Bridge Loan

By Mitchell

OpinionJournal has a very interesting editorial on the economic consequences of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, which should be required reading for everyone - not only those outside the area with an interest in how this story turns out, but those within the Twin Cities who very much have a vested interest - both in terms of transportation and taxes - in what happens next. Among their findings:

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.

Hardly a surprise, I suppose.

People from outside Minnesota keep asking me where the outrage is. I'm not always sure what we're supposed to be outraged about - there's always so much from which to choose - but a common theme centers around how our tax money is being used. As I mentioned in a piece last week, Thomas Sowell points out that there's plenty of money being spent on infrastructure; the question we should be asking is how that money is being spent. The OpinionJournal piece seconds these concerns: while Oberstar brags of "secured more than $12 million in funding" from a recent spending bill, the actual disposition of the money goes unnoticed: "$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."

It's not as if we're not paying enough taxes: seventh in the nation in personal income tax, third highest in corporate tax rates, and a budget surplus of $2 billion. Additional spending goes not to infrastructure, but to things such as "health care, art centers, sports stadiums and welfare benefits." Etcetera, etcetera, and so forth.

Very little of this will be a puzzlement to people who live in Minnesota, or have spent some time here. But it needs to be mentioned nonetheless. There's nothing like a tragedy to stampede people into action. This was true even when people voted with their hearts much less than they do in our Oprahfied era. Even though the attempt may be doomed to failure (see Drew's post earlier today on doomed heroes), someone has to bring up the facts. Someone has to stand athwart history, yelling Stop.

Be Careful What You Wish For

By Mitchell

You may recall that Willie Stark, the Huey Long-esque central figure in All the King’s Men, originally comes to power through a literal collapse of the infrastructure. Stark, who winds up as one of the truly sinister political figures in American literature, starts out as an earnest crusader, thrust into the limelight when a tragic school accident confirms his earlier charges of corruption in the bidding process used to construct the building. As one character puts it, “I am punished for accepting iniquity and voting against an honest man!”

You don’t see scenes like that much in American politics today, and it isn’t only because we don’t have novelists like Robert Penn Warren writing the dialogue. It’s because we live in an era in which the idea of a political white knight, a populist hero of the people, is a concept totally foreign to the average American.

Now, at this point in All the King’s Men Stark is, in fact, a relatively honest man. (This is before he goes on to become a poster child for the “power corrupts” school of political science. For more information look under “Moses, Robert.”) And therein lies the difference. Stark himself, in one of the novel’s most memorable lines, says, “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud.”

Again, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find a politician today (or anyone else, for that matter, outside of an evangelical pulpit) who would put it in quite precisely those terms. But Robert Penn Warren’s words lie at the heart of the debate that is to come, and the way in which our times have changed.

A friend of mine from out-of-town asked me if the outrage had started yet over the 35W bridge collapse. Certainly, if you’re interested in pointing fingers there’s enough blame to go around. You’ve got, just for starters, inspection records that might have sent up red flags, pork-barrel spending that might have taken needed funds away from supporting the infrastructure, a constitutional amendment that was supposed to take care of funding for roads (and might – several years down the line) and two new sports stadiums going up. (Wonder where the money for those is coming from, hmm?)

I told him that while I supposed the outrage would be there eventually, frankly people were still a little too stunned to get going on it. Not to worry though, I assured him – it will happen soon enough. (In fact, there are already arguments going on over the design and speed of the bridge replacement, not to mention the likelihood of a gas tax increase to pay for everything.)

So it’s easy to imagine the blame game to come. (Because, after all, we do have to have someone to blame for it, don’t we? The human heart is far more comfortable with that scenario. Something goes wrong, it has to be someone’s fault, right?) The question, however, is who will benefit from it? Who’s going to be the white knight? And I don’t think that’s a crass question to ask, when you’re talking about someone the public will turn to.

The days of Willie Stark are gone now, or fading quickly. If you look at the literature, the movies, the TV shows of the 50s and 60s, government leaders are generally the good guys. If there are monsters to fight, the military takes them on. If there are gangsters on the loose, the feds are there to protect us. Aliens, mind-control, different types of sinister plots, might even bring the president into the mix.

Hard to believe that would happen now. The general perception of politicians today is not a particularly positive one. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that any politician is going to be able to ride to the top on a wave of outrage over the bridge disaster. Between the earmarking, the pork-barreling, the vote trading, and the general level of corruption and politics-as-usual that most people associate with politics, today’s leaders are probably more likely to be blamed for causing the collapse (or at least the conditions that precipitated it) than looked to take care of the problem. That won’t stop them from trying, from talking a good game about it, but as the saying goes, talk is cheap.

Thomas Sowell had a brilliant column last week regarding the subject of tax increases to pay for infrastructure. He doesn’t think much of it. There’s plenty of money to pay for infrastructure, he said;

The real problem is that the political incentives are to spend the taxpayers’ money on things that will enhance politicians’ chances of getting reelected.

There may be enough money available to maintain bridges and other infrastructure but that same money can have a bigger political payoff if spent building something new instead of maintaining and repairing existing structures.

So where is one to turn to find the white knight? Not the politicians. They’re all guilty to one extent or another, most people would say. Or, as Stark puts it, “conceived in sin and born in corruption.”

(We probably ought to be suspicious of politicians who promise to take care of the infrastructure, anyway. They have ways of turning out to be something other than we’d expected, even as they fulfill their campaign pledges. He made the trains run on time, anyone?)

In truth, the politician of the Willie Stark era has been replaced, in most cases, by the trial lawyer. (See Edwards, John.) No matter what type of calamity occurs today, if you look closely enough you’ll probably find a lawyer somewhere in the aftermath, already working up his first briefs. It’s not that we look to the lawyers to remedy the situation. No, what we ask from them is simpler, more straightforward: we want justice, retribution, financial restitution. We look to them to assign the blame, to hand out the punishment, to hold the guilty parties up to ridicule.

It’s almost as if we’ve given up on the idea of changing things, and are content to simply react instead. We can’t prevent bad things from happening; we can only punish those responsible. The trial lawyers have punished a lot of people over the years, and they’ve certainly made a lot of money for the victims of disaster and their families (and a great deal of money for themselves, in the bargain). They’ve also been responsible for adding to the cost of even the most basic services, of skyrocketing costs (in the medical field, for example), and in attaining a level of trust just about as low as that of politicians. The only difference is that the lawyers might at least be able to get you a few bucks; anytime you talk to a politician it usually winds up costing you money.

There is one other possibility, of course. Oprah. She’s always got a sympathetic ear, unless you do her wrong. (See Frey, James.) Her audience is huge, heart-on-the-sleeve-wearing, inclined to believe the best about you and the worst about them. Maybe she can’t redress the wrongs you’ve suffered, but at least she’ll give you a hug and a shoulder to cry on. And there’s always the chance you’ll get a few minutes of fame, and maybe a book or movie deal. How good is that – a chance at the money, and you don’t even have to go through the trial lawyers to get it. Remember in Three Days of the Condor how Robert Redford goes to the New York Times to expose our corrupt government? Forget that; the Times is so passé. Oprah is the crusading journalist of our time.

I don’t mean for this to sound too cynical, although it undoubtedly is the product of a cynical age. It’s just that the times have in fact changed. Not necessarily for the better, or the worse; Willie Stark was hardly a bargain, as is usually the case once someone gets that first taste of power and finds he likes it. It’s just that we don’t look to the crooked politicians anymore, but to the ambulance chasers.

So when we demand answers, when we call on someone to do something, when we ask, “Where’s the outrage?” we’d better be careful what we ask for. We might just wind up with Willie Stark. Or John Edwards. Or even Oprah. Which one is worse? You be the judge.

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse

By Mitchell

Wednesday night is usually grocery night in the Hadley household. When you live downtown there aren't all that many grocery choices; the nearest one, Lunds, is just across the river, but it's not the kind of place you go when you live on a budget

So for us, the choice is usually to go over to Roseville, where there's a Cub and a Super Target. You get there by going out on Washington Avenue and taking a left on to the 35W bridge that runs over the Mississippi River, about six blocks from our condo. I'd get home from work and do a half-hour on the exercise machine, we'd have a quick dinner, and then we'd head out between 6 and 6:30.

But it was hot today, in the 90s with a forecast of rain, and Judie had been out to lunch with my aunt and was tired and didn't really feel like going back out, and so we decided to wait until tomorrow. Because of that, we were home at 6:20 when the first bulletins came on the local news that the bridge had collapsed, that there were perhaps 50 or 60 cars in the water, that it was a disaster.

About that time we became aware of the sirens outside. Now, living where we do (downtown, not far from Hennepin County Medical Center), you get used to the sound of sirens, and so perhaps they'd been going for a few minutes. But these were continuous, and there were so many of them. Police cars, fire engines, ambulances. It could only be for one reason.

As I said, we're only about six blocks from where the bridge collapesd. By going out the front door of our condo and crossing the street, we could walk across the Stone Arch Bridge, which parallels 35W. A woman from our building was headed out there; her husband usually drove across that bridge to get home, and she hadn't heard from him yet. Judie asked her when she'd last talked to him; she thought about 20 minutes, which would put it after the collapse, but when she looked at her watch she thought it might have been longer ago than that. She was shaking, fighting hysteria, headed down to see what she could find out.

There were perhaps hundreds of people already on the bridge, with more coming from every direction. Emergency vehicles screamed across the bridge, which is usually limited to pedestrian traffic. Black smoke rose from the scene, the fire from the semitrailer that was shown prominently on TV. We could see a portion of the bridge standing up at a 45 degree angle, other pieces beyond our sight, in the river.The street was jammed with cars, trucks, people. The sirens were endless; police and fire boats coming from Stillwater, a town located further down the river from Minneapolis. More police cars, patrolmen hanging out the doors, asking people to get out of the way. A blue command center being set up. Flashing lights everywhere. A Metro bus, slowly moving toward the river, the sign on the front reading "Rescue Bus." People were taking pictures, taking videos, talking on their cell phones. We ran into a co-worker from my office, who took that bridge every day to and from work. He didn't really know what to do, just kept walking down, to see what he could see.

For all its faults, Minneapolis is a pretty ordinary place. Sure, there are the murders and the gang violence, but there's never been a major airplane crash here, the most famous fire we've ever had was in an empty office building on Thanksgiving night and didn't hurt anyone, there just isn't anything to compare to what we saw and heard tonight, at the far end of our neighborhood.

It's dark now, at 9:30. The sirens have eased off; everyone who needs to be down there is already there. The large surface parking lot behind our building has emptied out, and there isn't nearly as much traffic out there as there was a while ago. The rain that was forecast has held off, but the temperature is still high, the air heavy and still. The news coverage, locally and nationally, will continue into the night, and the headlines in tomorrow's Strib will be predictable.

Tomorrow is Thursday, and it will be grocery night for us. We'll have to find a different route to the store, of course, or a different store. It's true we could easily have been on that bridge when it went down tonight; it was the right night, and while we often would have been going over it around 6:30, there have been nights when it's been closer to 6:00, or 6:10. It might be somewhat melodramatic to suggest that we should have been on that bridge tonight. A lot of people should have been, and weren't, and we can be grateful for that. But I don't want to put that fine a point on it, though, on how close a call it might have been. It was enough to have been that close to it, to see the flashing lights and hear the sirens and see the helicopters hovering over the neighborhood, to see your city and a road you take being featured on CNN and Fox News.

It was enough to be that close, to see and hear it all, to listen to people worried for their friends and loved ones. It was enough, to remind you once again (as if you really needed reminding) of the fragility of life, the fleetingness of it all. And for those of us of faith, it doesn't mean that life is meaningless; rather, it it reminds us of how packed with meaning every second of life is. It was enough to make you think about that decision to stay home tonight, and to go on your knees in Thanksgiving. It was enough, perhaps, to remind you that life is never enough, that there is always more to experience, more to do, and less and less time in which to do it.