The Bridge: Almost Too Loathsome To Loathe
By Mitch Berg
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.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Look, Pawlenty didn’t kill them, becuase the blame for underfunding our infrastructure goes WAY beyond one person, but your article here is just knee-jerk defense using a straw man.
The fact is, this and Katrina, point out the ramifications of 25 years of ‘goverment on the cheap.’ We’ve lived off the fat of our parents and grandparents, and have underfunded needed infrastructure for FAR too long. It’s time to be honest about the enormous deficit that exists – not ‘on-book’ dollars, which is bad enough, but the sham we’ve run for three decades where we claimed that all government is bad, all politicians are evil, and we have way too much waste to actually need to pay the bills that have piled up, either as bonding debt or unwritten debt.
If you wanted to be profound, you could have written on THAT reality rather than picking some knuckle-head out of the crowd to focus attention on and away from the root problem.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:54 am
You can’t say we do ‘government on the cheap’.
We just got finished building a billion dollar light rail that does a great job of taking people from where they don’t live to where they don’t work. It’s also done a good job of killing pedestrians, cyclists, and train riders.
The problem is that things like bridge repair, and other basic infrastructure repairs aren’t sexy enough for the DFL, and the Republicans don’t want to increase taxation just to see it get spent on boondoggles.
Hopefully this tragedy will get people’s heads on straight (people in both parties).
In any case, there would have been thousands of bridges across the country repaired or replaced before I35W.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:03 am
Actually our infrastructure is underfunded (or not funded correctly). But to blame Republicans makes about as much sense as blaming the Democrats who built the bridge in the 1960’s.
Here, how does this sound? “If Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who himself never served, wouldn’t have been preoccupied with his preemptive war on Vietnam, perhaps he could have built a better bridge”.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:05 am
Or to use an example, I see the Republicans and Democrats are trying to outspend themselves “for the children”. Republicans want to increase free insurance by $35,000,000,000. Democrats by $50,000,000,000.
Now, it’s a great cause, but I’d rather see it go towards infrastructure or deficit reduction.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:09 am
“Wow. Imagine how many bridges we could fix if we could get that billion dollars back that we spent on the Ventura Trolley…”
Or wasted in Iraq.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:10 am
“except that there’s no “re”-discovering.”
I debated using the ‘re’ and decided to go with it. We become to complacent sometimes and forget, or don’t realize what we can do when faced with crisis. At times like this, we ‘rediscover’ that which we had all along.
Thanks!
Flash
Centrisity.com
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:14 am
Flash,
Fair enough.
AC,
Not wasted.
Chuck,
Good examples.
MoN,
bridge repair, and other basic infrastructure repairs aren’t sexy enough for the DFL, and the Republicans don’t want to increase taxation just to see it get spent on boondoggles
Exactly!
PB,
The root problem is bigger than one post. I am focusing on an irascible knucklehead because he’s a symptom of something rather sickening taht we’re going to see more of. Ergo, not a strawman.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 am
Republicans only like boondoggles that involve killing foreigners.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:54 am
Republicans only like boondoggles that involve killing foreigners.
Cabbies?
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:00 am
Republicans only like boondoggles that involve killing foreigners.
Oh no. The clown is on to us.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
Okay, so crazy non-sequiters. Liberal Democrats in Minnesota sued to get me (taxpayer) to pay for their abortions. Liberal judge agreed to order it.
Maybe if Minnesotans didn’t have pay for Democrats abortions, more money would be available for roadwork. Counter that, AC.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
No, I didn’t say we don’t like boondoggles, I said we don’t like raising taxes for boondoggles. Please get your preconceived mis-perceptions straight, would you?
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Mitch – Please don’t play politics with this tragedy. The Hiawatha line was less than $750 million. $250 million off from your $1 billion snark. That is more than rounding and you know it.
The state only paid $100M of that $750. The rest of the money would not have been used for MN roads/interstates in any case. That is a fact not politics. If the LRT was not built, there would have been at most $100M more for infrastructure (approximately $1 per person per year in MN over the life of the state bonds). It really wouldn’t change the landscape in a metro that needs approximately $1 billion more per year to maintain congestion levels.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I got the same e-mail..and I’m not shy in the least about identifying the piece of shit that wrote it..
http://restraininorder.blogspot.com/2007/08/fuck-injured-and-deadlets-get-to-gop.html
In fact, I just realized that I omitted his e-mail address…I’ll fix that ASAP.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:25 pm
When I heard about the bridge collapse, I pictured Swiftee in that scene from The Blues Brothers, car falling from a great height, turning to the other Nazi and saying: “I’ve always loved you.”
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Shab,
Please don’t play politics with this tragedy. The Hiawatha line was less than $750 million. $250 million off from your $1 billion snark. That is more than rounding and you know it.
True, and to an extent I misspoke. But when you tack on a lot of the opportunity costs, plus the endless subsidy to run the line, you’ll be getting toward a billion, sooner than later.
Now, this next part…
The state only paid $100M of that $750. The rest of the money would not have been used for MN roads/interstates in any case. That is a fact not politics.
…kicks of a wave of disingenuity that I just can’t let pass.
Yes, it’s a fact; a fact formed purely by politics – in this case the Fed devoting billions of dollars to subsidizing rail transit that is, at least, un-needed. And so what if “the money would not have been used for MN roads/interstates”? That, too, is a matter of politics, and it’s a woeful misuse of taxpayer money, whatever the technicalities.
And this next bit…
If the LRT was not built, there would have been at most $100M more for infrastructure (approximately $1 per person per year in MN over the life of the state bonds). It really wouldn’t change the landscape in a metro that needs approximately $1 billion more per year to maintain congestion levels.
Huh. And what’d be REALLY cool is if you did the costs in 1967 dollars, and then stretch out the bonds for 1000 years, so Minnesotans only have to pay $.00000003 per year.
OF COURSE it’s not a lot, if you fold, spindle and mutilate the amount properly. And yes, I’m being facetious – but the fact remains that between MN and the Fed, from 1997 through 2014 we’ll be hemorraging $1.75 BILLION dollars (plus inflation, plus the inevitable cost overruns) on a useless rail transit system. That’s serious money, any way you slice it.
Tack onto THAT the fact that the DFL is pushing hard to allocate a stupendous amount of Gas Tax revenue to mass transit, and there’s really no way to take politics out of it, without jeopardizing the state’s economy to pay for it all.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Mitch – you are the one who suggested that we could have fixed a bunch of bridges with the money. That is NOT TRUE. Only in some complete alternate universe would the lack of funding for LRT have changed the outcomes for road funding. Is this problem due to political mechanations? yes. But the political rules existed and exist today and they surely weren’t going to change based on this single issue. It is senseless to discuss a hypothetical that ignores these things.
It is also fact that state didn’t write out a check for $100 M. The state bonded for that money and it will pay it back over the 30 year life of the loan. Cosequently that would be the appropriate period to allocate the costs to. That’s not spin that’s good accounting.
On your billion estimate: don’t forget the federal money that is spent by the feds in MN is going to be taxed by MN at somewhere around the 9.8% marginal rate through the taxation of the companies that get the contracts and the workers etc. Since the feds paid half the costs the state gets back about $35 million on taxation of the federal match before considering economic multiplyer effects.
“plus inflation”
I see, YOU can add inflation to the costs and that is reasonable, but ME amortizing the cost over the life of the bond is folding, spindling and mutilating.
“plus the inevitable cost overruns”
The line came in under budget. That is a fact
You don’t have to agree with the program, I don’t, but at least try to be honest about the way things work.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Frankly I really don’t want to have this argument today. I just don’t like to see such misrepresentation on this issue since it makes it incredibly difficult for the public to make informed decisions.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
at least try to be honest about the way things work.
I’m well aware of how things work. I’m saying they work badly.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
No argument there. I’m just saying the hyperbole doesn’t help move the debate towards a positive resolution, it mires debate in sub-arguments over facts and political intentions. I’d rather spend time on how to acheive the policy goals than politics.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:14 pm
[…] Of course, it you knew it was bound to happen. Check the comments here (thanks to ST reader GWR for the tip) and the Shot in the Dark blog notes the politicizing already taking place in Minnesota (thanks to Bak for that tip). […]
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I’d rather spend time on how to acheive the policy goals than politics
Ditto.
Which is why I say “ditch light rail, and get the money – however it has to be done – over to highways and bridges”.
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Everyone agrees that the bridge built in 1967 failed today because government doesn’t spend enough money on infrastructure maintenance.
Why not? Because our society has made the political decision to spend the money elsewhere. If you don’t want to blame light rail, the Iraq war, a new stadium or taxpayer funded abortions for siphoning off the money that should have been spent on bridges, how about The Great Society?
What if government (at all levels) didn’t piss away trillions on welfare, but instead stuck to pre-Great Society tasks such as, you know, FIXING THE ROADS?
This debate can go on endlessly but can only achieve a worthwhile result when everybody agrees that government – at all levels – must be drastically cut back in size and scope to focus on the tasks it does reasonably well: police, firefighters, water, sewer, roads and yes, bridges.
Except I can’t imagine the DFL coming to that conclusion in my lifetime.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Trillions on welfare? You’re on crack. Compare the welfare bill to the Pentagon budget sometimes. You wingnuts love to go on about lazy welfare recipients, but guess what? That ain’t where the big money goes.
There really aren’t any ideas behind 98 percent of you wingnuts. You just have a vague idea that somebody else is getting something and you’re pissed about it.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:26 pm
“There really aren’t any ideas behind 98 percent of you wingnuts. You just have a vague idea that somebody else is getting something and you’re pissed about it. ”
No Assclown, we have a clear understanding that somebody else is getting what we work to earn and we’re pissed about it.
It’s a never ending cycle. When the little Assclowns get out there and start breeding I’m sure we’ll be paying for their spawn’s funny shoes too.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Its the “however it has to be done” part that’s hard now isn’t it.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:03 am
[…] 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). […]
August 9th, 2007 at 8:25 am
[…] Engineers think they might have possibly found egg on Nick Coleman, Elwyn Tinklenburg, Alice Hausman, Amy Klobuchar and Wreck Chupke’s faces a possible clue as to what might have brought down the 35W River Bridge: Opening a new window into last week’s fatal bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that one of its areas of inquiry involves the design of steel connecting plates known as gusset plates; the material makeup of those plates; and the loads and stresses they bore. […]
October 1st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
[…] Actually, she “lamented” that the state wasn’t investing in a hell of a lot of things; the bridge was just a handy cover. Property taxes are spiking — especially in her St. Paul district — and there’s no boost in state aid for cities. The Legislature will help rebuild flooded southeastern Minnesota, but it couldn’t pass a bonding bill to meet other infrastructure needs. […]
November 14th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
[…] And – let’s say it together – Pawlenty is right. “Critics” – mainly politically-motivated hacks like Coleman, Elwyn “E-Tink” Tinklenburg and Alice Hausman – were blaming Pawlenty before the last girder had fallen. If you listen to Minnesota’s officials, it’s almost like the bridge never fell. It couldn’t have. After all, they had a great plan for keeping it up. On paper. […]
January 15th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
[…] 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. […]
March 17th, 2008 at 10:49 am
[…] Unless it doesn’t provide cover to Alice “The Phantom” Hausman, E-Tink, Nick Coleman, and the DFL and their other water carriers. […]