Thoughts on the Bridge Collapse
I've been gone on vacation for the past week and finally have the opportunity to comment tonight on last week's 35-W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I briefly caught the news footage on my way out the door Wednesday night of a collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, but I didn't realize at the time that it was the main bridge on 35-W. It was only when I returned home late Wednesday night that I realized the magnitude of the situation and the potential for long-term economic turmoil in Minnesota. Certainly, it's a black eye for the state and is likely to be a deterrant to our economic growth prospects in the months and years ahead.
It's probably not fair to single-handedly fault Governor Pawlenty or even his party, but there has long been a dangerous ideology in play in this country that lower taxes provide assurance of upward mobility and economic stimulus. That ideology has been challenged alot in the last couple of years, starting with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Given the surprisingly widespread national coverage this Minneapolis bridge collapse has received, the anti-tax ideology has likely been delivered another blow. Even Governor Pawlenty has done a complete aboutface in endorsing a gas tax increase during next month's special session. Even so, I'm pretty sure Pawlenty realizes his prospects for Vice-Presidential selection for 2008 have now been delivered a fatal setback.....and the fact that the bridge is unlikely to be rebuilt by the time the Republicans come to town for the 2008 Republican Convention will be an even larger-scale embarrassment for the party.
As haunting as the imagery on TV is, I'm amazed there have been as few casualties? What are we at now? Five? That's amazingly low. The idea that someone in a car can fall dozens of feet amidst crumbling pavement and steel girders and walk away from it with minor injuries is astounding. Chalk this up to another lesson learned the hard way in regards to funding infrastructural improvements and taking seriously reports suggesting your bridge has a nearly one-in-three chance of collapsing. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced the lesson will be learned at all, which could be abundantly clear in the 2008 campaigns when politicians still make fanciful promises of "lowering your taxes."
It's probably not fair to single-handedly fault Governor Pawlenty or even his party, but there has long been a dangerous ideology in play in this country that lower taxes provide assurance of upward mobility and economic stimulus. That ideology has been challenged alot in the last couple of years, starting with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Given the surprisingly widespread national coverage this Minneapolis bridge collapse has received, the anti-tax ideology has likely been delivered another blow. Even Governor Pawlenty has done a complete aboutface in endorsing a gas tax increase during next month's special session. Even so, I'm pretty sure Pawlenty realizes his prospects for Vice-Presidential selection for 2008 have now been delivered a fatal setback.....and the fact that the bridge is unlikely to be rebuilt by the time the Republicans come to town for the 2008 Republican Convention will be an even larger-scale embarrassment for the party.
As haunting as the imagery on TV is, I'm amazed there have been as few casualties? What are we at now? Five? That's amazingly low. The idea that someone in a car can fall dozens of feet amidst crumbling pavement and steel girders and walk away from it with minor injuries is astounding. Chalk this up to another lesson learned the hard way in regards to funding infrastructural improvements and taking seriously reports suggesting your bridge has a nearly one-in-three chance of collapsing. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced the lesson will be learned at all, which could be abundantly clear in the 2008 campaigns when politicians still make fanciful promises of "lowering your taxes."
posted by Mark at 9:35 PM
4 Comments:
Over at Calitics we were in the middle of discussing the budget deadlock in the state legislature since we inevitably need some Reps to vote for the budget because of the severely outdated 2/3 rule. Unfortunately, this budget includes some serious setbacks to our high-speed transit project and also snubs much-needed funds to improve our very own bridges, as the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, especially the underwater tunnel under the Bay Bridge, badly need repairs of their own. The incident with the gas truck earlier this year on the Bay Bridge should have been a wake-up call!
And by the way, I agree that the funding for the bridges and pretty much the rest of our infrastructure should be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Unfortunately, Governor Goodhair wants to fund our schools with "sin taxes" also.
Schwarzenegger is now nicknamed "Governor Goodhair"? Interesting. I'd be satisfied even with raising gas taxes and/or a half-cent statewide sales tax. They're regressive and wouldn't be as preferable as higher taxes on the wealthy (who pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than you or I), but at least they don't single out a fraction of the population to finance the entire cost of expanded government the way that sin taxes do. I never thought I'd see budget policy more irresponsible than Bush's borrow-and-spend approach. But mortgaging the financial future on government with massive new soak-the-poor "sin taxes" guaranteed to yield diminishing returns just might be. And that's why I'm having a hard time getting excited about politics these days.
It looks like Minnesota's Governor has gotten the message and is capitulating on the proposed gas tax increase that he so vehemently opposed throughout his five years as Governor. If anything will drive the message home, what happened in Minneapolis last week will....but I'm not optimistic that the message will have a long shelf life or extend much beyond Minnesota state lines. I may be wrong though.
Sorry if I confused you, I meant Perry when I mentioned "Goodhair". Everyone calls Perry Goodhair. Arnie's nickname is the Governator. (Though both look similar.)
In California, I didn't hear much on Arnold's position on the failed Prop 86 from last year, but I think he he opposed it. And there hasn't been much buzz in the state legislature lately on adding sin taxes to our already-messed-up budget.
Perry, on the other hand, proposed an increase in the tobacco tax to help solve the persistent school funding problems and lowering our sky-high property taxes (though truth-be-told this was from last year; the sin tax passed). What is interesting here is that the tax seems to be supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats, the opposite of what is happening at the federal level and in most other states. I guess this is so Repubs can again pose as "the party of lower taxes" as property taxes go down while the working poor's already too-high burden goes even higher.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A361686
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