (with every bit as much evidence as Sturdevant brings to the table) that the “Anti-Bachmann” votes were easily diluted by the “pox on both their houses” votes, the “Hey, a Norwegian last name” vote, and – rare as this might be – the tiny film of IP voters who realized that Bob Anderson who actually a fiscal conservative and former Republican. 

Note, by the way, her main reason for supporting IP so far (other than “pluralities make me sad”); it’ll get her pet candidates elected.  The ends, in Lori’s curious little world, do justify the means.

•Republican Erik Paulsen would still have the U.S. Rep.-elect title in the Third. My thinking: Paulsen is close to the 50 percent mark already, at 48.5 percent. My unscientific, skimpy sample of voters who opted for the IP’s David Dillon include a fair share who would have given their No. 2s to Paulsen.

So Paulsen benefits from real-life ambiguity, but every single person who voted for Bob Anderson was an “Anti-Bachmann” voters.  Such is the order of the world in that special little space we call “Lori Sturdevant’s mind”.   

•State Rep. Ron Erhardt of Edina would have been reelected. Instead, he was the second-place loser to Republican Rep.-elect Keith Downey in a city that Barack Obama carried with 55 percent of the vote.

Right.

Which is also in a state with a statistical tie for Senate, and where conservative Erik Paulsen won by eight points, both in Lori Sturdevant’s special little world and the real one!

How, you ask?

Don’t:

In third place in the District 41A contest, just 134 votes behind Erhardt, was DFLer Kevin Staunton. If Edina voters used IRV, would DFL voters have given their No. 2s to a small-government, socially conservative Republican, or to a maverick former Republican who was a prime mover of the big transportation bill in 2008? If second choices had been registered and counted, this one wouldn’t have been close.

Presuming, of course, that Lori Sturdevant – she of the selective ambiguity and constantly-shifting context in this district – is really that clairvoyant.

Three-way races have become the norm at the top of the ballot and are proliferating further down. Last week, the Edina legislative seat was won with 36.7 percent of the vote.

And as a result of which…what?

The earth opened and swallowed the city whole?

No?  The mayor, elected with a third-and-change of the vote, had to govern by compromise, as an executive with a plurality rather than a decisive mandate?

The horror!

Seriously – this would be the future of politics with IRV:  candidates elected with phony “majorities” (derived from obscure machinations carried out without the vaguest possibility of human scrutiny, without even a paper trail!), who exist in a political netherworld, not really certain they have a majority, but unsure of how far from majority they really are. 

 Every Minnesotan who thinks democracy should mean majority rule will be watching.

And every Minnesota who thinks that “a phony majority delivered by a voting system one degree of separation from a math-major parlor game is a way to run a government” should have their heads examine.

But not by Lori Sturdevant. 

UPDATE:  A commenter to the column asks: “What if we could instant run-off the worst columnist at the Strib?
We can dream”

The hard part would be actually ranking the “choices”.

Last weekend, JRoosh greeted the news of the NTSB’s draft report on the 35W Bridge collapse appropriately, noting that – at least in the context of the chorus of recrimination that the likes of E-Tink and Alice “The Phantom” Hausman and Margaret Kelliher and Nick Coleman dumped on him – the Governor was exonerated.

When Jeff Rosenberg at The Daily Liberal noted that Sporty the Dog from Clicking Stool had “taken Roosh to task” over his piece, naturally, I had to check it out.

As with most leftybloggers attempts to discuss history, engineering and other more-or-less empirical subjects, it was a big mistake.

Leftybloggers, like the political and media leaders whose shrieking points so many of them so unthinkingly ape, aren’t big on getting context right.  Sporty tries to frame the issue in the form of a doctor’s visit, and concludes:

The article in the Strib that J refers to is in the paper today. The headline? I-35W bridge was doomed from the start. It was a design defect!

We are, of course, all doomed from the start. But that doesn’t means we don’t get physicals, submit to humiliating examinations, and pay the medical profession to try to keep us healthy.

In the case of the bridge, the Pawlenty administration also fingered the whopper, got the test results, and opted for the cosmetic solution.

Except that there was no “doctor’s visit” saying that the bridge, as in Sporty’s example, was terminally ill.  To run with the (bad, misplaced) metaphor, there were merely checkups, telling the bridge, like a lot of 40-year-olds, that it was crumbling around the edges a bit; that the wear and tear of daily stress was taking its toll.  The bridge at 40 was doing better than some other bridges – MNDoT rated the Cayuga and Lafayette bridges, among others in the metro, much worse as of July 31, 2007, much more likely to die younger than the 35W bridge.  Not that it was especially more terminally ill than any other bridge of its age. 

The fact is, nobody knew 40 years ago – or two years ago, for that matter – that the bridge was suffering from anything much worse than…being a 40 year old bridge.  Yes, there were concerns – rusty gussets, suspect piers, etc.  But the thing that killed it – mistakes in engineering calculations?  That was a bolt from the blue – an undetected aneurism or clot or stroke that could have been found, maybe, given one of two things:

• A degree of dedication to checking and re-checking design assumptions, calculations and material specs from every potentially suspect bridge in the state (read:  every bridge in the state), aggressively trying to predict the unpredictable.
• Clairvoyance.

Going back and checking over all of those designs, all of their engineering and data – especially those made in the era before all of these things were done electronically – would be analogous to spending every morning for months at a time at the doctor’s office, getting prodded and poked and having latex-clad fingers shoved hither and yon by a staff of doctors dedicated to eradicating every possible “what if” in your physiology – and it’d be about as proportionally expensive.

As far as clairvoyance goes – if government could manage that, would our mortgage system be in the mess it’s in today?

To have done something about the 35W bridge’s problems, there would have had to have been a huge effort to go back and re-examine the design of every element of the construction of these bridges; the calculations behind the design of each structural member (hundreds or thousands for each structure), their material specs and various rates of deterioration – all of which, by the way, requires a LOT of reconstructive research, since the original calculations and material specs may or may not be available.  It’d be the equivalent of having a squad of doctors trying to rule out every possible malady you could have.

Think your HMO would cover that?

This hideously expensive process, by the way, would take a LOT of money away from every political body’s main goal in transportation spending; building monuments to the perspicacity of the politicans authorizing the spending. Building trains sends tingles up DFLers legs; lane miles do the same for Republicans. Watching hordes of engineers poring over moldy blueprints and Material Data sheets is no monument to anyone.  It’s just maintenance.

The conclusion?  Well, other than “never pay attention to leftybloggers when they try to talk history, science, engineering, or…well, really, anything”, I guess it’s this…

…well, no.  That kinda covered it.

About a ten months or so ago, give or take a few weeks, I wrote a brief to-do list to remind me of what needed to be done in re the sorting out of the 35W Bridge collapse.

Among the reminders:

Item #3: Await apology from Nick Coleman: After all, before they’d even found all the submerged cars, the Non-Monkey had blamed Pawlenty, the GOP and the Taxpayers’ League, and the “failure” to raise the Gas Tax, for the disaster, all but accusing them of complicity in murder.

Item #4: Await same from Alice Hausman: The famous truck was still engulfed in flames when Alice “The Phantom” Hausman, Tic from Saint Paul, Chairbeing of the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, and subject of an unseemly Lori Sturdevant girl crush, went on WCCO Radio and blamed the disaster on taxes.

Item #5: Await More Of Same From Elwyn Tinklenberg: Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenburg, Transportation Commissioner for DFL-Lite “Independence” Party governor Jesse “The Stealth Tic” Ventura, and perennial Tic candidate for higher office (he’s been pondering running against Michele Bachmann since before Rep. Bachmann was actually elected) did pretty much the same.

The NTSB has released their draft report on the causes of the 35W Bridge Collapse. The forty-year-old freeway bridge – which collapsed on August 1 of last year, killing 13 – collapsed because:

Original designers of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis likely neglected to calculate the size of key gusset plates that eventually failed, a human mistake that culminated 40 years later when 13 people died after the span collapsed, federal safety investigators have found.

They also have determined that corrosion of certain gusset plates, extreme heat and shifting piers did not contribute to the bridge’s collapse on Aug. 1, 2007, according to sources with direct knowledge of the probe. In three weeks, investigators will present their findings to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which will publicly review the draft report in a hearing Nov. 13 at the board’s Washington headquarters. After that, the board will use the draft as the basis for its final report on the probable cause of the collapse and recommendations for preventing future disasters.

In other words, the mistake was made on the drawing board, during the Johnson Administration.

So let’s revisit this:

How about you, Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenburg? Before the last bubble leaked to the surface of the Mississippi River that tragic evening, you were on WCCO blaming Tim Pawlenty for the collapse – albeit silent as a ghost about your own record as Minnesota’s Transportation Commissioner under Jesse “The Punchline” Ventura, where you found the money to build an absurd trolley but precious little for actually maintaining things.

Explanation, E-Tink?

How about you, DFLers; Margaret Kelliher certainly had you all chanting in unison about this time a year ago. Any second thoughts about not only politicizing a lethal tragedy, but being wrong about it?

Eight District Representative Jim Oberstar, who – when the first intimations came out that this was likely an engineering disaster rather than a political one – turned his boundless pettifogging clout to trying to intimidate the NTSB into finding at least some partisan political points for him? Any response?

Alice Hausman – DFL Transportation Committee chairwoman who was on the air with T-Tink before the sun set that night, and who spent the coming weeks figuratively carrying tar and feathers for Tim Pawlenty, Marty Seifert and David Strom? Any second thoughts?

And above all, Nick Coleman. Nick, who went on the air live from the banks of the Mississippi three days after the disaster to blame tax cuts for the tragedy;

Nick, who tittered like a schoolgirl when the first, preliminary word came out that it was a gusset problem.

E-Tink, Alice and Nick; science has crushed your febrile attempts to politicize this tragedy. And before the memory hole claims your loathsome little outburst, I thought I’d take a shot at asking.

So the veto of the gas tax didn’t result in the 35W bridge collapse?

My esteemed overlord hates to say “I told you so.”

Allow me.

Mitch told you so.

Number 1:  When the engineers finally release their report about what actually caused the 35W Bridge Collapse, a lot of regional lefties – Elwyn Tinklenberg, Rep. Alice Hausman, Nick Coleman and others among them – are going to owe the Governor, Lt. Gov/Transportation Commissioner Molnau, the Taxpayers’ League and the “hold the line on taxes” crowd – a lot of apologies for a lot of defamation.

Number 2: None of them will actually give those apologies.

Nick Coleman’s article of August 2nd is no longer linkable. But here are excerpts of Nick’s rabid blather at the time from Roosh Five:

The death bridge was “structurally deficient,” we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way.

There isn’t any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble than a bridge falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared.

Nick Coleman: Drama Queen. Hack Journalist. Dead Wrong.

Only this isn’t a metaphor.

But when you have a tragedy on this scale, it isn’t just concrete and steel that has failed us.

In a word, it was avoidable.

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It’s been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase – the first in 20 years – last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

I’m not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not partisan. It is general.

At the federal level, the parsimony is worse, and so is the negligence. A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there aren’t enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.

I-35W bridge was doomed from the start

Investigators will say the blame lies with designers who erred in calculating the size of key gusset plates, sources say.

Original designers of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis likely neglected to calculate the size of key gusset plates that eventually failed, a human mistake that culminated 40 years later when 13 people died after the span collapsed, federal safety investigators have found.

They also have determined that corrosion of certain gusset plates, extreme heat and shifting piers did not contribute to the bridge’s collapse on Aug. 1, 2007, according to sources with direct knowledge of the probe.

Elwyn Tinklenberg, Rep. Alice Hausman, Nick Coleman will undoubtedly not be reachable for comment. Mr. Coleman’s resume can probably be found on Monster.com.

As my son and I traversed the new 35W Bridge a couple weeks ago, we noticed wavy concrete sculptures marking the boundaries of the span.

I’m not an art critic but I know it when I see it and this aint it. The objects sit awkwardly on the center divider. While their fabrication in concrete lends to the aura of fortitude that is reassuring while crossing the mighty Miss on a bridge where one once ceased, the lack of contrast is uninspiring. The objects look to have been tacked on as an afterthought.

As it turns out, their purpose may be less about pleasing the eye and more about saving us from less than optimally oxidized particles.

the new sculptures are made from a type of concrete that is photocatalytic, meaning they will be able to convert gases like carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide to higher oxidized states, making them less damaging to the environment. Another benefit of the new concrete mixture is that it never looks old as it maintains a white oxidized color on its outer skin.

This is the same process used by a catalytic converter in automobiles.

The monuments were designed using the international cartographic symbol for water.

Many thanks for the definition of photocatalytic. I might otherwise have thought it described an object, once viewed, that induces discomfort in the right brain. I sit corrected.

My Son and I made our first trip over the new bridge…he made a quick video…

ANNOTATED VERSION UPDATED 9/21/08 2:34 PM

CLICK FOR HD Version HERE

Chino Latino is an hYpStR restaurant in Minneapolis.

I’ve never been there, but pretty much everyone I’ve ever known who clamed to be a regular seemed like the kind of person that’d be on Molly Priesmeyer’s speed dialer, if you know what I mean.

But I saw this, and almost wished I could be regular…:

…just so I could stop going in a loud huff.

The Cardinal Bar, on 38th Street just west of Hiawatha, has attained just a tad of hYpStR chic in recent years; half a block from the 38th Street Light Rail station, it’s become a stop on one of the recent traditions among dissipate twentysomethings with strong livers, the Light Rail Bar Crawl (where people start at the Mall of America, the light rail’s southern terminus, and ride up the line, hitting bars near the stops along the way, at Fort Snelling, the Cardinal, Lake, Franklin, Cedar-Riverside, and finally downtown).

But back in the day, when the Card was the closest cheap bar to my first apartment at 38th and Hiawatha, it was a place to go to get $.50 tappers and dollar burger baskets on Tuesday nights, to sit on a well-worn bar stool with a bunch of alcoholics and yap about the Vikings”.

Anyway, while many of us have fond (also hazy) memories of the place, apparently not everyone’s awash in nostalgia:

The third arson to hit a Minneapolis bar and grill this summer has prompted authorities to again search the south side neighborhood for culprits.

The most recent fire struck the Cardinal Bar and Restaurant, 2920 E. 38th St., just before 6 a.m. Saturday, when firefighters arrived to find flames outside an unused doorway to the bar along 38th Street. The fire was limited to the outside of the building and was put out in about five minutes, said Sgt. Sean McKenna of the Minneapolis Police Department’s arson squad.

If we assume his motive is anger at the hYpStR faddism that’s put the place on the map, then please, please Minneapolis PD; find them.

Before the arsonist turns his attention to the Turf Club.

…or haven’t hung around here a long time, he’s hard to explain the Twin Cities left.

I got this quote from an introduction thread of a local politics list-server; a regular is explaining his politics to the membership:

My politics are moderate.  That is, I view the current IR as an
extreme-right party and the DFL as a moderate-right party with some
progressive elements.  I’d call the Greens and Socialist Workers Party
moderate-left parties.

These are the people who think the media, the Strib, the school system and academia are moderate to conservative.

To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke; “You can have a discussion with these people.  You can also have a discussion with livestock, for all the good it’ll do you”.

…that the 35W Bridge collapsed.

The city is having all sorts of memorials today. 

In a typical year, I’d drive across that bridge maybe 3-4 times. I was in Fridley at a meeting with my son, at one of their rec centers.

As we walked out, I saw the TV tuned to Channel 5, and noticed what looked like a flattened bridge. It took a few moments to register that it was in Minneapolis; my first clue was “there’s no way these people would ever watch the news”, which led me to look more closely and notice which bridge it actually was.

On the drive home, I got probably half a dozen calls from friends and relatives.

And I didn’t go to the scene until late June.

Tomorrow and Monday, I have some questions to ask.

Today, I’ll just hope and pray that the families of the dead and injured can find some peace and comfort, and to thank the rescue workers and citizens on the scene who helped prevent a much worse tragedy.

Last month, we (via the Mindy) noted that the Minneapolis Park and Rec board had jacked its “large tent event” fee from $60.00 to $10,000 dollars for the Republican Convention.

Specifically for the convention.  Specifically to soak Republicans. 

Minneapolis Shadow at the Urban Renaissance Coalition blog finds another:

Take a look at the agenda for the Public Safety and Regulatory Committee Agenda item number one on taxicabs. The time period for the fare increases are during the Republican National Convention.

Instead of being happy to allow the increase in revenue from the activity that the convention brings, such as income from cab rides, they need to raise fares. I find this practice appalling. It is another example of how the city officials purposely go out of their way to discourage business growth, or are just plain stupid when it comes to long term thinking on economic development.

Y’know what?  I’m not going to stop buying things in Minneaopolis.  Nosirreebob.

I’ll come to the Mill City, all right.  And buy clothes.  And unprepared food. 

Lots of it.

Stuff that isn’t taxed. 

Not a damn thing more.

According to the Strib, the NTSB has found some new evidence about the 35W Bridge collapse – and it’s not all about the gussets:

The National Transportation Safety Board has not ruled out the possibility that Minnesota transportation officials missed a potential clue to the impending failure of the Interstate 35W bridge, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said Monday.

One year after the structure collapsed, killing 13 people, the federal agency is still studying whether photos of critical gusset plate connections taken by inspectors in 1999 should have prompted MnDOT to take action, Rosenker said. The photos showed bowing or warping of the plates.

Damn you, Carol Molnau!  A Pox upon you, Tim Pawlenty!  Curse you, David Strom and all you tax hawks, for letting the bridge collapse to save a buck!

CORRECTION:  I’m informed that none of the above were in office in  1999.

In 1999, MNDoT was run by this currently DFL-endorsed candidate for Congress; the one that was on WCCO as the last cars were settling into the river, blaming…

…well, see above.

I regret the confusion.

Something I missed in the crush of events this past week: the north and south banks of the Mississippi are connected again:

Image is from the MNDoT webcam.

You don’t want to drive on it yet, naturally – but last Wednesday, the contractors did the final pour to connect the main segments of the northbound span.

The southbound span should be getting connected any day now. Expect an angry column from Nick Coleman blaming Governor Pawlenty for the delay.

For those of you who always wondered “what if they could just swoop in and rip Washington Avenue out of the ground and toss it into space?”

We’re gonna find out!:

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents has approved a key agreement on the Central Corridor light rail project…The project includes $11 million for a transit and pedestrian mall on Washington Ave. The costs will be included in the budget submitted to the federal government.

I expect they’ll find people sitting in traffic around the East Bank so long they’ll actually form settlements up and down Huron Avenue.

Yesterday, I started trying to follow up Monday’s piece on the Minneapolis Park and Rec Board’s jacking up of “large tent” event fees from $100 to $10,000. You may recall the Minnesota Independent’s Chris Steller posted video of the June 18 meeting in which PRB superintendent Jon Gurban explained the hundredfold hike… (emphasis from Steller’s transcription):

GURBAN: No, you’re … Allow me to explain. The small tent rental went to that. But we now have a larger tent rental that somehow coincided with a convention that is coming to town that had a number of requests for LARGE events and gatherings on our property.

I tried to contact representatives of the Minneapolis Park and Rec board for clarification. I left messages for Superintendant Gurban, as well as the PRB’s Public Relations office.

I also left a message for Park Board Commisioner Carol Kummer – who seemed to be giggling about the fee hike at the PRB’s June 18 meeting…:

PARK COMMISSIONER CAROL KUMMER: Mr. Chair, just before she gets … Under Strategy 1, I’m assuming the tent rental increase went from $60 to $100, not $10,000. Or is that your goldmine? [general laughter]

…last Thursday.

I’ve still gotten no response from either Park and Rec board official.

It seemed like a “punk”; the Minneapolis Park Board goes on video and says they’re jacking their “large tent rental” from $60 to $10,000, to take advantage of the Republican National Convention. So much so that I had to double-check to make sure it wasn’t tongue-in-cheek.

No such luck.

Sure enough; the Minneapolis Park Board wants to gouge Republican event planners.

PARK SUPERINTENDENT JON GURBAN: I would then turn over the numbers point to Julie, subbing for Don, who presented these to the mayor and will also report on where we found that new goldmine. No?
PARK COMMISSIONER SCOTT VREELAND: Thank you. Juli Wiseman will be making the staff presentation.
PARK COMMISSIONER CAROL KUMMER: Mr. Chair, just before she gets … Under Strategy 1, I’m assuming the tent rental increase went from $60 to $100, not $10,000. Or is that your goldmine? [general laughter]
GURBAN: No, you’re … Allow me to explain. The small tent rental went to that. But we now have a larger tent rental that somehow coincided with a convention that is coming to town that had a number of requests for LARGE events and gatherings on our property.
KUMMER: It’s not a typo.
GURBAN: No.
KUMMER: Thank you for that good news.

Chris Steller has the video over at the Mindy. See for yourself.

So – now that we know this isn’t some elaborate hoax – you have the Minneapolis City Council actively and publicly planning to gouge the GOP Convention on the one hand, and the President of the Saint Paul City Council publicly expressing his contempt for Republicans on the other, while passing resolutions welcoming the protesters.

Naturaly, I’ll be inviting all the principals to this discussion onto the NARN. Hopefully Superintendent Gurban and Commissioners Vreeland and Kummer will be forthcoming.

This pic from the Daily Digital is pretty amazing:

The Daily Digital’s been covering the construction of the new 35W Bridge since the beginning.  It’s been interesting all along; from the beginnings, watching the casting yards and other infrastructure getting built, through all the work to get the piers and foundations and approaches done. 

And above it all, this last few weeks – as the actual span has virtually leaped across the river – have been just amazing.

To: Rep. Ellison

From: Mitch Berg, mere citizen

Re: Your campaign.

Rep. Ellison:

Conventional “wisdom” has it that the Fifth CD is a shoo-in for you. That the district hasn’t voted for a Republican since before the War of 1812. That Republicans in the Fifth should just fold up shop and either leave the district, or abandon their tattered conservative principles and link arms and march together with the DFL towards glorious future! (or at least shut up and quit talking about things that make Tics sad and dyspeptic with cognitive dissonance).

So I read this report from last Saturday’s Juneteenth parade…:

On another front in the Juneteenth event of Saturday, there was a parade. Barb Davis White participated by making an appearance, riding in the parade. Interestingly, there was no sign of Congressman Ellison until someone phoned him to report that his opponent was in the Juneteenth parade. I’m told by my sources that this seems to be a trend with Mr. Ellison. He is not so keen on campaigning hard, but will do so when he has to make a showing, lest it be said that he doesn’t care.

…and I say “good on ya, Rep. Ellison! Show your confidence in your people! They voted for you once – they have to vote for you again! (although beware – the “Open Card” laws you support actually pertain only to union elections, not congressional ones. So far, anyway).

To go out and actually work for your the peoples’ seat would be to diminish the magnitude of your majestic mandate.

So take the summer off. What – people think Barb Davis White is going to give you a run for your money? That’s all of that “going out into the neighborhood and talking with people about education, taxes and crime” malarkey is going to overcome the ineluctible forces of history that propelled you, Keith Ellison, Man of Destiny, to the forefront of American politics?

Pshaw, sez I. Pshaw, indeed.

Kick back, Rep. Ellison. Relax. Life’s good.

…by the progress they’re making on the rebuilding of the 35W Bridge.  Reportedly, the builders could  have the spans joined together (although still months away from traffic-ready) by July 4. 

Downtown, looking west.  The south (left) and north (right) approaches are at the bottom of the picture.

Daily Digital has been covering the progress, with photos and weekly updates of the various engineering and fabrication accomplishments.

I talked about this Strib story on the NARN last weekend; the chorus of calumny over the state of the Minnesota Department of Transportation seems to stop, like one of those mediaval maps of the world, at the edge of…the Pawlenty Administration.  To hear the left’s howling and baying, you’d think that MNDoT was an elite body with a decades-long record of excellence at transportation engineering that was only interrupted by Tim Pawlenty and David Strom.

Not so, of course.  Minnesota’s transportation system bears clogged, congested, poorly-engineered witness to decades of MNDoT’s dubious command of its subject.  The urban highway system funnels into several “commons” areas, where freeways merge and cross in arrangements that seem designed to create road rage (94/35W in downtown Minneapolis; 35W and Crosstown 62 in Richfield; 35E and 94 in downtown Saint Paul; 35E and 694 in Little Canada).  Many freeways were built with “forced exit” lanes – lanes with the dreaded yellow “exit only” signs, which force traffic to merge in on itself for no real reason (and which MNDoT has been trying to un-build, at dizzying cost, for decades). 

And of course, the bridges in Saint Cloud and Winona and of course downtown Minneapolis?  They didn’t start rusting until Inauguration Day, 2003, to hear the local left. 

Prominent among them was Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg, a DFLer who was Jesse Ventura’s Transportation Commissioner until 2002.  Last August 1, as the last of the girders were still falling into the Mississippi River, he went on WCCO with DFLer Alice Hausman to blame the “No New Taxes” pledge for the collapse – likely before the NTSB investigators had even booked their tickets to Minneapolis. 

Why was he yelling so loudly?  Why so early?

Andy Aplikowski at RezFor covered it this morning as well:

Don’t let the media gloss over the fact that El Tinklenberg, who is running for Congress against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R MN6), was the MNDOT Commissioner under Gov. Jesse Ventura. Yes, he was in charge of Minnesota’s transportation system, including the 35W bridge. No Carol Molnau has not been the only person ever to hold that position, and see reports on the critical nature of the bridge. 

(STRIB) Seven years before the Interstate 35W bridge fell, a consulting firm sent Minnesota officials a proposal to shore up the aging structure that included examining its gusset plates — the connections that federal investigators now believe likely played a role in the collapse.

The preliminary plan from HNTB Corp. of Kansas City, which was buried among hundreds of documents released at a recent legislative hearing, has gone largely unnoticed in the debate over the disaster. The company did its study at no cost in an attempt to gain a state contract for the bridge work but, in the end, wasn’t hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT).

A series of follow-up memos in 2000 and 2001 featured drawings of how HNTB planned to strengthen areas immediately surrounding the gusset plates and included renderings of “supplemental plates” and a “new oversize gusset.” Other drawings called for adding supplemental supports in the vicinity of the gusset plates.

El Tinklenberg, was MNDOT Commissioner at the time this proposal was denied. 

So let me get this straight; E-Tink presided over transportation in an administration that governed for four mostly-prosperous years – indeed, one that squandered billions in surpluses on new spending – and yet built almost no new roads, did very little bridge maintenance work, and whizzed $700,000,000 down a rathole building a train from the Mall to downtown.  Tinklenberg, indeed, did almost nothing in office…

…but was on the air while rescuers were still pulling people from the river to blame Pawlenty?

Hm.

Just a reminder – Barb Davis White is going to be at Keegans tonight, just in time for the 8PM Trivia round.

Barring any last-minute catastrophes, I’m going to be there – and whether you’re a blogger or not, I hope you can make it down to meet her. 

A journey of a thousand miles – which is truly what winning the Fifth District is – begins with a single step.  Make sure you take that step with a large, raucous group of friends and a pint of Smithwick’s!