King smacks a bad puppy:

My contention thus far is that dogs use explanations to give their readers the impression that they know that which they cannot yet really know. Attempting to connect dots of a rare event at this stage is highly premature.

The puppy – the not-exceptionally-astute author of the City Pages’ “Best Leftyblog of 2006” (see: “Damnation by Faint Praise”) “Cucking Stool” – took a thwack at King’s economic analysis of the Bridge collapse. 

Read the whole thing.  Ask yourself “have I checked my tire pressure since I got to work?”  Then send the whole thing to Nick Coleman.

Phred Phelps knows what caused the 35W Bridge to collapse…:

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., plans to stage protests at funerals of victims of the 35W bridge collapse to state that God made the bridge fall because he hates America, and especially Minnesota, because of its tolerance of homosexuality.

Oh, Phelps is coming to Minnesota.

In a press release issued the day after the bridge collapse, the church called for protests at the funerals and outlined its feelings about the relationship between God’s plan and the sins of Minneapolis and Minnesota, which it calls the “land of the Sodomite damned.”

If any Patriot Riders are involved in this and are organizing anything, please drop me a line. 

UPDATE:  D’oh!  The Patriot Riders won’t be showing up; they exist to honor veterans.

Fair enough.

Anyone else?

Last week, I joined a ton of MOB blogs in bringing you Sisyphus’ eyewitness account of the bridge collapse.

Yesterday, I heard from a friend of mine in New York (not Angryclown, for those of you who keep track of these things) who had an old fraternity brother on the same boat, who managed to liveblog the whole thing (scroll down to August 1)…

…and who would seem to be a co-worker of Sisyphus’.  And, as it happens, someone I’ve met.

Mikey gets the “immediacy” award, while Sisyphus has the narrative. 

Nihilist:

…if Don Shelby is all seeing, all knowing and all powerful and all good (as he insinuates), why does he allow bad things like this to occur?

I cried out “why”?  Don answered “Why Not?”

I’ve been collecting emails and other material about the chronic mess that is the Minnesota Department of Transportation.  There’ll be a much bigger post on this issue later on this week.

In the meantime, Sarah Janecek starts digging into the rathole:

The bridge collapse–in what’s sure to be an excruciatingly painful process–will put the spotlight on what anyone who has worked in Minnesota transportation policy has known for decades: the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is a mess. No one administration or political party is to blame. The Rudy Perpich (DFL) Administration (1982-1990), the Arne Carlson (R) Administration (1990-1998), the Jesse Ventura (I) Administration (1998-2002) and the Tim Pawlenty (R) Administration (2002-to present) have all made the same call. There are other, sexier things to fund rather than existing infrastructure and that’s what’s happened.

That, as they say, is just the beginning. 

Read the whole thing.

In other Bridge-related news, Wog has some theories about the collapse.  Some make you go “hmm”, some make you go “hmph”, and all of them are better than anything Nick Coleman’s come up with…

Dunwoody – a Minneapolis private technical school – offers a huge reward to one of last week’s heroes:

If school bus evacuator Jeremy Hernandez wants to resume learning auto mechanics at Dunwoody College of Technology, he can do so without charge.

The Minneapolis school made that offer to Hernandez’s family Saturday

School spokesman Dave Jarzyna said the school was bombarded with phone calls from the public, after word got out that Hernandez couldn’t afford to continue attending.

“Universally they said we need to do something for this guy,” Jarzyna said.

“We’re going to make sure that if he wants to come to Dunwoody, he’ll have the resources to do that,” Jarzyna said. Hernanedez, 20, could not be reached immediately for comment.

“The ball’s in his court and we’re hoping to hear from him,” Jarzyna said.

Of course, this sort of thing is great PR for Dunwoody; it warms up a spot in the press’ and public’s hearts for the place.

Just like now. 

Well played, to all concerned…

UPDATE:  Ed notes that you can contribute to Dunwoody’s scholarship program here.  It’d be a great way to say “thanks” for saying thanks.

Michael Brodkorb said it best in his headline:  PAWLENTY HATER NICK COLEMAN HITS NEW LOW.

First came his first, deeply stupid column on Friday, which blamed the “No New Taxes” pledge for the disaster as rescuers were still frantically combing the wreckage for survivors, roughly 12 18 months before the NTSB actually expects to know what actually happened.

Then, his – I’ll be charitable – scabrous and incoherent appearance on MSNBC.

And now, Saturday’s column, an apologia for the politicizing of this tragedy, and an attempt to seize “moral authority” on behalf of the likes of Coleman – fact-free politically-motivated ranters – from people who actually stayed awake in math class, went to engineering instead of J school, and actually have to deal in facts and science for a living.

The column distills everything that make Nick Coleman America’s worst working columnist into a melange of gutless lying that is almost too depressing to fisk; indeed, I’ve almost given up critiqueing Coleman, since under normal circumstances he’s become an irrelevant self-parody.

But people are dead, and this – I’m done being charitable – gutless illiterate habitual-liar political hack is trying to use this catastrophe to bully the ill-informed into accepting his deeply, abidingly stupid politics.

According to the pundits, the president’s response to the disaster at our end of the Mississippi is an effort to be seen as more compassionate than he appeared in 2005, when he just looked out the window of Air Force One after the levees broke in New Orleans.

Minnesotans will welcome the president. We need presidents to be comforters, and leaders, at times such as this…But let’s not pretend his visit isn’t all about politics, too.

Everything about this disaster — except the heroic efforts to rescue and recover the victims — has been steeped in politics. And the most calculated political effort has been the posturing and spinning by public officials trying to act commanding while making sure they don’t get pinned with responsibility for the collapse.

Alternate – and as it happens, factual – explanation:  They’re working their asses off to get ahead of the lies that people like Nick Coleman are telling about the situation; lies that are contradicted in Coleman’s own paper; lies that can only be aimed at swaying the gullible and ill-informed (i.e., Nick Coleman’s entire audience) into taking a desired action at the polls.

If you think everyone should play nice about it, you are living in Pollyanna Land. We are in a bare-knuckled political brawl in this country, and the government is in the hands of government haters who want to starve it or, in the alleged belief of presidential ally Grover Norquist, want to “drown it.”

You can’t drown government. It is people who drown.

Again, Coleman lies.  Not only does nobody this side of Ron Paul seriously discuss dismantling government, but one of the things tha so irritated wahabbi-DFLers like Coleman before this tragedy was their “myopic” focus on…roads and bridges, as opposed to boondoggles like the Ventura Trolley.

Friday, the Taxpayers League — the heart of the No New Taxes beast — called on us not to point fingers. They probably disconnected their phone and took down their sign, too.

Actually, sources tell me they were inundated with hateful calls, likely as not from people inflamed by ignorant  moral vermin like Nick Coleman.  Unlike Nick Coleman, the Taxpayers League took the phone calls, and responded.  Try calling Nick Coleman sometimes; he may sound like a stroke victim (no offense to stroke victims or, for that matter, vermin), but he can sure dish out the verbal abuse.  I have the voicemail tapes to prove it.

No New Taxes is not a slogan that works anymore.

We wouldn’t know, would we?  Remember – this bridge was first drawing red flags under the Moe Ventura Administration, when the DFL was spending the surplus like a crack whore with a stolen Gold Card.

That means don’t blame the people in charge for letting 140,000 vehicles a day — 1.7 every second –cross a bridge that wasn’t fit for traffic.

And again, Coleman is not just a gutless, cynical liar, but an illiterate, ignorant one too.  He repeats the lie that the “50” rating implied a “50-50” chance that the bridge was going to collapse, or that it wasn’t fit to be driven on.  His own paper iterated that, in fact, it was a rating; a rating that caused a response (more inspections, more scrutiny, and a focus on the year 2020, when the bridge was scheduled for major reconstruction or repair).  These were decisions made by engineers, people who deal in fact, calculation and empirical conclusions.  The opposite of Nick Coleman.

No one knew it might fall? Give us a break. What do you need? They were talking about bolting plates on it to keep it up. Maybe duct tape was next.

Nick, you lying, illiterate numbnuts:  You state this (“bolting plates”) like it’s some kind of anomaly.  That’s how you maintain bridges – indeed, any big steel-girder construction – when you have neither the option nor the need to take the whole shebang out of service.

And, in the opinion of engineers who do this for a living and for whom it is a matter of empirical science rather than ill-informed opinion, they didn’t need to take it out of service.

If they were wrong, it was not a matter of insufficient money.

The rest of Coleman’s paper doesn’t seem to have a problem getting that fact out there.

Why does Coleman?

Bottom line: It fell.

At least he got one fact right.

Is it political to be angry about that? So be it. Everything is politics. Politics is not a dirty word by itself. Politics builds bridges and schools and hospitals. And politics can make them fall down.

Catch that?

It sums up the problem with people like Nick Coleman.  “Politics” doesn’t “build” anything.  It decides how things like taxes are gathered, and how government budgets are spent.  Since we live in a “democracy”, that process is going to be bumptious and imperfect.  Perhaps Coleman would prefer a dictatorship?

But politics doesn’t build anything; engineers, ironworkers, carpenters and masons do.

And barring the odd war here and there, it doesn’t “destroy” anything either:  wear and tear does.  Time does.  “Acts of God” do.  Traffic does.  Design flaws and construction errors and undetected flaws in material do.   More often, confluences of all of the above do; the Titanic wasn’t sunk by an iceberg or a design shortcoming (un-capped watertight compartments) or faulty assumptions (that only three compartments would vent to the sea) or misplaced arrogance (doing flank speed at night in an ice field); it was the combination of all of them that doomed the ship.

Likewise, it’s every bit as likely that some combination of material flaws or deterioration combined with decades of heavy use and occasional abuse, construction practices, heat, weight of traffic, and undetected material faults caused this catastrophe as it was the nonexistant “lack of money”.

When Pawlenty vetoed the transportation bill in May, “Commissioner” Molnau was beside him, smiling. Dear, Minnesota. A transportation commissioner who grins while her department is being knifed is not a transportation commissioner.

Could we please follow this logic into the newsroom?  A “journalist” who makes s**t up as he goes along isn’t a “journalist”.

Now, a bridge has fallen and people are dead. The buck has to stop somewhere. Molnau was in China when it happened. She probably kissed the Minnesota turf when she got back. Because a Chinese transportation commissioner whose bridge collapsed might lose her head.

And a columnist who gang-rapes fact to chase a further his politics should certainly not be working in a town that values “fact”.

Jay Reding also guts Coleman like a fish.

I remember late in the afternoon on 9/11, talking with my pal and neighbor Flash at the end of America’s longest day in two generations.  He glumly predicted 20,000 dead.  I was more “optimistic”; given it was New York, I figured thousands would be late to the office, stuck in the subway, whatever.  I looked at the bright side, and figured 15,000 dead. 

Both of us, along with millions of other Americans, were astounded, and thankful to be very wrong.

I had the same reaction last week.

———-

I’m always gratefully astounded by two things;  humans’ ability to survive, and the average person’s ability to rise to the occasion, no matter what the occasion is, and how confounding the “experts” continuously find that to be.

Not everyone accepts human resiliance and intelligence as a given, of course.  Reading official disaster-planning documents, it’s fairly clear that officialdom thinks the average citizen is a helpless sheeple, unable to deal with, much less react to, crisis without government “experts” on hand to do their thinking for them.  While that’s mostly a high level phenomenon, it extends down to all-too-many “first responders” as well, although I like to think they’re in the minority. 

The fact is that, in every major disaster in which people were cut off from “authorities” and “experts”, the average American is perfectly capable of reacting appropriately to the situation.  Examples range far and wide; from the appropriate reactions of thousands of individual carry permit holders who’ve thwarted crime without inflicting carnage (confounding many prominent lefties, confirming most conservatives’ beliefs) to the people in the Twin Towers who, on 9/11, managed to convince themselves to ignore the announcements telling them to stay in their offices and await rescule, to organize themselves, and to get themselves to safety in an orderly evacuation that bordered on the miraculous, to the “kids” on that schoolbus, perched on the edge of the abyss last Wednesday, who stepped up and got their charges to safety without the aid of anyone with a badge.

And while after every catastrophe, the “experts” quickly give up hope of finding survivors in, say, buried rubble within three days of the disaster, nearly every such declaration, it seems, is followed by a story of someone being pulled, alive, from the rubble days later, after surviving on runoff and hope for an impossible time.

As I watched and heard the initial news coverage of the 35W Bridge collapse last week – with stories of dozens of cars in the water, memories of sitting in eight lanes of stopped traffic on the deck in mind, and the jagged concrete and flames front and center – I and most everyone I knew silently braced for dozens and dozens of dead. 

Humans’ sometimes-miraculous resiliency – aided by some fortuitous physics – stepped in.  Thank God:

Although the final death toll is still unknown, doctors and safety experts say that a combination of factors, from physics to shock absorbers, probably helped cushion the blow for those plunging from the bridge in their vehicles.

In general, they say, the cars and the bridge itself helped absorb some of the impact that would have killed someone free-falling from that height.

“I would say over two-thirds of the people walked away,” said Dr. Marc Conterato, an emergency room physician at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, who was at the site. “Believe me, the human body can absorb a lot of trauma.”

Watching the immense cloud of spray and spume thrown up by the falling structure, falling 20-30 feet below the plummeting roadbed, gives you some clue; the web of girders sluicing into the water and then plowing into the riverbed surely absorbed a lot of the impact; the flat roadbed beneath many of the cars must have spread out the energy of the impact over a large enough area to make things more survivable than they appeared at first glance – not just to us gathered around our TVs, but to the experts as well:

“I figured we’d probably have a couple of hundred injured, and 25 or 50 fatalities,” said Dr. John Hick, an emergency doctor and disaster coordinator at Hennepin County Medical Center.

I don’t think anyone minds being wrong about that.

Writing about the President’s visit on Saturday to the site of the 35W River Bridge collapse, Jeff Fecke of the Minnesota Monitor wrote:

Bush will be in town Saturday to survey the damage caused by the deadly collapse of the bridge, and to attend the Republican Party’s summer meeting, which is being held in Minneapolis.

Michael Brodkorb left two comments:

Have you confirmed with the White House that Bush is speaking at the Summer RNC meeting?  Have you confirmed this with the RNC? I haven’t seen this reported anywhere. 

[and…]

According to my source, the meeting has adjourned. President Bush did not attend the meeting, nor was he ever scheduled to attend the meeting.

The President landed in the Twin Cities (I watched it on TV) around 9:30, and got to downtown Minnepolis within the following hour; the RNC had reportedly adjourned about the time the President landed.

So – Jeff Fecke?  Where did you get this little tidbit?

To be fair – we have no indication that the statement was plagiarized, per se.

But what is the source of this apparently utterly-fallacious statement?

…that failed Air America host-ette Randee Rhodez took the same pro-forma shot at Governor Pawlenty that every single other liberal pundit, activist and media figure (and instant civil engineer) has taken this past few days…:

What you’re watching, should have the chyron underneath, instead of it saying Governor Tim Pawlenty, or news conference on bridge collapse, or recovery or whatever, you know what it should say underneath there? ‘Your tax cuts at work!’ That’s what it should say.

…as I am to hear that she’s still on the air at all.

Who knew?

Paul Schmelzer – one of the good reporters at the Minnesota Monitor – points us to an amazing story of survival.  Or, really, two:

One of the most amazing images — of many — to emerge from the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge was a photo of a man in a wheelchair staggeringly close to the edge of the fallen-away highway, the ramp of his van aiming like a bobsled chute into the abyss.

 

The image I found on the internet didn’t identify its source, but the Minnesota running blog Down the Backstretch reports that the man is Marcel Ordaz Cruz, a 26-year-old Mexican native who lives in Crystal. In 2005, he  finished sixth in the wheelchair division of the Twin Cities Marathon, and this year he finished ninth in the wheelchair division of Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth.

Left paralyzed after a shooting in North Carolina seven years ago, Cruz was driving across the bridge in his modified van Wednesday when the roadway started heaving. He says he saw as many as 20 vehicles plummet into the river as he veered into the guardrail to prevent the van from continuing down the steep decline that appeared in front of him. When he came to a stop, he said he “felt hopeless because I couldn’t do anything.” Quickly, rescue workers appeared to help him.

Read the whole thing, natch.

Yesterday, I noted that a local backroom politico had blamed the 35W River Bridge disaster on “No New Taxes”; that if the state had only raised more taxes, the bridge would still stand.  Nick Coleman echoed (literally and metaphorically) the same sentiment (and drew the only response that really fits).

Of course, it was BS (via Ed).

So who is accountable?  And what can “the system” do about it?

More later – or Monday. 

UPDATE: Sarah Janecek beats Coleman like a baby seal:

“No New Taxes” has nothing to do with what happened, yesterday.

A few facts for Coleman. In general, the major bridges the federal government has built become the responsibility of states to maintain, and states routinely seek and are granted federal funding to help with the maintenance. The maintenance work being done on the I-35W bridge by Progressive Contractors, Inc., out of St. Michael, Minnesota, was on the list of projects of the 2007-2009 State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) list. Right there on page 116 of the report is the I-35W bridge. The $3.3 million price tag was being paid mostly by the federal government ($2.97 million) and not the state ($330,000).

The National Bridge Inventory conducted by the federal government in 2003 reported that the bridge had a “sufficiency” rating of 50% on a scale of 120. That’s not great, but that’s where about 80,000 of the country’s bridges stand. The significant finding of that Inventory, however, was that structurally, the bridge “meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as-is.”

The federal government didn’t flag structural issues; neither did MnDOT.

That’ll leave a mark.

I watched a bunch of coverage of the Bridge disaster last night. 

I wanted to figure out how to criticize Don Shelby’s unctuous – and eventually revoltingly-politicized – commentary as succinctly as possible.

Fortunately, The Elder – who at least works in the same building as engineers – is on duty, wielding deft satire…:

 The Don Shelby Credibility Bridge–spanning the divide between the local anchorman’s ego and reality–collapsed without warning shortly before 10pm this evening. Preliminary indications are that a massive failure in Shelby’s structural integrity led to the collapse.

 …and a fact-checking machete:

The man’s self-importance knows no limits and it was on display for all to see this evening. At a time when the news coverage should have focused solely on rescue and recovery efforts, Shelby almost immediately launched into discussions about the possible causes of the collapse and where blame could be assigned. He was obviously getting all his information on bridge structures and engineering from other sources, but he rarely if ever mentioned them, giving the viewer the impression that HE DON SHELBY knew all about such matters and was able and willing to start drawing conclusions while the rubble was still settling. It was a disgusting display of arrogance with an almost total absence of wisdom.

RARE COMPLIMENT ALERT:  The Twin Cities daily newspapers have, at first glance, done a decent job with their coverage. 

Fraters has an eyewitness account from “Sisyphus”, the normally-hilarious wag from MOB blog Nihilist in Golf Pants, who saw the entire collapse from river level, on an excursion boat just upstream from the bridge, at the Saint Anthony lock.

Go to Fraters to read the whole thing – to my knowledge, so far the best eyewitness account of the collapse anywhere.

Excerpt:

I remember seeing the bridge buckle, and a white vehicle fall into the water. Then, the span of the bridge on the east bank side crumpled up like an accordion and the entire bridge fell towards the river. It was over before my brain could comprehend what I had seen – you just don’t expect to see a bridge collapse right before your eyes with no warning. And not being accustomed to looking at the city from on the river, I didn’t immediately realize that the bridge I had just seen fall into the Mississippi was the I-35W Bridge.The minutes after the collapse were eerily quiet. As we stared in disbelief at the wreckage, it began to sink in that we had just witnessed a major catastrophe. The east bank side of the bridge was bent like an accordion and there was a blue SUV or mini-van and two other vehicles on the downward slant toward the river. It seemed odd that the only evidence of a disaster, as of yet, was the fallen bridge itself – no sirens, no helicopters overhead, no flashing lights. Of course, it was far too early for any of that, but it did add to the surrealism of the moment.

One of the things you learn in concealed carry training is the tricks your mind can play on you at times of extreme stress.  Sisyphus’ account is a great case study:

Time seemed to crawl by, everyone onboard was shaken and we began discussing what we had seen amongst ourselves. Each of us who had been looking at the bridge while it collapsed, remembered seeing one and only one car falling – and each of us remembered a different car. Another oddity is that none of us remember hearing any noise from the collapse at all.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:  Leftyblogger “Noah” from “Blanked Out” lives in one of the buildings closest to the bridge, on the East Bank by the U of M.  He gives his eyewitness account here.  (Via Jay Reding)

My pal and neighbor, Flash at Centrisity, notes the part of Minnesota’s response to the Bridge Collapse that we’d all like to focus on:

Minnesotans have shown their true colors with displays heroism and unconditional support. Through this tragedy we will rediscover the pride we have in our fellow citizens.

What he said; except that there’s no “re”-discovering.  Minnesotans have much to be proud of, especially during crises. 

Not all of us, of course.  After a couple of contentious sessions in which Governor Pawlenty held the line on the DFL’s demand for more tax money, one might expect this disaster to bring out the ugly side of someone.

And indeed it has.  A Saint Paul DFL operative blames the Governor and all Republicans for the disaster (in a Saint Paul politics email discussion forum; I won’t link it or list his name, for reasons that I think might be obvious):

You can all scream at me for being the first to throw stones, but here is
what I know this bridge was inspected in May of 2006 and found to have cracks in the supports. It was placed on the watch category. One only can wonder if it should have been put on the critical list. It had been listed as having fatigue details from as long as 2001 and by 2006 they were able to take pictures of the fatigue cracks.

Governor NO MORE TAXES AND LET THE RABBLE DIE was just on the tube claiming that the bridge was given a “clean bill of health.’ He knows that what he was saying is as full of crap as he is.

This is the result of Minnesota not raising the gas tax in years.

The Governor has now directly killed people by his policies.

Pretty stupid?  Of course.

Worse, in its own way, was my “represenative”, DFLer Alice Hausman.  Girders hadn’t finished falling into the river, and the blazing truck was still on fire, last night when she went on WCCO Radio and hinted – without really coming out and saying it – at basically the same thing. 

The bodies were barely cold, and some (by no means all) DFLers were ready to blame the Governor and the MNGOP.

The NTSB has barely gotten their luggage unpacked.  The engineers are months away from having an answer.  I’m no engineer, but the simultaneous collapse of nearly 2,000 feet of bridge just might be a sign of a major design flaw, as opposed to a deteriorated girder failing.

In any case, I don’t recall Governor Pawlenty making any bones about the fact that he’d rather spend money on roads (and bridges) than on boondoggles like the Ventura Trolley and the Central Corridor. 

Wow.  Imagine how many bridges we could fix if we could get that billion dollars back that we spent on the Ventura Trolley…

Anyway; no more politics for now. 

Leave the tragedy aside for a moment; I never liked that bridge.

It was the product of a dismal age in bridge design, when the Interstate Highway system’s philosophy for bridges was “you shouldn’t know you’re on a bridge”; among all of downtown Minneapolis’ bridges, it never really fit in with its surroundings architecturally; it was like a delivery van in a parade of Dusenbergs.

But on the bridge?

One of the most piercing memories of my life was my first winter in Minneapolis, in 1985-6.  I was driving home down 35W from a friend’s place in Forest Lake one bitterly-cold evening, after midnight.  For the first time, I crossed that bridge late at night going south over the river.  The view was, literally, breathtaking; the lights of the city, looking sharper than normal in the cold, were gemlike in their brilliance; the light reflected off the water and dimly outlined the gorge below, by the Falls and the lock and dam, sparkled off the parts of the river that weren’t frozen.

Minneapolis looked beautiful.  And it was one of those moments when I first felt like I really belonged here.

The view has stuck with me; every time I welcome a friend or relative or newcomer to the Twin Cities, one of the stops on my night-time tour always involved driving south across the bridge, after dark (and thence to Saint Paul, driving into downtown from the south over either the Lafayette or the High Bridge, which is equally stunning). 

The loss of that view is the least of today’s tragedies.  But it’ll stick with me, too.

I have little to add to the news; by now, the world world knows that the 35W River Bridge collapsed last night.  Ed’s done a good job of covering it – there will be much more to come.

I can add nothing to the facts of this story.  Not yet, anyway.

I was ten miles away, up in Fridley at an event with my son.  We walked out at 7:15, and saw the coverage with a group of other families.  Like all such visceral, physical disasters, it took a moment or two to realize it was real, and it was huge; it took longer to sink in that it was here.

As I said before; my thoughts and prayers to out to everyone involved; those who survived, the families of those who didn’t, and all the people working on the site, the hospitals, and on the investigation today, trying to rescue, recover, heal, plan around, and solve, and help the Metro recover from this catastrophe. 

For those of you from out of town, the importance of this bridge to this metro area can not be overstated.  The Twin Cities are famously dependent on bridges, since the Cities are cut into three distinct regions by the course and confluence of two great rivers, the Mississippi and the Minnesota. 

The Mississippi flows like a big “S” that’s rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, separating most of Minneapolis from most of Saint Paul.  The Minnesota River, in turn, joins the Mississippi where the two cities come together, by the airport and the Mall of America, dividing most of the booming south suburbs – Burnsville, Shakopee, Mendota Heights and Eagan – separate from the rest of the city. 

So – if you need to go from south to Northeast in the metro, the 35W Bridge was the main link.  And it was heavily used; the Minnesota Department of Transportation estimated 140,000 cars a day used the bridge as of 2002; people commuting from the north-east ‘burbs to jobs downtown or on the Southtown strip (the huge commercial district along 494 from Eden Prairie to the Mall of America).  All the major detours are bad; jogging across the 694 River Bridge to I94 leaves you with the perpetual mess at the Lowrey Tunnel and the 35W Commons; Minnesota 280 (through Roseville and the Midway and thence to I94) isn’t a freeway (although they’re jury-rigging it today), plus I94 through the Midway back to Minneapolis over the I94 River Bridge and the Commons is already a congested nightmare; taking 35E to 94 via downtown Saint Paul is a 10-20 mile detour (and southbound 35E is already horribly congested every morning, and northbound is even worse at night), and leaves one back to the same bottleneck on 94 at the river; for those working south of Minneapolis, taking 35E to 494 is a long detour, and the traffic there is, yep, already kinda bad there. 

I remember talking with someone with knowledge of these kinds of things when I was at KSTP, twenty years ago, back when “terrorism” still killed people in ones and tens and twenties; he said “if you wanted to shut down the Twin Cities, all you’d have to do is take down the 35W and 94 River Bridges – or even make them inoperable.  This city couldn’t function”. 

We’ll see. 

Please direct whatever form of prayer, imprecation or wish your worldview recognizes to the victims, their families, the survivors…

…and today, all the Fire, Police, Sheriff’s Department, hospital workers who will be untangling this mess looking for victims and (God willing) more survivors.

To everyone who called last night; I was no where near the bridge.  But thanks for thinking about me.

More on that later.

The Strib gives a hearty “attaboy” to the North Minneapolis residents that fingered Charez Jones’ alleged killers:

Let us pause to praise those who gave information about the recent North Side murder of 14-year-old Charez Jones. Their actions led to several arrests just days after the high school student was killed on June 9. And their quick responses are fine examples of how a community can come together to combat violent crime.When neighbors step up and speak up, it sends just the right message to criminals: You will not be tolerated here. That’s among the best ways to counter the “Don’t Snitch” fear campaign of the criminals.

That, as far as it goes, is true.  It’s good when the law-abiding people of the neighborhood can stand up and point out problems to the authorites.

But it’s bad when the fact that they do it at all is notable. 

Those who think they “shouldn’t get involved” ought to know that law enforcement is at its best when the community cooperates. Rarely are cops around to actually witness a crime; they are called in after the fact. That’s why they rely so heavily on the eyes and ears of the community to help solve crimes. Community policing and involvement works.

But only if the people really believe it’s in their best interests to cooperate.

Minneapolis and Hennepin County have spent the last forty years building a “catch and release” system for criminals, welcoming new criminals (and the poor on which they prey first and most) and effectively ceding Phillips and huge swathes of the North Side to the gangs.

It’s been coming home to roost for a long time:

Community organizations and police are worried that things could get particularly difficult this summer because there is evidence that at least eight gangs or wannabe gangs are fighting over drug turf on the North Side. That means residents must be especially observant during these warm summer months and report what they see.

Like most highly challenged inner-city neighborhoods, the North Side is largely populated by good people who keep up their homes and care about their neighbors. They want nothing more than to get rid of the bad actors who use their streets for gunplay, drug dealing and other illegal acts.

And then…what? 

If you call the (overstretched) Minneapolis Police Department, and if they manage to make an arrest, it goes to the County Attorney, who…

…does what?

To make that happen, more neighbors must band together to support the kind of actions that led to the recent arrests. A “Protect our people and community” campaign must be stronger and more sustainable than criminal efforts to scare good people into silence.

And the only way you’ll get that is by revoking the DFL’s hereditary one-party rule over Minneapolis.

The Strib endorses RT Rybak’s dream of revitalizing Washington Avenue.

We’ll get to the editorial in a moment or two.  Shark Bait at Anti-Strib jumped on the first word of this “plan”, last week, quoting the Strib piece:

 The mayor doesn’t know how much it would cost. But he announced that a committee will meet to generate more ideas and a website,

Let me tell you how much it’s going to cost you…WAY TOO EFFING MUCH! You have RAMPANT CRIME in North Minneapolis, you have too few cops on the streets, and you want to spend money on making your city pretty?

Rybak, have you COMPLETELY lost your mind?!?!?!

Well, while I usually agree with the guys at Anti-Strib, this time I’ll leave it with “maybe and maybe not.”

Rybak’s incompetence at dealing with crime is, of course, grimly legendary, to the point that it’s spawned perhaps the most vibrant cottage industry among Twin Cities’ center-right bloggers.

But there is something to making the city less habitable to crime and criminals – by making it more friendly to real people.  Downtown Minneapolis has been victimized over the past fifty years by a couple of government-driven trends in urban design that, in retrospect, have been el-flopola.  And Sunday’s Strib editorial on the subject notes both of these trends, although they stint a bit on parts of the background, in going through a history of the neighborhood:

From the nearby Milwaukee Road Depot, a traveler [before the early sixties] stepped directly into the city’s worst squalor, where drunkards “littered the alleys with broken whiskey bottles, fought openly on the sidewalks [and] urinated on street corners,” recalled Joseph Hart in his and Edwin Hirschoff’s book “Down & Out: The Life and Death of Minneapolis’s Skid Row.”

Washington Avenue was a strip of bars, flophouses, pawnshops, secondhand stores, brothels and charity missions where, according to the Minneapolis Star, rats “burrowed holes from one building to another” and could “travel for blocks.” (The first skyways, perhaps.)

Slum clearance in the late 1950s and early ’60s chased out the denizens […]

 So far, so good.  The editorial refers to “Urban Renewal”, the first big attempt at socially-engineering the American inner city.  Influenced by [see Lileks for the list of the European architectural criminals against humanity], the ideal was that since the suburb was the home of the future, that the inner city should be turned into a hub and destination via piece of minimalist art. 

Which is what gave us urban atrocities like St. Paul’s Town Square (a vast concrete abomination that turned the area around Cedar, Minnesota and Fifth streets into a stalinist concrete desert), Riverside Plaza and, as the Strib describes, the neighborhood that’s drawn Rybak’s attention, which used to be called the “Gateway”:

[…] tore down hundreds of buildings and turned the avenue into a desolate funnel for auto traffic.

Unmentioned by the Strib:  “Urban Renewal” was a government program – the nannystate’s first big effort to shape the environment people lived in.  It, along with the decision to build the Interstate through the center of the city at the same time they tore down the old streetcar lines (which were, after decades in operation, basically self-supporting) with the connivance of a cartel of oil, tire and car companies, effectively turned America’s inner cities into the screwed up messes they are today.  In the Twin Cities, driving 94 and the 35s through the center of both cities gutted whole neighborhoods, creating slums where decent neighborhoods once stood, destroying St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood (the city’s traditional African-American neighborhood dating back to before the Civil War) and taking with it the community cohesion that used to be a hallmark of pre-welfare-state Black Minnesota.

Thanks, government.

But I digress. 

The problem with “funnels for auto traffic” (and/or “grandiose monuments to the wisdom of urban plans gone horribly awry”) is that they are ugly, barren, uninhabitable, and about as appealing to a regular person, a shopper, a visitor to a city, as a parking lot. 

And since nature and humanity both abhor vacuums,  who’s going to flock to these concrete deserts?

Criminals. 

Now, smacking criminals – property criminals, violent criminals, sex criminals – over the head and tossing them into jail until they get right is a laudable goal – one of state and local government’s precious few most legitimate priorities.

But creating an environment where crime can not flourish is equally laudable.  It is, of course, a goal that Minneapolis is comically-ill-equipped to carry out, given its’ one-party DFL government with its’ attendant commitment to using the city as a warehouse for the poor, its punishment of wealth and enterprise and merit, and mania for going mushy on crime; the DFL has spent two generations turning Minneapolis into a perfect storm of crime.

Still, turning Washington Avenue – one of the most depressingly-arid places in the Twin Cities – into something that real, law-abiding people with money and families would like to visit is a decent goal, certainly less-stupid than most of Rybak’s agenda in that, if successful, it could help rather than harm the tax base, encourage rather than discourage real, law-abiding people to come to the area, and make part of Minneapolis inviting rather than actively repellent to decent folks.

Mayor R.T. Rybak’s “vision” for transforming an ugly duckling into a grand, tree-lined boulevard is laudable and well worth trying. The rebirth of the Mills District has shown Washington’s potential as a green, attractive connection between the University of Minnesota’s West Bank and the booming North Loop. Charging a team of talented designers to sketch out a new Washington was the right first step, and their treatment, unveiled this week, is stunning. Their main point (borrowing from European boulevards) is that busy auto traffic can coexist with lively sidewalks if infill shops and a generous barrier of trees are added to give pedestrians an even chance.

Which is a start. 

Of course, there’s the little matter of coming up with businesses that’ll inhabit the stores along the gorgeous new thoroughfare – which would involve making Minneapolis less overtly-hostile to business, which would mean electing a government that is happy to say “no new taxes” for a better Minneapolis.  In other words, it means voters in the City of Lakes must have the foresight and wisdom to turn its ruling bloc of extremist DFLers and Greens out of office. 

The editorial notes what I did a few months back:

In some ways, the city government is its own worst enemy. As developer Jim Stanton pointed out, the city says it wants a pedestrian environment but insists that new buildings extend fully to the street, leaving no room for wide sidewalks or trees. Go figure.

That mentality must change if Washington Avenue is to be transformed. The McGuire Family Foundation has set high standards with its gift of nearby Gold Medal Park. If those standards — and an ethic of public/private support — can spread to Washington, it will become, over time, the beautiful, tree-lined boulevard that the city hopes for.

“That mentality” must change in many, many ways that I doubt the Strib editorial board is prepared for. 

Sunday’s Strib editorial dances about the obvious conclusion but, blinded by its extremist statist ideology, couldn’t actually spell it out if it were in five foot flaming letters in their North Oaks living rooms:

While the central cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have avoided the economic devastation that still besets much of the Midwestern Rust Belt, they have not kept pace with more dynamic cities farther west, places they would like to emulate.

Er, says who?

That picture emerges from a new Brookings Institution report, “Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities.”

Ah.  The Brookings Institution, the famously left-of-center think tank that never met a tax bill or government intervention it didn’t like. 

The impression left is of Minnesota’s urban core drifting between two fates — steering away from the vortex that has swallowed Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis and other Midwestern trouble spots, but unable to join the clubby atmosphere of Austin, Tex., Denver, Seattle and other more prosperous places.

And why are those other places more prosperous?

The condition of central cities is important, the report says, because they are the canary in the coal mine; trouble at the core bodes poorly for the suburbs and the state. Indeed, state governments hold the key to the success of older big cities, the report says, because their policies set the table for older cities to compete.

You can lead a horse to water, goes the old saying, but you can’t wrench the horse from the control of a bunch of sixties’-vintage paleoliberal neo-socialists whose agendas consider drinking water to be a racist, sexist diversion from imposing a narrow, ideologically-blinkered version of “horseness” onto it. 

But let’s look at the specific priorities that the Strib calls for:

 State investments in education, jobs, public safety, transit, housing and urban amenities create cities that are stronger, regions that grow more efficiently and local economies that are “a boon to, rather than a drain on, state budgets.”

And yet doesn’t the Strib call out Austin, Texas – a city larger than Minneapolis, and when combined with San Antonio part of a metro area comparable with the Twin Cities – as an example?

And isn’t mentioning “Texas” a cue for smug lefties to start tittering about the state’s education budget?

Austin has a smaller, less-expensive transit system than the Twin Cities; I can see no references to anyone building trains (which, if you ask a Twin Cities lefty, is the one thing that will one day separate Minneapolis from Omaha). 

Public safety?  Each of the cities the Strib cites has had a “shall issue” concealed carry law for vastly longer than Minnesota; Texas has a reputation for no-BS law and order that is pretty much the mirror image of Minnesota’s criminal-coddling welfare magnet.

Unfortunately, that’s a message Gov. Tim Pawlenty ignored in vetoing a tax bill that would have restored a portion of the deep cuts in aid to cities that he initiated in 2003… As Brookings’ Bruce Katz said in a recent speech: City-based regions are the “main organizing units” of global competition; competing successfully and meeting the great environmental and social challenges of our time “rests largely on the health and vitality and prosperity of major cities and metropolitan areas.”

Then the Twin Cities – locked into an ideology of spending without accountability and want without goal by uber-liberal administrations whose only goal seems to be to garner more money and power unto themselves – are pretty well doomed, huh?

To that end, it’s in a state’s best interest, says the report, to ensure that its biggest cities are safe and fiscally healthy; that their physical landscapes are transformed, and that their middle and upper-middle classes grow.

And what’s the best way for that to happen?

To keep using the inner cities as warehouses for the poor, in a “war on poverty” that is the nation’s real quagmire?

To keep entrusting our cities to liberal administrations who see “lack of diversity” as a bigger problem than crime?

Oh, and since the Strib is sounding the warning gong, just how bad are things?

It’s good that Minneapolis and St. Paul are not on the Brookings “critical list” — at least not yet. But it would be nice to see them moving toward the top tier. Among central cities in the 50 largest metro areas, Minneapolis ranked 16th in economic condition and ninth in residential well-being. St. Paul ranked 30th in economic condition and 15th in residential well-being. While both cities run ahead of their Rust Belt neighbors in the rankings, they trail Austin, Seattle, Denver and a half-dozen other “peers.” That puts the central Twin Cities in a category that might be labeled “pretty good.” In an era of sharp competition, pretty good isn’t good enough.

WHAT?

Forget for a moment that the report, by a left-leaning think tank, is measuring spending; we come in closer to the top of the list than the middle, and the Strib is fussing?

Leaving aside that when the comparison is based entirely on the amount of higher-government spending, “pretty good” isn’t very good at all. 

Amid the layoffs, buyouts and restructurings currently going on at the Strib, the rumor had it that Katherine Kersten’s column was saved at least in part because she has never worked as a beat reporter (just as at least one rumor has it that Doug Grow’s departure is tied to the paper’s plan to put him back on the street, due to his experience as a gumshoe general assignment reporter).

And yet her column Friday – about Minneapolis’ reticence to pursue illegal immigrants, even when they are committing crimes – puts to shame many of priorities of the paper’s “news” division (to say nothing of the local partisan agendafloggers dressed in “Ace Reporter” costumes).

Minneapolis, as a matter of city policy, tells its police not to act as surrogate Immigration agents. 

Supporters of the city’s hands-off approach point to a “separation” ordinance, passed in 2003. The ordinance prohibits police from becoming involved in routine immigration enforcement, where immigration is the main issue. Immigrants in the city won’t cooperate with the police if they fear deportation, the reasoning goes.

But that’s not supposed to include interfering with enforcing laws against crime…:

But the ordinance explicitly permits police involvement in investigations like the sex ring. “Nothing in this chapter,” it states, “shall prohibit public safety personnel from assisting federal law enforcement officers in the investigation of criminal activity involving individuals present in the United States who may also be in violation of federal civil immigration laws.”

On Wednesday, Rybak acknowledged that the ordinance doesn’t bar police from engaging in crime fighting just because immigration is involved. “When the issue is clearly prostitution, we will continue to stand strong against it,” he said.

Rybak’s next quote explains a lot about the miasma of dilettantism that besets Minnesota’s largest city:

But wasn’t prostitution the issue in the sex ring bust? “The line between what is prostitution and what is immigration was blurry,” Rybak replied.

I had to stop there for a minute.

“The line between what is prostitution and what is immigration is blurry”.

This is Minneapolis’ mayor. 

Saint Paul, though hamstrung by a similarly-lefty City Council, hasn’t quite slipped the surly bonds of reason:

The St. Paul Police Department, for its part, wasn’t troubled by “blurry” lines though it too has a “separation” ordinance. In fact, the St. Paul police helped lead the charge against the sex ring operators.

So it’s clear that at least one of the Twin Cities’ loony-left-of-center governments can tell the difference between illegal immigration and prostitution. 

Are Minneapolis citizens well-served when city leaders avoid law enforcement on the “blurry” lines theory — when the crimes at issue may involve illegal immigrants?

Mark Cangemi, now retired from ICE, doesn’t think so. Cangemi was special agent in charge of the sex ring investigation until December 2006. “In the guise of protecting citizens, the Minneapolis leadership is actually harming the most vulnerable,” he says…In Cangemi’s view, Minneapolis’ “separation” ordinance — and its overbroad interpretation — have created a wedge between city police and the feds. In an operation like the sex ring investigation, he says, officers would likely be hampered if they had to make an arrest. “They are afraid they will be chastised and disciplined for doing what they are sworn to do: serve and protect,” he says.

Cops, like Cangemi, talk about enforcing the law.

Mayor Giggles talks about clothes and confusion:

“It’s ICE that has created a wedge,” Rybak retorts. The agency has not removed the word “‘police” from its officers’ jackets, despite his request to do so. Rybak maintains that the word “confuses” people who believe that immigration and criminal enforcement should be separate.

“But we are police!” protests Cangemi. Rybak, he says, “is way beyond his level of expertise” in making such a demand of a federal agency. “Police” is an internationally recognized term, used by law enforcement worldwide. Last year, Cangemi sent Rybak an “open letter” making this point, but Rybak never responded, he says. Rybak’s spokesman says he doesn’t know whether that’s true. Meanwhile, it’s Minneapolis leaders’ priorities that confuse people.

And there, finally, Kersten is wrong.

Nothing confusing about R.T. Rybak’s “priorities”.

Protect his constituencies. 

Simple.

George F Will on the other Minneapolis taxi controversy – the one that doesn’t involve Somali Moslems and alcohol:

The campaign to deny Luis Paucar his right to economic liberty illustrates the ingenuity people will invest in concocting perverse arguments for novel entitlements. This city’s taxi cartel is offering an audacious new rationalization for corporate welfare, asserting a right — a constitutional right — to revenues it would have received if the City Council had not ended the cartel that never should have existed.

That’s right – owners of Minneapolis cab licenses, who’ve benefitted immensely from government regulations artificially driving down the supply of cabs in Minneapolis, are sueing on Fifth Amendment grounds to protect a “right” to income that exists only because of government intervention!

Will tells the story of Mr. Paucar…: 

Paucar, 37, embodies the best qualities of American immigrants. He is a self-sufficient entrepreneur. And he is wielding American principles against some Americans who, in their decadent addiction to government assistance, are trying to litigate themselves to prosperity at the expense of Paucar and the public.

…who came to the Twin Cities from NYC to try to make his fortune as a cab entrepreneur.

Where he ran into “Minnesota Nice”, in the form of a government-induced scarcity; Minnesotans are apparently happy to pay extra for an artificial scarcity of taxis. 

By the time Paucar got here in 1999, 343 taxis were permitted. He wanted to launch a fleet of 15. That would have required him to find 15 license-holders willing to sell for up to $25,000 apiece…[the scarcity of taxis in Minneapolis]– and Paucar’s determination and, eventually, litigiousness; he is a real American — helped persuade the City Council members, liberals all (12 members of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, one member of the Green Party), to vote to allow 45 new cabs per year until 2010, at which point the cap will disappear.

Minneapolis’ licensees are addicted to the easy life of the regulatory beneficiary: 

In response, the cartel is asking a federal court to say the cartel’s constitutional rights have been violated. It says the cap constituted an entitlement to profits that now are being “taken” by government action.

The danger?  Beyond the stupidity of regulating something like the maximum number of cabs in the first place, I mean? 

If the licensees win, the precedent will be set; no government regulation that confers a financial benefit can ever be undone, because it’ll be a “taking”.

Will gives well-placed kudos to Mr. Paucar…

By challenging his adopted country to honor its principles of economic liberty and limited government, Paucar, assisted by the local chapter of the libertarian Institute for Justice, is giving a timely demonstration of this fact: Some immigrants, with their acute understanding of why America beckons, refresh our national vigor.

…but betrays provincial ignorance of Minneapolis: 

It would be wonderful if every time someone like Paucar came to America, a native-born rent-seeker who has been corrupted by the entitlement mentality would leave.

A good part of Minneapolis would be depopulated.

Hmmm.

I love the new Guthrie.  Oh, it’s disconcerting, and when you react to it – inside or out – you feel like you’re playing a part that’s been pretty well scripted out for you by some dweeby little metrosexual architect somewhere, as if you’re part of his artistic vision…

…but at the end of the day, it’s a great place to go to watch not just a play, but to see the world go by.

Inside the building. 

Outside?  A very different story.

The area around the New Guthrie is a dreary, arid place; cold and cement-y in the winter, dry and hot in the summer.  It’s long been one of the most depressing parts of Minneapolis.

The Strib’s architecture beat reporter (for now), Linda Mack, points the finger:

Stand in front of Spoonriver, the streetwise new restaurant facing the Guthrie Theater, and you’ll feel the problem. The cafe’s outdoor tables with their orange umbrellas are inviting, but what lines the street? Parking meters.

No trees are allowed on this part of S. 2nd Street because most of the buildings are historic ones. Trees weren’t part of the original industrial landscape that the St. Anthony Falls Historic District protects, preservationists argue, so trees aren’t allowed today.

That’s absurd. There weren’t sidewalks either when this area between the mills on 2nd Street and Washington Avenue was a giant rail yard. But there are sidewalks now, and people living in the mills and walking the streets. The city should foster neighborhoods that are as livable as possible, and there’s nothing that works better than trees.

But…:

In Minneapolis, the city’s Public Works Department holds more sway than the Planning Department. And despite Mayor Rybak’s push to turn Washington Avenue into a tree-lined boulevard, the nearby streets are wanting.

In Minneapolis, bureaucracy trumps the market. 

Which is a shame, because it’d be nice to walk out of just about the coolest theater in the business onto a street that looks like something other than a Bloomington car lot sans cars. 

Especially since,  y’know, that’s what the market is trying to do, without any tax money needed in the process.

I’ve long advocated introducing toll roads to Minnesota, especially the metro area, as a substitute for generalized taxes to support road construction.

Mentioning this around DFLers, of course, draws offense; to the DFL’s statist senses, all public goods are a public duty, with “public” meaning “the whole public” (or at least that part not favored by tax breaks from the DFL-strangled legislature).

And as the standardbearer of all DFL folk “wisdom”, the Strib can’t help but vent for it, even when basically agreeing with the concept:

Tolls cannot substitute for government’s broad responsibility to raise the taxes needed to build and care for basic transportation.

Um – why? 

I mean, if it were determined that tolls could somehow replace gas and other taxes, why wouldn’t we reassess this “responsibility?”

The Strib does, in fact, support the experimental addition of a toll lane to 35W in the South Metro…:

But tolls used specifically to relieve congestion and support transit on certain crowded roadways might be worth trying. Thus we applaud Minnesota’s application last week for federal money to refashion Interstate Hwy. 35W between Burnsville and downtown Minneapolis to include a toll lane for single drivers that would, in turn, help finance bus rapid transit service.

…but, naturally, all libertarian sense has been stripped from the proposal: 

The idea is to free up more space in regular lanes, draw more commuters to transit and coax others to alternate routes or times. A similar experiment in Stockholm raised bus ridership and reduced congestion by 20 percent.

Indeed, tolls (like so much of the “Transit” mania gripping the local center-left) are to be tools, used to further the powers-that-be’s frenzy of social engineering:

Toll lanes should not be seen as “solving” the metro region’s severe shortfall in transportation funding. They cannot substitute for the Central or Southwest light-rail lines [Really?  Why? – Ed]. Tolls should always be set high enough to retain transit’s competitive advantage. 

Does anyone proof-read this crap?

What “competitive advantage” does transit have?

  And care should be taken to assure that tolling doesn’t damage central business districts.

One wonders if the Strib editorial board has reviewed the ghastly toll that its’ beloved Central Corridor light rail line is going to take on the non-“central” business district in the Midway and Frogtown – a district that has been saved by small, Asian business that is going to be gutted by nearly a decade of rail construction, for a line that will detract from rather than enhance the neighborhood (it’ll be a light rail rather than trolley line).

One wonders if the Strib editorial board even understands any of this.