I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see how the local Sorosphere would react to the news that their conclusion that the “No New Taxes” crowd all but blew up the 35W River Bridge was wrong.<\/p>\n
And while Lori Sturdevant is the gold standard for Tic PR flaks in this area (and Nick Coleman is the DFL’s trained organ-grinder monkey), there is no better barometer of the Twin Cities’ left’s smug, entitled gestalt<\/em> than Brian Lambert.\u00a0 I’ve beein waiting for his take on what is – for most of us – the good news; the news that bad design, rather than depraved malfeasance, led to the collapse.<\/p>\n Was I to be disappointed?<\/p>\n It’s Lambert.\u00a0 He’s the most reliable source of material in town<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was 6 p.m. Tuesday when I first heard of the NTSB’s “preliminary” finding that a design flaw\u2014too thin gusset plates\u2014was the cause of the I-35W bridge collapse. By 6:07 p.m., I had received a copy of an e-mail Star Tribune<\/em> bete noire, Dan Cohen, had fired off into the teeth of Eric Ringham and Tim O’Brien of the paper’s editorial page and columnist Nick Coleman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read Lambert’s piece for Cohen’s letter and [the parts of Cohen’s] background [that express Lambert’s bias].\u00a0 Summary:\u00a0 Cohen, like me, was jumping on Nick “the Monkey” Coleman’s many, loathsome, premature assignments of guilt.\u00a0 (A detailed fisk of Coleman’s “the dog ate my logic” column will follow, probably tomorrow).<\/p>\n And to start with, Lambert puts on his big-boy pants and takes his medicine:<\/p>\n Those of us who shared Coleman’s view<\/a>\u2014that penny-pinching by craven politicians fearful of the wrath of the cynical “small-government crowd” bear a responsibility for the collapse\u2014aren’t exactly buoyed by the NTSB report.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m trying to imagine how “buoyed” one would be by circumstances that led to 13\u00a0deaths.\u00a0 But in the interest of discussion, I’ll let that one slide.\u00a0<\/p>\n But this one is “preliminary.” It is not the last word, and myriad issues remain, all supporting more comprehensive inspection and maintenance of government-owned infrastructure, something that requires significantly more cash than will ever be generated by a piddly five-cent-a-gallon tax increase…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0…and all of which would be more useful than the billion plus <\/em>dollars we’re going to spend on a light rail line from nowhere to noplace – which seems to be completely inviolate in the world of Brian Lambert and Nick Coleman.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moreover, although Cohen and his “no-new-taxes brigade” have distilled this to Coleman and the Star Tribune<\/em> vs. Republicans, Carol Molnau and Govenor Pawlenty in particular, Coleman at least was pretty clear at the start that blame should be placed at the feet of both political parties with the Republicans just happening to be running the show as the thing fell into the river.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is, of course, buncombe:\u00a0 it was aimed squarely at Pawlenty, fiscal conservatives (and the handy dandy group that serves as our lobbying body, the Taxpayers League) and anyone that doesn’t claim to channel the spirit of Walter Mondale.\u00a0 Which would be Minnesota’s right – Republicans and the thin film of fiscally-responsible Tics.\u00a0<\/p>\n