Bogus Gold

Good Lord, would someone please keep all news about bridges away from the Strib's pet monkey columnist (that would be Nick "I am implausibly nobody's monkey" Coleman)? This is a guy who will strain to cobble together the most far-reaching similes and metaphors without having them so neatly pre-packaged for his gleefully dour columns.

To catch us up on Nick's position regarding Minnesota's bridges it is this: Republicans are to blame.

That's it. It doesn't really matter what the issue affecting bridges might be. He got started on his current roll when he noticed a Republican sitting in the governor's office when the 35W bridge collapsed. After that it's been a simple matter of connecting the dots for him. A news story pops up with the word "bridge" in it, and he's off on yet another "gotcha" column about Republicans.

What set him off this time. Apparently this:

On Tuesday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation closed the picturesque span for inspections after finding holes in the 67-year-old structure.

Considering his hysterical ranting about how MNDOT should have closed the 35W bridge, somehow anticipating the unprecedented collapse and completing emergency repairs to prevent said tragic collapse, and the only thing that prevented them from doing so was an unwillingness to spend the money, you would think this action was exactly the sort of change Coleman would welcome. No more with the "do more studies." No more "not in this year's budget" dodges. Just close the damn thing and fix it. We're not going to chance a repeat of what happened to the 35W bridge.

If you think Nick has even the slightest chance of taking such a lesson from this, you simply don't know the man. Like a monkey cannot be expected to resist the temptation to fling his feces no matter how nice you are toward him, Nick flings away...

It seems as though Minnesotans can't turn anywhere during our sesquicentennial without banging up against the realities of years of neglect and under-spending on infrastructure, especially highways and bridges. Even Gov. Tim Pawlenty has had no luck avoiding potholes.

Yes indeed folks. The problem cannot be resolved by spending to fix things now. We, one of the nation's highest taxed states, have not been spending enough all along. This is an itch too old to scratch now. And therefore the justification for whining can never be withdrawn. Lucky Nick.

Lesson number 5731 in how conservatives can never appease liberals. You don't spend all the money they want, you're damned as a miser in the pocket of the fat-cats. You change course and start spending like they demand and...

Other bridges have been slated for emergency repairs since Pawlenty declared there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the 35W bridge from falling: The Hwy. 61 bridge in Hastings, the Lowry Avenue bridge in Minneapolis, the Blatnik Bridge in Duluth and, now, Winona.

Why, it's as if we have some kind of transportation crisis!

... now you're responsible for creating a crisis! They can prove it too. Look how you're closing bridges and spending so much on emergency repairs!

But wait, isn't that kind of circular reasoning? No it's a Nick Coleman column. But I repeat myself.

Lost amidst all Nick's ranting is the fact that the actual battle over Minnesota's transportation dollars for the past decade between liberals and conservatives (not so cleanly between Democrats and Republicans) has been that liberals want a larger share of dollars to go to alternative transportation - commuter rail, more buses, bike trails - while conservatives want those same dollars spent on improving the existing infrastructure. You know. Things like bridges and roads.

As that billion dollar (and counting) light rail chugs past Nick Coleman's Star Tribune building, I wonder if he ever feels just a tingle of the notion that there may be people who aren't Republicans who share just a tiny bit of responsibility for this crisis he personally declared and now condemns.