{"id":1972,"date":"2008-01-16T05:32:06","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T10:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1972"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:57:55","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:57:55","slug":"meal-ticket-stolen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1972","title":{"rendered":"Meal Ticket: Stolen!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With yesterday’s news that the NTSB’s investigation of the 35W Bridge collapse will conclude that a design flaw from the 1960’s – inadequate gusset plates – combined perhaps with excess weight on the deck is the most likely culprit for the disaster, the Tics’ key political truncheon for the next session is on the verge of being seized from them.<\/p>\n

And they’re neither happy, nor giving up without a fight <\/strike>tantrum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The NTSB investigation is not yet complete,” House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher said Tuesday. “It would be helpful if [Pawlenty] would follow his own advice and not add his own speculation on the cause of the 35W bridge collapse.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kelliher – one of the dumbest speakers Minnesota has ever had – sounds like a teenager being confronted about a piece of wrecked furniture; “Oh, yeah? Were you there<\/em>? Did you see <\/em>it get broken?”<\/p>\n

And Speaker Kelliher – you didn’t seem too concerned about “waiting for the report” when your caucus-mate Alice “The Phantom” Hausman went on WCCO to indict the failure of the gas tax even before the last kid was off the schoolbus, did you?<\/p>\n

Pawlenty and DFLers came together briefly after the bridge fell on Aug. 1,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Very <\/em>briefly]<\/p>\n

Pawlenty said on Tuesday that within hours of the collapse, a “political leader” whom he would not name had called him and threatened retribution and that since then opponents had made repeated and inaccurate “linkages” of the bridge collapse to his earlier vetoes of transportation legislation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In light of the report, he said, they should “have the decency to correct those statements,” he said<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Minneapolis and Saint Paul are one-party towns; being a Tic <\/a>means never having to say you’re sorry.<\/p>\n

He noted that there was “a bit of irony” to the fact that the design error detailed by the National Transportation Safety Board had occurred during the fabled golden era for public works in Minnesota.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kudos to the Governor for saying that; the bridge was an artifact of an age that the DFL points to as one where “we” did things “right”. Indeed, if you want to indulge in excessive metaphor, the collapse frames nicely the demise of the “Minnesota Miracle” – the storied time when government took credit for a boom in regional prosperity that (sssssh) would have happened anyway in Minnesota, a sleeping giant at a time of immense growth nationwide.<\/p>\n

“It is clear that MNDOT did everything humanly possible to maintain our bridges,” [Senate Minority Leader Dick] Day said. He accused Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Steve Murphy, who has called repeatedly for Molnau’s resignation as commissioner, of “prematurely and recklessly blaming her.”<\/p>\n

But Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, was unrepentant Tuesday, saying that Pawlenty was overreaching and that the report drew no definitive conclusions about the reasons for the collapse.<\/p>\n

“If a half-inch gusset plate kept that bridge up for 40 years, why not another 40?” Murphy said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m going to pause and let that sink in for a moment.<\/p>\n

Steve Murphy – chowderhead Tic who couldn’t pass an engineering class at gunpoint, but who would <\/em>say 2+2=Bacon if Margaret Anderson Kelliher told him to – is saying “So what if the plates broke? What if they hadn’t?”<\/p>\n

“Could it be because rust ate it away? Because the trips over the bridge went from 25,000 to 140,000? The parameters changed, and MNDOT should have been going back, making sure all the gussets, I-beams and plates could handle 140,000 trips a day.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course – they did.<\/em><\/p>\n

The NTSB’s safety recommendation noted that “although inspections of the bridge identified and tracked some areas of tracking and corrosion, at this point in the investigation there is no indication that any of those areas played a significant role in the collapse of the bridge.”<\/p>\n

That set off U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., who heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Oberstar said that such a dismissal of the possible role of rust and corrosion was “inappropriate and uncharacteristic of a board chairman. That [the design flaw] may be the proximate cause, but there are contributing factors in every accident.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words – key Tic porkmonger Oberstar won’t directly try to politically undercut the NTSB, but he’s still running damage control for the locals.<\/p>\n

Who, if there is any justice, will need it.<\/p>\n

The DFL, as the curtain seemingly starts to close on the “mystery” phase of this tragedy, looks like a bunch of angry hamsters, angrily gnawing and chattering away, trying to wish things into being that just aren’t. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With yesterday’s news that the NTSB’s investigation of the 35W Bridge collapse will conclude that a design flaw from the 1960’s – inadequate gusset plates – combined perhaps with excess weight on the deck is the most likely culprit for the disaster, the Tics’ key political truncheon for the next session is on the verge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bridge-collapse","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22495,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions\/22495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}