I am with the Captain on this- certain people are not covering themselves with dignity in regards to the bridge collapse in Minnesota:
Yesterday, Senator Amy Klobuchar blamed the collapse of the I-35W bridge on a lack of highway funds — even though the 2005 highway bill increased federal funding to Minnesota by 46% over its five-year span. Apparently realizing that line of argument wouldn’t hold, Rep. James Oberstar accused MnDOT of being too cheap to use advanced technology for bridge inspections. He left out of his accusation that the technology hasn’t proven itself for that purpose:
On the House floor Friday, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., accused MnDOT of turning down an opportunity to use a $200,000 high-tech inspection technology on the bridge that might have detected a fatal flaw. …
“Technology can discover microscopic cracks not visible to the naked eye and then measure their propagation and do the same with bridges,” he said on the House floor. “The Minnesota Department of Transportation was offered the opportunity to use that technology and I am disappointed that the state rejected the opportunity to use that technology to test the structural integrity of the bridge that collapsed.” …
John Schadl, Oberstar’s spokesman, said the congressman mentioned the incident because he is frustrated by the lack of investment in new technologies, at both the federal and state levels. But Oberstar does not know whether the company’s system would have detected any fatal flaws in the bridge.
“Nobody knows if this technology would have prevented this tragedy,” Schadl said.
Precisely. And do you know why nobody knows it? Because we don’t know why the bridge failed yet. We don’t know whether this system works as promised, either. Why can’t our Democrats in this state wait to find out what actually happened before leaping to conclusions as to what could have prevented it — especially on the floor of Congress?
Just once it would be nice if, in the aftermath of these tragedies, we could actually get an idea of what went wrong before the politicians are promoting politically motivated fixes and wagging fingers at people for no reason.
As an aside, the Star Tribune headline on a story states: “MnDOT chose ‘most cost efficient’ of 3 options.” Since when is cost efficiency a bad thing? And since when does cost efficient mean ineffective? I am sure we could all list any number of things we do every day which are both cost effective and efficient. Last week I spilled a drink on my floor. Now, I suppose I could have ripped up the carpet and replaced it with a new, top-of-the-line carpet. Instead, I cleaned up the mess with about 50 cents worth of detergent and water. I guess, if there is ever a problem with my carpet in the future, the Star Tribune will be on my case.
ThymeZone
Ah, this is all just idle chirping over our Saturday morning coffee cakes and lattes.
What’s important is, the people of Minneapolis can rest easy. George Bush has walked the site and declared that he’ll help rebuild the bridge and help the community.
And so, the people of that fine city can now sleep tonight knowing that they are truly, truly fucked.
demimondian
Um, John? You need to do a bit more parsing of the article. You teach rhetoric and propaganda — you should teach a module on lying with statistics to your students, then, because that article is a classic example.
The 46% growth figure is over 5 years. 46% over five years is a
John Cole
The suspense is killing me.
demimondian
[grr I hate HTML’s binding of carets.]
Um, John? You need to do a bit more parsing of the article. You teach rhetoric and propaganda—you should teach a module on lying with statistics to your students, then, because that article is a classic example.
The 46% growth figure is over 5 years. 46% over five years is a less than 8% per year increase. That barely covers inflation, and certainly doesn’t cover major new projects.
As Ben the Wise Owl says, “Don’t be a dupe! Learn to compute!”
jg
You can easily lose the point in the numbers. Which I suspect is exactly the result the right is aiming for. The point is tax-cut mania leads to this. As does privatising. Pet projects get whatever meager funding is available and most of that is simply to pad the reps image so he can be re-elected. Instead of agreeing with the Captain you could point out how he’s helping to blind the issue with numbers and figures. The same old ‘thousand points of distraction’ republican strategy we’ve seem for years. In the end its always the lefts fault somehow.
Tim H.
Public or private, there is a non-zero probability that cost efficient is merely a euphemism for “cheapest for now, and maybe it will be someone else’s problem when it gets serious.” What’s bothersome about that article is first that inspections only were not a solution in the first report by the consultant, but magically appeared in the redo. That screams “stall because we don’t want to spend any money.” The second is the totally bonehead move to discontinue inspections during the summer.
RSA
Here’s some context, from the Minnesota DOT, as quoted by Captain Ed:
Wow, that sounds like a lot: $47.733 billion for each of those six years. Here’s some more context [PDF], though, from the GAO:
Hmm. $47.733 doesn’t seem quite enough for “cost-beneficial improvements that would maintain the current physical condition of highways”, and much less than enough for improvements beyond maintenance. I realize that yes, I’m getting into the numbers, but just pointing to huge mountains of money doesn’t really answer any questions. It may end up that the flaws in the bridge would not have been detectable under any circumstances. It’s a big jump for Captain Ed to say that blaming a lack of highway funds won’t hold water. We’ll have to see.
John Cole
Which is pretty much all I am asking. To wait and see before this becomes a polarized political debate where nothing is resolved, or, more likely, a shit ton of money is hastily thrown at something that doesn’t do anything to remedy the situation, after which Republicans and Democrats can gather together for a press conference and celebrate their bipartisanship.
The Other Steve
Bad analogy. Your carpet isn’t important to your safety and well being.
Let’s use a different one. The brakes on your car. The sensor indicates they are wearing out. But you don’t want to spend the money fixing them, because you got your eyes on a brand new 60″ LCD television.
3 months go by, and the brakes squeak as you stop. 6 months goes by, and now they’re rubbing metal on metal. A year goes by, but you still just don’t think it’s worth fixing the brakes. You just drive slow, and hope nobody pulls out in front of you.
What do you think is going to eventually happen? Is that 60″ LCD television really worth it?
Now, you know, maybe it’s not fair to play politics but I don’t give a fuck about fairness. I care about results, and the only way to get results is by playing politics. The fact is, over the last two election cycles in Minnesota, transportation has been the #1 issue. The Republicans lost like 10 seats in the Senate, and 30 or so seats in the house because of their failure to come up with a rational transportation funding plan.
Why is it an issue? Because we have had tremendous growth in our city. Traffic has become a very bad issue. Most of the core interstates moving traffic were built 40 years ago. 35W, 494, 94 and so on. 35E was only finished about 20 years ago, if I recall correctly, but it’s already a mess.
There’s a lot of reasons for these problems, chief amongst them has been irrational civic planning caused by citizen complaints.(We have interstates where you can only do 45 mph, because the neighbors complained about noise, or roads which do weird merges because the neighbors didn’t want a fly-over, etc.)
Other problems are caused by urban sprawl. More people are living farther away and driving more.
Now, you can say those are problems, fine… But if you don’t claim they are problems, and/or you do absolutely nothing about them… then the real problem has been the Republican insane tax policy.
And BTW… The Republican insane tax policy.
That was PURELY political.
So go fuck yourself about complaints on playing politics.
The Other Steve
Maybe we should ask Grover Norquist what a rational person would do in this situation?
Perhaps sel lthe bridge to Wal-Mart, maybe?
John Cole
Yes- because we know how much both of us care what Grover Norquist thinks.
ThymeZone
Hell yes, man. What is the matter with you?
Brakes, schmakes.
RSA
People my age who grew up watching Sesame Street may find it difficult to take anyone named Grover seriously. Super Grover, on the other hand. . .
Andrew
Seriously folks, I drive around without using my brakes all of the time. Learn to drive a standard, fer cryin’ out loud.
Punchy
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLA FRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTA!!!!
RSA
I forgot to comment on this point: People in general have a very hard time thinking about human lives directly in terms of cost, even if they do it implicitly every day in the decisions they make. People might think, “How can you put a price on a human life?” And yet if the price of a human life were literally infinite, we’d never leave our houses for fear of being struck by lightning or hit by debris falling from old satellites.
dmbeaster
As an aside, the Star Tribune headline on a story states: “MnDOT chose ‘most cost efficient’ of 3 options.” Since when is cost efficiency a bad thing? And since when does cost efficient mean ineffective?
Frankly, the label “most cost efficient” is in all likelihood the same sort of political exploitation of this tragedy, only it’s the reverse — trying to pretend that all reasonable measures were taken.
The leading candidate on causation is metal fatigue for which the bridge was inadequately designed (due to the fact that engineers did not realize in the 60s that it was a factor in bridge design). For nearly 20 years, they have known that stress cracks are likely to develop on this bridge and compromise its structural integrity.
No one knows when that failure point is going to be reached, nor did they truly know that they could detect the danger in advance from an inspection regime. It is not possible to calculate “most cost efficient” approach with such gigantic unknowns. Imagine being in the room listening to the calculation of how long repairs could be delayed before catastrophic failure became an unacceptable risk — because that is what they would be doing when making their “most cost efficient” analysis.
Nothing like pretending that they were “efficiently” managing the risk of catastrophic collapse when they were basically making guesses.
grandpa john
Best and most succinct post I have read about the bridge tragedy and I don’t remember where exactly I read it, but it goes like this
Your tax cuts at work
grumpy realist
Yah–I’m also interpreting the “most cost effective” to mean “doing Jack-All about maintenance and hoping it holds together through prayer.”
What’s so “cost-effective” about not doing anything until the bridge falls down and then having to spend N x 100 millions of dollars to replace it?
Pretty piss-poor analysis of “cost-effective” to me.
myiq2xu
The way major tragedies like this should be handled is:
1) Rescue/provide aid to the victims.
2) Recover the dead for burial.
3) Gather evidence with full open and public scrutiny
4) Hold public hearings where the evidence is considered along with expert opinion. The body holding the hearings must be non-partisan or bi-partisan, and must be independent and disinterested.
5) Release to the a public a report on the findings and conclusions, and let the chips fall where they may.
As you should note, finger-pointing and assigning blame do not take place until step #5.
Secrecy, no matter what the reason, is the enemy of truth and will frequently be misused to conceal wrongdoing, thus undermining public trust in our government. It also spawns conspiracy theories.
ThymeZone
New rules, effective Jan 2001.
BIRDZILLA
As usial the demaraps find a way to blame GEORGE W. BUSH for something becuase theres not enough tax money for more of their pork projects
jake
Because they’ve learned their lesson: Speak up immediately and loudly, or Republicans will blame you for the bad shit.
I am willing to bet at least one MN Republican replied that now is not the time to play the blame game.
Andrew
The following is going to sounds particularly cruel and insensitive:
Look it folks, bridges in the U.S. are mighty safe. If only one or two fail in a year, and two dozen people die, it’s nothing compared to dozens of other issues. If we spend billions of extra dollars upgrading bridges, we’re going to be wasting money that should be spent on other more critical issues.
Even looking at automobile issues alone, bridge safety is probably a distant hundredth something place after issues ranging from road design, lighting, drunk driving, driver education, pedestrians, bicycle lanes, weather alerts, vehicle stability control, etc.
The best way to improve driver safety would probably be to spend a few billion giving modern, safe vehicles to anyone driving something more than 10 years old. But no, we’re going to spend another $12 billion dollars to upgrade bridges so that one falls down every two years instead of one every one year, because politicians are media whores and voters are media johns.
Yeah, it sucks that the bridge fell down and that people died. But over 40,000 other folks died in automobiles last year. Bridges are not a significant issue. Period.
John Cole
I have made an editorial decision that this blog will be spent obsessing on the cruel and insensitive. The more we can be cruel and insensitive to idiots, the better. And if we can have fun doing it, even better.
I have given up on rational debate (not that I was ever really big on it)- it accomplishes nothing. You can spend 2 hours typing up the ins and out of something, and some fucking retard will come in and write “Yeah, but Clinton did it.”
Cruel and Insensitive works, is fulfilling (for me, at least), and the direction of the future.
caustics
Where is the MSM coverage of all the bridges that didn’t collapse?
But seriously… As someone mentioned the other day, basic infrastructure improvement has traditionally been a yawn-inducer when it comes to voter issues.
Even when something like this happens, the initial ‘we gotta fix this’ urgency peters out with successive news cycles. The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was supposed to wake us up and spur an upgrade of our national power grid beyond third-world standards into a terrorist-proof marvel of technology.
The official reason it didn’t happen? No prospect of short-term economic gain.
ThymeZone
You really ought to join our mailing list.
incontrolados
Given this:
then:
You either pay a lot for water or a lot for detergent or both.
So does that destroy your argument? Where’s brock?
srv
We cross the river with the bridges we have, and not the ones we wish we had.
Birdzilla, are you related to Senator Stevens?
incontrolados
In all seriousness, I think that looking for blame is unproductive. Just a couple of days before this happened, there were reports in the news here in Houston that several bridges have been weakened due to the heavy rain we’ve been getting. I look at the rail bridge I drive under every work day and it is severly cracked and after this happened, I thought what if — like anyone, I guess.
Andrew, while you are right, the argument has never worked. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is a false sense of confidence — you drive your car. But recently we’ve had deaths here related to street racing.
I feel a long rant about death bubbling and so I should just leave it at that.
srv
Is Florida incredible or what? The folks at the Onion must be slamming their heads against the wall:
Prisoners prosecuted for being handy.
ThymeZone
Yes, but you are talking as if everything is political, and politics is everything. It isn’t about bridges, it’s about whether people care about good government.
Good government takes care of the bridges even when people aren’t looking, because it’s the right thing to do.
Good government doesn’t pander to people who hate government and despise all taxes. It makes its appeal to people who want, demand and expect competant mangement of public trusts and resources.
People can make the right choices, and the whole American Experiment rather demands that they do.
I’m not convinced that the fallen I35W bridge is a sign that the sky is falling in America, but it can at least be an opportunity to ask questions, get good answers, and start making appropriate plans and decisions.
I am, though, convinced that handing over government to people whose campaign promises amount to “no gay marriage” and “government is the problem” is going to get you a lot more things like falling bridges and the decline of America into something like a second-rate country with some rich people who get the tax cuts and the first-rate things.
Just to be clear, the people I refer to above are called Republicans.
Tim
Look it folks, bridges in the U.S. are mighty safe. If only one or two fail in a year, and two dozen people die, it’s nothing compared to dozens of other issues. If we spend billions of extra dollars upgrading bridges, we’re going to be wasting money that should be spent on other more critical issues.
Even if absolutely nobody had been killed, the politicians would be looking for scapegoats. There are now 15,000 trucks per day looking for another way across the river where none exists that can take that load. Let alone the car traffic. Cynic that I am, I believe the money being lost in Minneapolis is motivating these guys more than anything.
srv
Catastrophes like this always happen in a vacuum. They simply can never be forseen.
myiq2xu
Maybe I’m a starry-eyed idealist, but I think that living in the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the mankind means that we should be able to expect that our bridges won’t collapse just from normal use.
And while I would agree that infrastructure maintenance may not be the most urgent issue facing us today, it is far more urgent than tax cuts for the rich and shameless.
RSA
I entirely agree. Unfortunately, one has to be a starry-eyed idealist to think that the richest, most powerful nation etc. also means not having a poverty rate of 12%, not having 40 million citizens without heath insurance, and so forth. Riches and power trickle down a bit, but not that much.
Dave
Simple answer to all these problems.
Take the money out of politics.
If politicians didn’t have to spend most of their time fund raising, campaigning and cozying up to big doners, they might actually give a shit about the important but non-sexy things like infrastructure.
rockdalian
The fact of the matter is that the feds do not require road funds to be spent only on roads. States have used these funds for bike paths and other non road related projects. How much money has Minnesota siphoned off for other projects? To blame this on tax cuts or Bush is nothing short of lunacy. But then that is the dems strongest suit.
The Other Steve
Yeah, like invading Iraq.
Well, actually. They’d come over on the 494 loop, cutting west around the city and then back up. It adds about 20 miles to the trip.
Oddly enough, 494 was designed as a bypass specifically so trucks didn’t have to go through the city.
Yeah, that’s it… Minnesota siphoned off road transportation funds to build a bicycle path.
Nice spoof, DougJ.
Hyperion
ain’t gonna happen. that train has left the station. the horse is dead. this is an ex-parrot.
this is all very reminiscent of NOLA levee failure and then the miner disaster. both times JC got his knickers in a twist about (idle) speculation about who-dun-it or what-dun-it before all the facts are in. this 24 hour news cycle is the world we live in now and there is no going back. the beast must be fed. so get over it.
otherwise your response will just get dovetailed in the now recognizable sequence of events:
1. incident occurs
2. first reports and footage repeated endlessly
3. GMA or Dateline or Anderson Cooper set up on site in order to generate fresh reports and footage to repeat endlessly
4. local pol gets interviewed and achieves sound byte excellence…so remarks get repeated endlessly
5. B-J post decrying state of media world
6. the prez visits
7. blame game gets a full head of steam
8. investigations that reach conclusions long after the memory of the event has faded
quick: what WAS the final decision on the levees in NOLA? and was the mining company’s safety policy implicated in the deaths of the miners?
at least we have google now and can just look it up.
the perfect tool for “what ever happened to…?”
TenguPhule
Fixed it for you, John.
John Redworth
Multiple Choice Answer:
A) It is Clinton’s fault
B) If you aren’t driving over a bridge, you shouldn’t worry about it
C) God made the bridge fall because of the homosexuals and abortion mills in this country
D) I’ve never heard of the bridge therefore it must not exist and saying that it collapsed just emboldens other bridges thinking of collapsing
John Redworth
Forgot one…
E) Since John discussed this, he must be a bridgeaphobe
Pudentilla
oh, i think that horse has long since been driven from the barn by the republicans:
“in response to an Associated Press reporter who asked him how the campaign was going: [Gingrich said] “Slightly more moving our way. I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things.”Gingrich concluded, “The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That’s the message for the last three days.” ”
good times.
capelza
Pudentilla, I thought he had done it again! Yeah, that was a stupid thing for him to say, since it turned out her own stepfather was a GOP muckety-muck and Christian Coalition dude, who also happened to have molested her as a kid.
That was irony biting Newtie in the butt.
The remarkable thing about this bridge collaspe is that so few people died. It is a terrible thing for those who did, though. The “blame game”…isn’t that the American way? We proud, we few, we sue-happy bastards. Sadly.
Otto Man
If this were an isolated incident, I think you could fault people for saying the administration has neglected the infrastructure. But it’s not.
The entire northeastern power grid went down in 2003. The levees in New Orleans failed horribly during Kartina in 2005. A giant steam pipe in Manhattan exploded earlier this year, and down we have an interstate bridge collapsing into the Mississippi. Those are just the national headlines. Locally, schools and roads and other public spaces are crumbling all around us.
It seems to me that the Bush approach of cutting taxes, cutting investment in the infrastructure, spending all our money on school painting in Iraq, and hoping for the best — well, maybe that isn’t the wisest approach.
Otto Man
States have used these funds for bike paths and other non road related projects. How much money has Minnesota siphoned off for other projects?
You do realize that bike paths and light rail systems help alleviate the traffic on major roads and reduce the wear and tear on major roads? And that, in almost all instances, their funding is separate from highway funding?
The Other Steve
It’s official. Per the Republican debate in Iowa… Cutting taxes will help us to get the money we need to fix the bridge.
Halffasthero
I was out of town when this all blew up and did not feel safe using a public computer to vent.
BTW I loved this quote:
It is too true to be funny. Pawlenty has been trying to govern on the cheap for too long and only got his governership back because Hatch shot his mouth off 3 days before election. He has been governing like he has a mandate (Bush style) while the Republicans haven been getting stomped in the legislature losing seat after seat in supposedly safe Republican districts.
On an aside, I have to believe that this has put the fear of God in other states. I know that the bridges in Pittsburg were in very sorry shape. I wonder if this incident will have any impact on them.
rea
There are now 15,000 trucks per day looking for another way across the river where none exists that can take that load. Let alone the car traffic. Cynic that I am, I believe the money being lost in Minneapolis is motivating these guys more than anything.
If 15,000 trucks and an unknown, but significant, number of ordinary commuters are adding 20 miles to their daily commute–well, I’m not an actuary, so I’m not going to venture a number, but it’s rather obvious that there will be a significant number of additional fatal accidents resulting from all that extra driving, isn’t it?
Fe E
And don’t forget to factor in that most of the main roadways were already at, near or significantly past capacity, I don’t think that there is any doubt that this will negatively affect traffic safety.
Who even knows about looming road rage….
rawshark
From Carpetbagger