Et Voilà!
While my wife and I watched news footage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse last night, many thoughts went through my mind. One thought that never occurred to me, however, was “How could I make political hay out of this tragedy?”
This is known as foreshadowing.
Not so with Nick Coleman, the loyal Democratic party hack who writes a column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Less than twelve hours after the bridge went down, Coleman had in print a column blaming the collapse on Goveror Tim Pawlenty and all others who oppose tax increases.
Hinderaker bases his ensuing criticism on a point he concedes the columnist never intended to make, and applies a litigator’s narrow focus to the meaning of a particular word or phrase (in other words, what Hinderaker calls “blogging”):
If yearly inspections had caused engineers to think that there was a danger the bridge might fail, it would have been shut down. But the inspections apparently suggested no such danger.
Ahem, tragically, not exactly:
The 40-year-old bridge was rated as “structurally deficient” two years ago and possibly in need of replacement, the Star Tribune reported … [An official] noted that many other bridges around the country carry the same designation that the I-35W bridge received.
Essentially, these bridge had been determined to pose a significant risk. I’m sure there’ll be lots more reporting on this topic in the coming weeks. Back to you, Hindy:
[O]ne thing we do not lack for in Minnesota, or elsewhere in the United States, is spending. Over the past few years, we Minnesotans have spent something like a billion dollars of transportation money on a light rail system. “System,” actually, is too grand a term; it is a single line that runs from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis. Conservatives generally opposed light rail, viewing it as an inefficient boondoggle, and wanted to spend the money on road construction instead. But the liberals prevailed, and the billion dollars were spent. If we hadn’t spent that money on light rail, those dollars would have been available for other transportation projects. Like bridge repair.
Above: A young boy demonstrates Power Line
blogger John Hinderaker’s signature rhetorical technique
To be fair, this Power Line post was written around 25 hours after the bridge collapsed, and nearly 13 hours after the column that inspired it. Hinderaker further resists the charge of clumsy hypocrisy, because he hasn’t introduced politics into this discussion so much as reasonable doubt.
But it’s probably a waste of time to carry the argument that far.
Indeed.
Conservatives generally opposed light rail, viewing it as an inefficient boondoggle, and wanted to spend the money on road construction instead. But the liberals prevailed, and the billion dollars were spent. If we hadn’t spent that money on light rail, those dollars would have been available for other transportation projects. Like bridge repair.
I’m a Minnesota resident, I live just ten minutes south of the disaster site. If we had spent more money on light rail and expanded the system to include more than to downtown and to the Mall of America, say, by extending it to the suburbs, there would probably have been fewer people on the bridge at the time of the collapse. The bridge may not have collapsed at all, because it may not have had so much weight. Forcing people to rely on roads and private transportation is the inefficient approach.
Maybe someone should explain to rectum-soyuz that pointing out the governor’s fuckups isn’t making political hay, it’s pointing out a fuckup. If Barry Bonds shot my dog, would it make me a racist to point out what a shitty thing to do it was?
Looks like Microsoft Word ate half his diction before posting.
One thought that never occurred to me, however, was to reach for my half-hourly corndog, since I was absorbed in asking myself, “How could I make political hay out of this tragedy while denying it and blaming someone else for doing the same thing?”
What Buttrocket neglects to note is that if he were told that the government was going to raise his taxes to improve infrastructure in his own district, his reaction would be “OMG Not mah money! Let the poor drown, I has a helicoptor!”
I’d love to see your average Republican survive in their long-dreamed-of libertarian paradise. I suspect the Powerline boys and the rest of their Randian cohorts would end up eaten by hillbillies in the first few hours…
Are we sure he actually graduated from law school? Do his clients know he’s a complete fncking idiot?
If Barry Bonds shot my dog, would it make me a racist to point out what a shitty thing to do it was?
Did he shoot your dog, too? That SOB shot mine last week. Of course, he only shot it in the butt. With steroids.
Now my dog has a huge head and a bad relationship with the media/
That sucks, General. At least you won’t have any trouble walking him (I’m sorry, that was terrible)
… last night, many thoughts went through my mind. [Too easy. …] One thought that never occurred to me, however, was “How could I make political hay out of this tragedy?”he said, as the thought occurred to him, as sure as his morning sit-down would follow his second cup of cofffee.
I wonder, was Lileks’ first thought after the collapse of the bridge: Will this tragedy interrupt shipments to Target ?
Rectum-soyuz is so much more vivid than assrocket. Thanks for that image.
Sadly, NO! I’m used to work at the Dept. of Transportation, Office of Inspector General as a Federal auditor. My area of expertise was auditing mass transit systems. See Hindy, mass-transit projects are funded out of the New Starts or Small Starts programs. Not one dime is allocated away from highways — or bridge repairs — into mass-transit projects.
Good old Hindrocket, blowing exhaust smoke up his own arse again.
Tucker Carlson had a segment last night in which he used the bridge collapse to advance the argument that government just can’t get anything done and we’d all be better off if we just handed the reins over to private businesses.
Then he attacked Patti Murray for saying that the government had neglected our infrastructure, saying he couldn’t believe she’d “politicize” this tragedy.
His head should’ve exploded at that point. Mine did.
Barry Bonds has been shooting at my dog for weeks. But he either he keeps loading blanks or his bullets bounce harmlessly across the infield where they are fielded in shallow right by the shortstop. The dog remains un-shot…
mikey
Thank god for the Mpls light rail system, since I’ve been taking it since the bridge collapsed on the route I used to drive to work. I’d been meaning to start using public transportation, this sealed it.
I would be in utter disbelief that something like this could happen in the richest country in the world if things like this didn’t always happen in the richest country in the world. At Clique Mall Middle School, we’re glad to collect the insurance money from submerged vehicles!
Even if the light-rail money could have been spent on bridge repair instead, it wouldn’t have been spent on bridge repair, because Hinderaker said that the bridge was fine just one paragraph ago. Why spend money on bridges that pass inspection? It’s better to knock down taxes and let the bridges crumble.
I tell ya, I just can’t make the leap from what I consider my currently sane opinion of “government for the benefit of the people” to the neocon “privatize it, it will be cheaper AND better!”. How is privatized, and therefore in need of making a profit, going to be cheaper/better than a public good such as safe bridges? From what I have seen of privatization, first comes the hoopla, next the increase in fees, followed by the decline in the service in question as the Harvard B School dictum for maximizing profits (the “sausage rule”) is implemented. If they couldn’t see a way to make a profit, they wouldn’t want to buy the thing from the government entity in the first place, and how anyone thinks that is going to be cheaper for them is beyond my apparently limited powers of perception.
Or maybe they are all just libertarian doodyheads. Or rectum soyuezeseses.
The light rail system is a boondoggle?
Here in Denver, they’ve had to add more cars to existing trains and add more trains to accomodate the nearly 50% higher than predicted usage. We’re boondoggling again and again over the course of the next ten years as we add more lines running out to the airport, and some up north and east towards my neck of the woods.
Wally Whateley said,
August 3, 2007 at 15:42
I’d love to see your average Republican survive in their long-dreamed-of libertarian paradise. I suspect the Powerline boys and the rest of their Randian cohorts would end up eaten by hillbillies in the first few hours…
They don’t call ’em the Soggy Bottom Boys for nothin’!
soggy bottoms makes me think of captin crisp and his brave crew boldly navagating the high seas of moo-juice
Am I the third Twin Cities residence to post a comment to this single thread?
As Jas said has occurred in Denver, the light rail system has been a success here, and they would expand the system if the “boondoggling” types would shut their yaps. For example, I live in St. Paul, and I’ve been looking forward to them expanding it down here. Plus, there are other benefits to having a quality public transportation system, like lower drunk driving rates and alternatives for low-income people whose car breaks down. The point: only those who would never use public transportation would call it a “boondoggle”. The rest of us call it “a benefit”.
Another interesting point for y’all: The MN light rail system had looked at expanding across another bridge (the Washington St. bridge, or the next one to the east by the University of Minnesota) a few months ago, but the engineers said it could not support the weight of the track + train + autos. So, if a bridge with a light rail train crashed into a river, what kind of political hay could Hinderaker thresh?
When NorthWorst dumped me in Mpls, I used the light rail to get downtown. Pretty fricking cool. And it doesn’t seem to have the nasty racial dynamics of the Atlanta MARTA, though Assrocket would probably like it more that way.
And as for Assrocket? Oh, fuck him. Pawlenty starved the beast.
And if the highway funding bill had passed, this bridge would have been repaired. Negating this whole argument.
Therefore, tax cuts caused this disaster.
You can’t deny that.
Wrong. Jesse “the body” (or is it “the mind”? No, couldn’t be.) Ventura did it. Dude took funds that were channeled directly to MNDOT and cut them severely when he objected to the high registration fees on his plush modes of transportation. Now, in our lovely state, your brand new Porsche costs no more to register annually than my 1995 Chevy Lumina. Cool, huh?
Jesse thought it was “unfair”. The sales tax parallel never crossed his mind. It’s a percentage, fuckwad. The more you spend, the more you pay.
(yes, I voted for him).