Steam Valve

Wagging the Dog

Our own Senator Klobuchar, trying to divert attention away from the fact that she's going on vacation before addressing the most pressing issues facing her constituents, is slinging mud at Sonia Pitt, the lower level employee who was scapegoated after the 35W bridge collapse. Ms. Pitt was fired for "unprofessional conduct" because she "failed to return to Minnesota immediately" after the 35W bridge collapse.

Give me a break.

Apparently, Ms. Klobuchar thinks that Ms. Pitt is fit only for the minimum wage jobs that are in shorter supply since the last minimum wage bill got passed. Just like all the other liberals, Amy apparently believes that lower class people are expendable in her struggle for more and more political power.

Should we put Ms. Pitt in stocks in the middle of the town square? Or is it enough that Ms. Klobuchar will write letters to any employer who dares to hire her?

Ms. Pitt didn't make the bridge fall down.

This is so transparent. Let's pretend that many of our neighbors are not having a really hard time because of rising gas and food prices. Let's pretend that the real evil is caused by Sonia Pitt and her confederates.

Come on. Do you really expect us to buy this?

Cross-posted at Truth v. The Machine

Oberstar to NTSB: How Dare You Contradict Me

Our own James Oberstar, who one month after the 35W bridge collapsed, pointed the finger at MNDOT for this catastrophe, now says that the NTSB is RUSHING TO JUDGMENT with its statement that the collapse was due to design problems.  And yet, just ONE MONTH after the bridge's collapse, without the benefit of ANY INVESTIGATION, Oberstar was quoted repeating his own testimony during 1987 safety hearings, and blamed MNDOT for the collapse:

"Our national bridge program is in serious trouble," he testified then. "The safety of millions of Americans has been jeopardized by inept federal stewardship over our bridge inspection and rebuilding effort. States have misspent millions of federal aid bridge dollars."

Oberstar is still largely inclined to blame state transportation authorities -- including the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) -- for failing to make effective use of federal bridge dollars. Too frequently, he argues, they are converted into all-purpose transportation funds, to be used for everything from new streetlights to wider roads.

Well, I guess all those millions didn't find their way to figuring out that there was a design problem with this bridge.  But how many were diverted by our Mr. Oberstar's earmarks?

01Sept07Oberstar

Download 01Sept07StarTrib.pdf

Oberstar's Hypocrisy

Jim Oberstar, darling of Critical Mass bikers for funneling federal tax dollars for bike trails, has the arrogance to point the finger at MnDOT over how federal tax dollars are spent.  After he has had first dibs on the money with his earmarks.  Let Freedom Ring today explains why Oberstar's criticisms amount to nothing more than phony political posturing.

Who needs facts or logic to make a point when you can get away with manipulating readers' emotions? Part 2

Nick Coleman's August 21 column, State officials rolled dice on 35W bridge, and we all lost distorts some facts and ignores others in a single-minded effort to blame the 35W bridge collapse on one man, Governor Pawlenty. 

Never mind that the reports Pawlenty is accused of ignoring began over a decade ago, long before he ever took office. Other state officials can be forgiven for overlooking the warnings, but not Pawlenty.

Never mind that experts told MnDOT that the bridge defects did not mean that the bridge needed to be repaced prematurely, and that reinforcing it might weaken it because of the drilling that would be required.  Pawlenty should have second guessed the engineers.

Never mind that the collapse occurred after Oberstar funneled transportation dollars away from highway and bridge repair to fund his pet projects. 

The facts don't matter when you already know who's to blame.

It's gotta be Pawlenty.

Coleman's distortion and omission of already reported facts makes one wonder whether he dashed off this opinion piece like a crazed, bleary-eyed midnight blogger determined to make his point no matter what.

Next we'll read that the floods are Pawlenty's fault, too.

Who needs facts or logic to make a point when you can get away with manipulating readers' emotions? Part 1

Recent articles in the Star Tribune bring this question to mind.  Part of our interstate highway system collapses after over a decade of reports pointing out defects, after our DFL representative in Congress funneled transportation dollars away from highway and bridge repair to fund his pet projects, and the current governor is to blame?  How you get to this conclusion is by distorting some facts, ignoring others, and playing on emotions, prejudices and ignorance.

Last weekend's article Phone call put brakes on bridge repair is a good example.  It starts off with the language of high drama which, like the Jaws theme music, is meant to warn readers of an impending accusation of some heinous crime:

The men and women whose job was to ensure the safety of Bridge 9340 were meeting once again. Just after noon on Dec. 6, they filed into a conference room in Roseville to divvy up the final prep work for a dangerous steel reinforcement project high above the Mississippi River.

The scene is set.  The drama begins. You can hear the scary music in your head.  You just know the authors are about to break the biggest story ever on the 35W bridge collapse, and they've telegraphed ahead of time that they've got the current administration in their sights.  The story strains to create dramatic effect with language, but falls short of coming up with any facts to support its innuendo:

But five weeks later, all those preparations stopped. In a single conference call on Jan. 17, the same consultants who said reinforcement plates were needed to strengthen the bridge cautioned MnDOT that drilling for the retrofit could weaken it.

"That was the turning point. That's where we turned the ship 180 degrees," said state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan.

Well, think about this a minute.  MnDOT hired outside experts, who told them that drilling for the reinforcement plates could weaken the bridge.  The experts also told MnDOT that the three options it presented were all "equally viable."  Then MnDOT chose the option that did not present the danger of weakening the bridge.

Undeterred, the Strib article persists in its innuendo that MnDOT cared more about money than about safety:

Internal MnDOT documents reviewed by the Star Tribune reveal that last year bridge officials talked openly about the possibility of the bridge collapsing -- and worried that it might have to be condemned.

After going on at some length about MnDOT's worries about a bridge collapse, the article buries on the next page the explanation of why MnDOT decided that a collapse was not likely:

Dorgan didn't want the consultant to mince words when it came to explaining what would happen if a fracture-critical beam in the superstructure failed.

"If the conclusion is the instability would likely lead to the collapse of the bridge, that should be stated clearly," Dorgan wrote.

So, MnDOT clearly asked the outside experts if a bridge collapse was likely, and Dorgan made sure  to put this in writing so that there would be no question that he had asked the question.  And the experts did not say that the bridge's defects were serious enough to replace the bridge at that time.

And never mind that, in 2001, a report by the University of Minnesota Department of Civil  Engineering had concluded after a fatigue evaluation that this bridge did not need to be replaced prematurely.

Actually, the facts reported in this article support Governor Pawlenty's initial explanation:  the San Francisco contractor MnDOT hired never told them that the bridge's condition was so bad they were looking at a collapse if a fracture-critical beam failed, and the contractor told MnDOT that the drilling necessary to reinforce the bridge might actually weaken it. 

But of course, you have to read the whole article to get to these facts, and be willing to distinguish between the manipulative rhetoric and the facts.  Once you do that, you end up asking, "where's the beef?"

Sometimes, you get to read the truth

How great to see that the terrific WSJ opinion piece exposing the truth about why we hadn't gotten any federal money for bridge repair before the 35W bridge collapsed is being quoted and paraphrased and reflected in so many other places, like here, and here, and here, and here AND EVEN HERE!
But really, no paraphrasing can put it better than the original:

Some things in politics seem to be inevitable--and one of them is that any road or bridge tragedy will be followed by an argument to raise the gasoline tax. That's what is now happening in the wake of the terrible Minnesota bridge collapse, but that state's transportation and tax record shows precisely why voters are skeptical.

The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.

As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That's the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.

In Minnesota, meanwhile, politicians and editorial writers imply that the bridge collapse is somehow the fault of those like GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty who believe in the "motto" of no new taxes, as a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune put it. Mr. Pawlenty has been skewered for his veto earlier this year of a 7.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase (from 20 cents a gallon currently). Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, has told her Gopher State constituents that if President Bush weren't keeping us in Iraq, bridges wouldn't be falling down.

Mr. Pawlenty has been wavering, first saying after the collapse that he was open to a tax increase but more recently showing more reluctance. Democrats in the Legislature are also demanding a sales tax hike to raise another $1.5 billion. What's never explained is why the gas-tax revenue they already raise is so poorly spent.

Minnesota's transportation auditors warned as long ago as 1990 that there was a "backlog of bridges that are classified as having structural deficiencies." In 1999 engineers declared that cracks found in the bridge that collapsed were "a major concern." Bike paths were deemed a higher priority by Congress, however, including its powerful Minnesota Representatives.

As recently as July 25, Mr. Oberstar sent out a press release boasting that he had "secured more than $12 million in funding" for his state in a recent federal transportation and housing bill. But $10 million of that was dedicated to a commuter rail line, $250,000 for the "Isanti Bike/Walk Trail," $200,000 to bus services in Duluth, and $150,000 for the Mesabi Academy of Kidspeace in Buhl. None of it went for bridge repair.

Minnesota's state budget is also hardly short of tax revenue. The state spends $25 billion a year, twice what it did 10 years ago. The Tax Foundation reports that Minnesota has the seventh highest personal income tax rates among all states, the third highest corporate tax rates, and the 10th highest taxes on workers.

The Legislature started the year with a record $2 billion budget surplus, and the economy threw off another $149 million of unexpected revenue. Where did all that money go? Not to roads and bridges. The Taxpayers League of Minnesota says the politicians chose to pour those tax dollars into more spending for health care, art centers, sports stadiums and welfare benefits.

Even transportation dollars aren't scarce. Minnesota spends $1.6 billion a year on transportation--enough to build a new bridge over the Mississippi River every four months. But nearly $1 billion of that has been diverted from road and bridge repair to the state's light rail network that has a negligible impact on traffic congestion. Last year part of a sales tax revenue stream that is supposed to be dedicated for road and bridge construction was re-routed to mass transit. The Minnesota Department of Economic Development reports that only 2.8% of the state's commuters ride buses or rail to get to work, but these projects get up to 25% of the funding.

Americans aren't selfish or stingy, and they can see for themselves that many of our roads need repair. Minnesota in particular is a state that has long prided itself on its "progressive" politics and a willingness to pay higher taxes for good government. Minnesotans already pay twice as much in taxes per capita than residents in New Hampshire and Texas--states that haven't had a major bridge collapse.

We suspect most voters would indeed be willing to pay more for better roads and bridges, if they had any reason to believe that is where the money would be spent. But they have long experience with politicians promising them that new taxes will go to such projects only to see it diverted for parochial ends. A new Survey USA poll finds that 57% of Minnesotans oppose higher gas taxes. Mr. Pawlenty can follow their advice, or Mr. Oberstar's.

Sometimes, you get to read the truth.

The 35W Bridge Mystery

On August 1 the 35W bridge collapsed.  The collapse inflicted harm without regard to race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual or political preference.  It should have united us in the effort to rebuild the bridge and make sure it doesn't happen again.  Instead, in addition to the predictable finger-pointing, we hear all kinds of objections to the bridge rebuilding that seem to center on the argument that mass transit is better than cars and SUV's.  What difference does that make if the bridge is going to fall down?

A letter to the editor in the local ThisWeek newspaper ("Can we talk about mass transit now?") seems to argue that we'd have been better off if we had had more mass transit:

As we consider the inevitable long-term effects of the heartbreaking I-35W bridge collapse disaster, we need to remember that everything is connected.  I think often about the fact that for five years the governor and Republicans in the state Legislature have been steadfastly beating back the ever intensifying demand, by metro residents, for mass transit. The folly of that attitude is now more clear than ever. Where will metro area residents turn for the next year or longer while a critical downtown stretch of a major transportation artery is shut down?

Now, I really tried to understand this person's viewpoint, but a couple things kept gnawing at me:   First, all the mass transit we have in the Twin Cities uses the same infrastructure as the rest of the vehicular traffic, and second, if the bridge had been packed with busses and/or trains, how many more lives would have been lost?

The letter writer says that, thanks to Pawlenty and the Republicans, we've been spending all our transportation dollars on  bridges and roads, shortchanging mass transit.  According to a Wall Street Journal Editorial editorial, however, the opposite is true, and we've been diverting billions away from urgent road and bridge projects and funneling them into bike paths, nature trails, and mass transit.  But even if the WSJ is wrong, and we really have been spending all of our transportation dollars on bridges and roads, why would we want to change that priority if our bridges are “structurally deficient and functionally obsolete?” Seems to me we would want to fix the infrastructure before we increase the number of people in each vehicle.

And some, like Mayor Rybak and City Council members, argue that the new bridge should be built "light rail ready," whatever that means.  I get the feeling that they are just looking for something to argue about. As discussed previously, we already have a planned light rail line to cross the Mississippi at a bridge not far from the one that collapsed, and nobody seems to think that that particular project should be re-routed to go over the one that will be rebuilt.  We've seen how fast technology has been changing in our lifetimes.  What makes us think that by the time someone's ready to put a light rail line over the new bridge that whatever we do today will really have made it "light rail ready?"

Call me naive, but it's a mystery to me why we can't just rebuild the bridge and try to make sure our other bridges are in good repair before we start adding more busses and trains.

Offer an olive branch and they chew off your arm

Last night, Almanac featured two separate discussions about the issues surrounding rebuilding the 35W bridge. The first focused on factual issues, with Met Council chair Peter Bell and Scott Dibble, a DFL senator from Minneapolis, discussing whether and how light rail issues fit into the rebuilding of the 35W bridge. The second, a political panel discussion with Jane Ranum, Fritz Knaak, Phil Krinkie and Wes Skoglund, consisted of political sparring between Ranum and Skoglund on one side, and Krinkie and Knaak on the other.

Peter Bell, a self-described "strong transit believer," explained that before the 35W bridge collapse, the Met Council had already been planning a light rail project which would cross the Mississippi River over the Washington Avenue bridge. This is the "Central Corridor LRT Line" which is planned to link downtown Minneapolis with downtown St. Paul.

When some argued that the rebuilt bridge should incorporate light rail, Bell objected to re-routing the Central Corridor Line.  He said re-routing that line so as to cross the river at the site of the rebuilt 35W bridge would delay the bridge rebuilding, and cost more money.  Dibble admitted that there was general agreement that the central corridor line should not be rerouted.

At this point, I wondered why there was any debate if, as Dibble said, there was general agreement on this issue. Add to this the fact that Pawlenty just announced that he was ready to discuss a gas tax increase, to the chagrin of at least some fellow conservatives, and I was scratching my head trying to figure out what the argument was about.

Turns out it's about making the rebuilt bridge "light rail ready" for some as yet unplanned project in the future. Bell said this would cost an additional $10-20 million. I didn't hear anyone say that the rebuilt 35W bridge location would fit nicely into anybody's vision of a future light rail line, or whether today's technology would be suitable for use in some as yet unplanned project at some unknown time in the future.  (how could that be sustainable?)

The political panel went at this issue with gusto, however. Krinkie said that Pawlenty offered DFL'ers an olive branch by saying he was open to discussing an increase in the gas tax, and that now they're trying to chew off his arm. Knack said that there had to be some agreement in order to justify a special session to hash out these issues.

Ranum disagreed, arguing that Pawlenty "has to have a special session" so that a "balanced" package can be passed. Krinkie, admittedly not a fan of light rail, said that the legislature ended up deadlocked just a few months ago on these same issues.

Ranum called Pawlenty a "statesman" for the way he has reacted to the bridge collapse, and said that the question now is whether he will pay attention to "the small group of people who just want to focus on roads and bridges or if he’ll be listening to the vast majority of people who will want a balanced package."

Maybe Ranum hasn't been paying attention to the public's reaction to the bridge collapse. Here and elsewhere, the public is demanding reliable bridges that won't fall down. Nowhere in the massive coverage this tragic event has prompted have I heard or read anyone expressing the view that we need more mass transit. Nowhere have I heard or read anyone saying that the bridge reconstruction should be put on hold while the politicians try to slip in earmarks for light rail or other pet projects. Looks to me like the vast majority of people care about roads and bridges, and those who stand in the way of rebuilding this one ought to care more about the safety of their constituents.

No Means Yes

Buried in the last paragraph of the Pioneer Press' timely question of whether sabotage (e.g., "terrorism") has been "completely ruled out" as a cause of the 35W bridge collapse on page 13A of the August 12, 2007 Sunday edition, the paper reports that the NTSB concluded that "no cause has been ruled out." Inexplicably, however, the article leads off with its own answer: "Seemingly, yes." By what mental gyrations does one interpret the NTSB's statement as actually meaning the opposite of what it states? Trying not to blunt the impact of the page one article on "all eyes" (e.g., the PP's eyes) focused on Molnau?