One of Minnesota’s most famous and gifted citizens, Garrison Keillor, has written about the I-35W bridge collapse in his newspaper column, The Old Scout. As usual, our reigning politicians are on the receiving end of his barbed wit.

Here’s a brief excerpt. Keillor’s tongue is firmly in his cheek as he writes about his choice to travel down to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which requires crossing other “structurally deficient” bridges:

The day when we look to big government for solutions to our transportation problems is gone. Our governor has twice vetoed a 7.5-cent increase in the state gasoline tax to pay for road and bridge repair. He believes it is dumb. So it’s up to us to solve our own problems. Rochester is 88 miles away. Northwest Airlines offers seven flights daily for a round-trip fare of about 500 bucks, or slightly more than the fare to New York. You want to visit Rochester, pay your own freight. Don’t expect Minnesota to take care of you.

On Saturday, August 4, our family made an early-morning trip to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, then headed north for a glimpse of the collapsed I-35W bridge. Sensitive to calls to stay away from the immediate area, we went to Gold Medal Park, near the new Guthrie Theatre. I had read in Nick Coleman’s StarTribune column that people were gathering there to view what they could of the disaster from the newly made hill that sits at the center of the park.

The picture above shows the view toward the bridge, magnified only slightly by the 3x zoom on my small digital camera. It’s not a great picture of the disaster, but if you look closely in the center of the photo, you can see the collapsed southern part of the bridge angled downwards. In the background is the 10th Avenue bridge.

For the last several days we’ve been hearing about Governor Tim Pawlenty’s indications that he will reverse his “no new taxes” pledge and support an increase in the Minnesota gas tax. Shamefully, the tax has been held at 20 cents a gallon since 1988. Inflation has eaten away at the ability of the tax to provide funds, and it’s at or near an all-time low in terms of its real cost.

How sad that it takes a disaster that costs many lives and hundreds of millions of dollars to realize that we need to increase funding for transportation infrastructure. Democrats deserve some of the blame for recently failing to come up with a compromise that might have overriden a Pawlenty veto, but the onus of responsbility for the disgraceful drop in funding over time goes to the anti-tax crowd and, more recently, its darling, Gov. Pawlenty.

Pawlenty is trying to keep this disaster from being an albatross around his neck. Would that he had made prevention his goal and not political reaction.

See a StarTribune story for more about Pawlenty’s political situation regarding the tax. The story quotes a poll showing that 57 percent of Minnesotans oppose a gas tax increase. Voters need to wake up to this issue too. The truth is that driving a motor vehicle imposes costs not only to the environment in the form of pollution but also to the transportation infrastructure in the form of wear and tear. A gas tax only begins to allow government to remedy the damage caused by driving.

Some weeks ago a new blog, “Rudely Stamped: Heterodox Views on Politics and Public Policy,” made its debut. Its author, Michael Blaine, offers valuable and incisive comment on politics and culture from a generally left-wing perspective, with an international outlook that is often missing in the United States.

Of the early posts, I especially appreciated one on immigration. Recently I’ve come to think of immigration as necessary to save our social safety net. That is, with fewer young workers supporting an increasingly elderly population, I believe we’ll need a healthy level of immigration to provide the tax revenue to support Social Security and Medicare. Anyways, here’s an excerpt from Rudely Stamped that puts Latin American immigration into the U.S. in a positive light:

In reality, the U.S. finds itself in a relatively fortunate immigration situation. The vast majority of our nation’s newcomers are Roman Catholic, capitalistic, zealously eager to work — that is why they come, after all — and family-oriented. These millions of Latin Americans speak a European language and are eager to become part of their new society, even if they also retain a foothold in their old one. Indeed, these people already are American in the sense that they have grown up in the Americas, the New World we natives are taught in school to cherish. Without them, our nation’s population would actually decline, a phenomenon that would produce difficult economic consequences.

Contrast this with Europe, where most new arrivals are not Christian, do not know Western-style capitalism or democracy, and do not join the social mainstream. These North Africans and Middle Easterners communicate using inscrutable languages, and frequently remain alienated from their host societies (by choice or not), while retaining loyalties that do not include their new countries. Europe thus confronts an enormous and ongoing immigration challenge, one that by most accounts it is not handling well.

By the way, the phrase “rudely stamped” comes from Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, I’ve been told. Richard calls himself “rudely stamped” - that is, ugly. Methinks Mr. Blaine is too hard on himself!

On Saturday, April 14, 16 people in Northfield, Minnesota, participated in Step It Up 2007, a “Global Warming Day of Action” organized nationally by the Sierra Club. After gathering in the Northfield High School parking lot (top picture) at noon, participants climbed on 13 bikes and rode down Division Street to the Northfield Public Library. Two children rode in child carriers and Andy Alt joined Charley Skinner on Charley’s Blackbird “quadribent” dual recumbent.

I participated with my wife and daughter. As we rode down Division Street, many of us rang our bicycle bells, making delightful music.

At the library (bottom picture), participants signed letters urging four Minnesota leaders to take action to mitigate global warming: U.S. Senators Coleman and Klobuchar, U.S. Representative John Kline, and Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Thanks to Grant Dobbe and Andy Alt for organizing the Northfield event.

The U.S. House just passed a budget bill creating a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by September 1, 2008. It’s clearly the strongest Congressional challenge ever to President Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. It doesn’t satisfy those who want the war to end as soon as possible, but it does indicate that the Democratic party has been emboldened to change course regarding the war in Iraq.

Here is what the New York Times reported:

The withdrawal timetable provision, which calls for most American troops to be out of Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, is part of a bill to provide about $100 billion to finance the war [sic] in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would also impose a series of performance benchmarks, for Baghdad and for Washington, to show progress in the new Iraq. Withdrawal would be required even sooner if progress on those benchmarks could not be demonstrated.

Passage of the legislation in the House by no means signals that it will emerge from the full Congress: the Senate is about to debate its own Iraq-pullout measure, which differs in substantial ways.

Still, the House legislation is hugely significant as a gauge of political support for the Bush administration’s war strategy.

So it’s not likely that there will be a withdrawal even by fall 2008, particularly given the fact that President Bush immediately announced that he would veto the bill if it came across his desk in its present form.

The Minnesota delegation voted along party lines: 5 Democrats in favor, 3 Republicans opposed.

One of the most important news items this past month, in my opinion, was the February 2 release of a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was the panel’s fourth report. Here is an overview of the report’s conclusions from the Wikipedia entry on the IPCC: Read the rest of this entry »

“Environmentalists have embarked on a secular crusade,” reads the headline for Katherine Kersten’s column in the StarTribune yesterday. The conservative columnist argues that Christians should beware of turning environmentalism into a “secular religion” and quotes a Prof. Robert H. Nelson, who criticizes the “environmental gospel” as “Calvinism minus God.” She goes on to say that this “gospel” appeals to people who are “turning away from traditional religion”: Read the rest of this entry »

President George W. Bush gave his state of the union speech last night, and I was both surprised and not surprised by its contents. I was somewhat surprised by the opening, which was conciliatory toward the Democrats - including an acknowledgment of Nancy Pelosi as the first woman Speaker of the House. The president also expressed hope for the recovery of Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, whose ill health could lead to a return to Republican control of the Senate. Read the rest of this entry »

When President Bush spoke to the nation last week about his new plan for Iraq, which includes a “surge” of approximately 20,000 more troops to that country, I was aware of how warily I listened to his words. He is an effective speaker in such scripted situations, and I understand why many would be influenced by his urgent and sincere tone. However, I have learned too much about this man and his administration over the last six years to listen with much credulity. As he spoke, I kept asking myself, “Why should I believe you?” I expect that I’m one of millions who asked that same question.

After the Iraq Study Group released their report in December, I hoped that the Bush administration would adopt its recommendations. When Bush distanced himself from the report and said that he would announce his plan later, I suspected that he wanted some time to elapse so that our entertainment-distracted populace would forget the report and its grave findings (if it had paid any attention at all to them in the first place).

And so we were presented with the surge plan. Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker recently described the Iraq War in this way: “a four-year journey from shock and awe through stay the course to surge and pray.” Those last three words capture nicely the desperation and ineptitude that characterizes U.S. leadership of the war in Iraq. The plan seems unlikely to succeed, as another New Yorker writer, Steve Coll, has argued in a strong essay.

Surge and pray. I’ll pray for the Iraqi people and for the coalition troops there, but I’ll also pray that the U.S. Congress stops Bush’s plan from being implemented and forces the country to take a different course in Iraq.

Richard Cretan of The Glebe Cow Drooled does not see the election as the end of a conservative era. He wants further proof:

Obviously there are many millions who want more–more war, more repression in the name of “security” and “faith.” They will growl and regroup. Many in the new majority, moreover, are anything but liberal or progressive (and you can find the right wing taking early comfort in that fact). So it seems too early to speak about the end of a conservative era. It’s too soon to speak about the end of destructive post-9-11 nationalism, too; give that another decade, alas.

But there are signs, however tentative and small. My friend Peter observes that with the scouring of Congress, there is less fear in his heart of fascism, and inside the beltway, my pal Chris writes:

The imperialist blowhards who favor war and torture and crushing the poor will perhaps be a little more sedate, while the potential for a little more debate and truth-telling has probably risen.