DWT Endorses Alexis Tsipras... What Can Greek Voters Learn From Minnesota?

Can Alexis hold back the barbarian banksters?

Tomorrow, Sunday, Greeks will make what could turn out to be their most important decision since they saved Europe from the Persians at the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea. The final polls show a dead heat between anti-bankster populist Alexis Tsipras and the Greek Mitt Romney, conservative hack and champion of German Austerity, Antonis Samaras. The formerly top center-left party, Pasok (something like the Blue Dog/New Dem wing of the Democratic Party here) is polling third (13%) and has basically lost its following since throwing it's lot in with the conservatives. Tsipras is now the representative of the left and he's promising to renege on the unfair bailout deal that the Germans and Wall Street made with Greece’s conservative corporate whores. Corporatists-- and their media outlets-- across Europe are blasting away at him with all guns. They're very offended that he's standing up for ordinary Greek families and pointing out that Merkel's Europe belongs to the past.

So what does this have to do with Minnesota, which has lots of Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, English, Poles and Germans, but not many Greeks (outside of Dalbo where 692 of them make up just over 1% of the town's population)? Tsipras is all about growing Greece's real economy, not playing losing financial games with banksters. That doesn't make banksters, the masters of Austerity, happy. After all, Austerity works for them... if for no one else-- and even if it spells doom for our sociey's in the long terms. But banksters and financial wheeler-dealers never think beyond the quarter. The long term, in their world, is for suckers. And that brings us to our old pal, Joshua Holland, and his new book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About The Economy. Because the rich don't want to pay their fair share-- and feel empowered enough to get away with it now-- America's infrastructure is falling apart. Like the conservatives in Greece (and across Europe), the Republican Party, whose only function is to serve the interests of the wealthy, don't give a rat's ass.

In 2010, the New York Times reported, “Thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.” On average, a major water line bursts every two minutes somewhere in the country. “For decades,” the Times noted, “these systems-- some built around the time of the Civil War-- have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.”

In 2007, a Minnesota bridge spanning the Mississippi River collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring almost 150 more. Republican governor Tim Pawlenty reacted to the disaster by calling a press conference, where, with a steely look of determination, he lied to the American people. Pawlenty insisted that inspections in 2005 and 2006 had found no structural problems with the overpass. But the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the bridge “was rated as ‘structurally deficient’ two years ago and possibly in need of replacement.” The bridge was borderline, with a 50 sufficiency rating. If a bridge scores less than 50, it needs to be replaced. When the bridge collapsed, more than a hundred others in the Gopher State had a rating below that number. According to the Pioneer Press, the bridge’s suspension system was supposed to receive extra attention with inspections every two years, but the last one had been performed in 2003.

The governor had every reason to obfuscate; in 2005, he’d vetoed a bipartisan transportation package that would have put more than $8 billion into transit fixes during the subsequent decade. Pawlenty was applauded by fellow Republicans for his staunch fiscal “conservatism.”

The Minnesota bridge tragedy occurred just weeks after an eighty-year-old steam pipe in Manhattan blew up, killing one person and injuring dozens more. A year before that, hundreds of thousands of Americans became refugees after New Orleans’s pitiable levees collapsed-- a graphic illustration of shortsighted public policy if ever there was one. More than seven hundred bodies were found in the Crescent City during the following months.

It’s all part of a larger picture. We have a crumbling power grid and are falling behind the rest of the world in broadband technology.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) talks of “congested highways, overflowing sewers and corroding bridges” that are “constant reminders of the looming crisis that jeopardizes our nation’s prosperity and our quality of life.” Every year the engineering society issues a report card grading fifteen categories of America’s once-premier physical plant. In 2009, we got a “D.” The ASCE called the state of the infrastructure in one of the wealthiest countries in the world “a disgrace.”

The organization estimates that it would take an investment of $2.2 trillion during the next ten years to bring our infrastructure up to modern standards. That investment would create thousands of decent jobs and might unleash a new wave of productivity growth.

Nobody seriously believes that the hidden hand of the market is going to step in and inspect and repair our bridges and water systems. When lawmakers don’t fund that work, they know full well that it won’t get done. And the evidence that infrastructure investments result in increased economic productivity is strong; some studies have estimated that every dollar invested in public infrastructure yields a 104 percent return through increases in productivity.

This is a very clear example of relentless tax cuts resulting in reduced economic activity, not the opposite. And it’s a predictable outcome of the rise of “backlash” conservatism. We’ve swallowed thirty years of small-government rhetoric, and it’s led us to a point in which our infrastructure, once the pride of the developed world, is falling apart around us. We’re reaping what we’ve sown.

Do I need to add that this is the foundation of the Romney business model-- and, clearly, how he intends to govern if, tragically, he were elected? As would Antonis Samaras and the other German lapdogs in Greece's ruling elite.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!

If you've been following our posts riffing off Glen Yeadon's The Nazi Hydra in America, you may have gotten the idea that I think every millionaire in the country should have been lined up against a wall and shot. That would be the wrong idea. I certainly feel economic predators and corporate Nazi collaborators should have been brought to justice and I have been outspoken about far too many millionaires-- with their unique perspective and interests-- in Congress and the media. But there are plenty of worthy, patriotic millionaires... as evidenced in the short clip above, marking today's 10 anniversary of the Bush tax cuts.

Their message-- "rich people are not the cause of a robust economy; they're the result of a robust economy"-- was very different from Tim Pawlenty's ballyhooed big economic speech that came out at the same time. Pawlenty thinks his path to the Republican vice-presidential nomination is by calling for draconian changes if not an end to Social Security and Medicare. In short, Pawlenty, like all the Republicans, is demanding

• A massive new tax cut for the wealthy

• A massive tax cut (more than 50% reduction in the rate) for corporations-- including Big Oil (He's also called the idea of ending subsidies "ludicrous")

• The elimination of the estate tax and taxes on capital gains and dividend income

• A balanced budget amendment and spending cap at 18% of GDP-- translation: severe cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and everything else except the Military-Industrial Complex

In his not-ready for prime time speech, Pawlenty said "There are some obvious targets to cut. We can start by applying what I call 'the Google test.' If you can find a good or service on the Internet, then the federal government probably doesn't need to offer the same good or service. Eddie Vale of Protect Your Care scratched his head in wonder.

I can Google ‘seniors’ and ‘health care’ does that mean Pawlenty would completely end Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? I can Google ‘veterans’ and ‘hospital’ does that mean Pawlenty would dismantle the VA system? I can Google ‘pharmacy’ does that mean no senior citizen or child would ever get assistance with their medicines from Pawlenty? These may seem like idiotically stupid questions, but, are necessary since Pawlenty is going to give a speech to demonstrate his qualifications to be leader of the free world by basing his policy agenda off what he can find on the internet.

“It’s also pretty sad and pathetic how quickly the regular blue collar guy veneer has fallen off as he rushes to cry crocodile tears over class warfare while taking away health care from seniors and kids to pay for tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires and big oil.

Author and labor attorney Jonathan Tasini marked the anniversary of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires by asking what we've learned from their utter failure to create jobs or improve the economy. Not much.

We seem to learn very little. Or, perhaps, it's better to say that our elected representatives seem to learn very little-- partly, albeit, because of the corruption of the electoral process that seems to force even those who have half a brain to automatically spew out the words "tax cuts" along with "economic recovery," "government regulations" and "small business" as if there was even a connection between any of those phrases to building a health economy.

Example: in 2009, the president proposed, and the Congress passed, a stimulus bill that was supposed to drag the economy out of the crisis sparked by the financial crimes on Wall Street. The problem: the stimulus was too small-- $787 billion-- and a third of the bill was...tax cuts!!! The most inefficient way to create jobs. And, IMHO, it's the reasons the stimulus did not have the impact it could have had.

So, now, the president and Democrats are caught in a real pickle: they face a disastrous jobs picture but they seem reluctant to push for new government stimulus because they feel on the defensive defending the 2009 "failed" stimulus. Well, that's what you get for believing in tax cuts as some economic miracle-producer ("failed" is in quotes because actually if you ask governors and mayors about the stimulus you would find a lot of them grateful for the hundreds of thousands of jobs that were saved thanks to the stimulus).

And we don't learn.

People run around wanting to cut taxes for "small businesses" and eliminate the estate tax--even though this is just a cover that, "would allow the rich to continue to enjoy most of the tax cuts they received under President Bush while doing nothing to create or protect jobs."

The "compromise" tax deal in 2010 tilted to the wealthy.

Then, there is the truly dumb idea of giving corporations yet another tax break by letting them bring back profits stashed overseas virtually for free.

And wrapped around all this craziness is the entire phony debate about a debt and deficit "crisis"--phony because the only crisis that exists is the lack of jobs in the country, a crisis brought on by a massive robbery of our nation's wealth, in large part, due to the obsession over giving ever-larger tax cuts to people who do not deserve to get them (and a decision by many of those same people to pay themselves obscene CEO salaries).

It goes on and on and on. A robbery that has gone on for thirty years shows no sign of abating.

Thirty years? Why leave out the 1920s and '30s, the years the last 30 were based on? They were the Big Business heyday hacks like Pawlenty and Romney want to get us back to.

Kevin McCarthy Has Proven In The Past He Can't Count Votes But... Will The GOP Back Boehner's Budget Kabuki Today?

Boehner's office is claiming he has the votes in the bag to pass the budget deal he and Obama made. Recall, when they voted last Friday just after midnight on a temporary Band-Aid to keep the government from shutting down, 28 teabaggers and 42 progressives voted NO. It passed 348-70. Grassroots teabaggers, who the far right has been winding up with "shut down the government" rhetoric for month, is furious, screaming for Boehner's head on a pike and babbling incoherently about primaries.

With the budget itself coming up for a vote, it's up to Boehner and Cantor to get it passed-- and Hoyer claims they haven't asked for help from the Democrats. So far two top House Democratic Leaders, Xavier Becerra and John Larson have committed-- to voting NO. Although Hoyer, as always, is expected to fall in line behind whatever the Establishment position is, Pelosi isn't saying what she's going to do. This is inconvenient for Boehner-Cantor-Ryan, Inc because it comes just as revelations are sweeping the right-wing paranoia underground that the reported $38.5 billion dollar cut was all smoke and mirrors and there weren't anything like the substantive cuts they feel they were promised-- like maybe just a paltry $352 million.

Boehner took to the conservative airwaves, appearing with Sean Hannity on Fox News to dispel what he said was “inaccurate information” circulating about the legislation.
“These are real cuts,” Boehner said.

“I’m not jumping up and down thrilled to death with this deal, but it was the best we could get,” he said earlier in the interview.

Rank-and-file House Republicans appeared to be coalescing around the agreement, but party leaders had to fend off criticism from Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, who said Thursday the deal “should be rejected.”

“The more we learn about the budget deal, the worse it looks,” the former Minnesota governor said in a statement. “When you consider that the federal deficit in February alone was over $222 billion, to have actual cuts less than the $38 billion originally advertised is just not serious.”
Pawlenty’s critique drew a chilly response from the party leadership.

“I think Tim Pawlenty and others are entitled to their opinion,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told The Hill. “This is a deal the Speaker struck. It was the best deal he could strike given the fact he was dealing with the White House and the Senate.”

Asked if Pawlenty could swing Republican votes against the deal, Cantor said he wasn’t sure of the former governor’s intent. “Perhaps he wants to try and do that,” Cantor said. “What I can say is our members understand that what we’ve done is begin taking a first bite of the apple of dealing with the spending and debt crisis.”

In an implicit warning to other Republican presidential contenders, a senior House GOP aide brushed Pawlenty aside, telling The Hill that the candidate “would be considered a Blue Dog Democrat” in the 112th Congress.

“A real profile in courage from Governor Pawlenty-- who has no responsibilities but rattling off sound bites to appease the base,” the aide said. “In this Congress, Pawlenty would be considered a Blue Dog Democrat … that is, until he pretended to be something else.”

A spokesman for Boehner, Michael Steel, said in response to Pawlenty’s critique: “The Speaker has always honored President Reagan’s ‘11th commandment.’ ” Reagan famously said he never spoke ill of fellow Republicans.

Republican leaders were faring better on Capitol Hill. The freshman class president, Rep. Austin Scott (Ga.), told The Hill he would support the budget deal, as did Rep. Kristi Noem (S.D.), a freshman representative on the leadership team.

And that brings us to McCarthy's whipcount. Even as Marco Rubio was joining the other teabaggy senators in opposition, McCarthy says he has the votes in the House. Republicans who have already announced they will vote no include some of the craziest and most extremist press-whores, like Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Paul Broun (John Bircher Society), Steve King (R-IA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ron Paul (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-IN) and Scott Garrett (R-NJ). Several Republicans looking to jump into higher offices by appealing to teabaggers-- Jason Chaffetz (UT), Dean Heller (NV) and Pence will all vote NO as well. In the Senate, 7 teabagger types are joining Bernie Sanders in opposition-- DeMint (R-SC), Ron Johnson (R-China), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jim Risch (R-ID) and Diapers (R-LA).

Many Republican freshmen elected with heavy teabagger support are now confident enough to follow Boehner-- who has made sure they are all being well taken care of by special interests lobbyists. They say they don't fear tea party primaries. Mike Kelly (PA) and Mike Grimm (NY) are two examples.

“It’s not that I’m not worried about them. And I would like to be all things to all people, but if you try to do that, you’re nothing to anybody. So I’m more inclined to just vote yes and move this in the right direction,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a freshman lawmaker who’s a favorite of Tea Party activists back in his home district.

The conservative grassroots movement says opposition to the budget deal, which was negotiated late last week by congressional leaders and the White House, has increased in recent days. The proposal cuts $39.9 billion from current spending levels, but Tea Party activists were encouraging GOP leaders to shut down the government in order to get higher cuts.

...“As much of a fiscal conservative as I am, you do have to accept the small victory sometimes before you get to the bigger victory,” said freshman Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who has taken some heat from Tea Party activists back in his home district.

“It’s not something I worry about,” Grimm said of the potential for a primary challenge. “My job is to lead and to govern. If I wanted to just sit back and not be a member of Congress and just be a member of a Tea Party, well, then I can espouse whatever I want because there are no consequences.”

Grimm praised Tea Party activists in his home base on Staten Island as “very reasonable and rational,” but he added he would rather make progress “a little at a time” than simply oppose a measure because conservative activists are railing against it.

Update after the vote today.

Republicans Have Been Very Successful In Minnesota Senate Contest

Oh, there was never any chance they would be able to re-seat Norm Coleman; he did, after all, lose the election and get fewer votes than Al Franken. But that wasn't really the GOP objective. Half the people who vote for John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell may be part of what Charles Pierce refers to in his new book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, but neither of the two congressmen, malevolent as they are, is stupid. They funded a series of frivolous, pesky lawsuits for Coleman, not to get him into the Senate, only to keep Franken out for as long as they could. And it's worked for nearly half a year.

Since January, when the Coleman strategy of keeping Franken from taking his seat emerged-- and Harry Supermouse Reid's boast that he would be seated by the first of April turned into an April Fool's joke-- Franken hasn't been able to vote on any of the crucial issues in the change agenda that Minnesotans were pumpin' for when they cast their ballots for him and for Obama. Worse yet, the Democratic caucus has been at the mercy of a couple of right-wing Democrats who conspire daily with the GOP to water down every reform Obama attempts. Without Franken joining the family-friendly Senate Democrats, the caucus has been stuck catering to the corporate-friendly shitheads like Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and, now, Arlen Specter.

This morning Michael Falcone writes at Politico that the GOP game plan has finally run its course. Law experts all agree that Coleman has no chance of prevailing and that Franken will be ordered seated by the state Supreme Court, which was astounded that Coleman came before them with his spurious assertions and, after almost 8 months, no evidence whatsoever-- none.

“Each of the five justices asked some questions that seemed to home in on the absence of evidence," said [Peter] Knapp, an expert on the Minnesota Supreme Court who has kept a close eye on the case. "And when each of the five are asking those questions, that’s significant.”

...At one point on Monday, Associate Justice Christopher Dietzen, who was appointed to the court last year by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, complained to Friedberg that he was offering “no concrete evidence” to back up his theories.

Pawlenty has all but declared that he'll be spending the next three and a half years running for the Republican presidential nomination. He's giving up the Minnesota governor's mansion-- likely to a Democrat-- and will concentrate on burnishing his image as someone who can appeal to Pierce's Idiot America, the only path to the GOP nomination now (which is probably also a path to sure defeat in a general election). Pawlenty wants to get the Franken thing out of the way as soon as possible now; he's already announced that if the Supreme Court tells him to sign the election certification that will allow Franken to take his seta, he'll do so. That isn't something that will go over well with the base and Pawlenty is working overtime to make sure the Republican Party opinion leaders-- Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, the Cheney family, Savage, Coulter-- realize he's one of them. In a speech to the College Republican National Committee Friday night, Pawlenty was playing the "socialism" card and characterizing the Obama administration as a “tyranny” responsible for “nationalizing” the mortgage, banking and automobile industries. And then he coughed up the ultimate offering to the GOP Hate-Talkers:

“The only thing growing faster than the federal government’s deficit is Chris Matthews’ man-crush on Barack Obama."

When Will Norm Coleman And Tim Pawlenty Allow Minnesota To Have The Same Representation In Washington As Every Other State?

No shame, no dignity, no sense of duty to Minnesota

After Norm Coleman was defeated by Al Franken in November he lost his Senate office and his right to vote, of course. The 3-way race was very close, Franken barely ahead (by 225 votes), 1,212,431 to Coleman's 1,212,206. The third party candidate had 437,404 votes (15%). As a point of reference, Minnesota voters picked Obama over McCain, 1,573,354 (54%) to 1,275,409 (44%). The 5 Democratic congressional incumbents won re-electon by huge margins-- between 63%-72%-- and 3 red seats were all competitive, Michele Bachmann hanging on with only 46%.

Since then, Coleman has suffered an uninterrupted series of setbacks as he has tried to overturn the election results through the courts. His strategy is basically to challenge every ballot that wasn't cast for him. His latest setback came today as the 3-judge court shot down his latest shenanigan for stealing the election.

In rebuffing Coleman, the panel noted that he and Franken had agreed three weeks ago to allow the secretary of state to redact information identifying 933 absentee ballots approved by the state Canvassing Board on Jan. 5. Both campaigns had accepted those ballots, but Coleman last week said about 100 are invalid under the panel's recent rulings.

The judges said the secretary of state had already begun the process of redacting the information, using a black marker to obliterate identifying numbers. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said about half were redacted before he halted the process Friday when Coleman sought a temporary injunction.

Coleman argued that he would be irreparably harmed without the injunction because the panel would be unable to determine which ballot was illegally cast without the identifying marks.
"The court does not accept this argument," the panel wrote. It cited, in part, "the fundamental right to secrecy of a voter's ballot"

Coleman is suing Franken for beating him. And he's being cheered on by Obstructionist Republicans in Washington who know full well that Franken won and will eventually be seated; they just don't want him voting for Obama's programs for as long as this can be drawn out. That's almost understandable from the perspective of neo-Confederate fanatics and extremists like Jim DeMint, David Diapers Vitter, John Cornyn, Tom Coburn, Richard Burr, Jim Bunning and that lot. But Tim Pawlenty? He's in cahoots with a bad bunch who couldn't care less if Minnesota has representation in the Senate or not. Pawlenty should know better. In fact, national Republicans have agreed to fund an appeal process that could prevent Franken-- if Pawlenty participates in the plot-- from taking his seat for years! As Joe Sudbay pointed out at AmericaBlog Monday, Coleman can't win; all he can do is drag his feet and keep Franken from being seated. And he can do that for as long as Pawlenty puts his party before his state and before his country. I thought the Republican Party opposed frivolous lawsuits? It's a shame no one starts a recall petition against Pawlenty.

PAWLENTY VETOES POPULAR FORECLOSURE AND STEM CELL RESEARCH BILLS... FALLING IN LINE WITH EXTREME RIGHT NATIONAL GOP

A couple of serial flip-floppers

While Bush and Rove are trying to shove Mitt Romney down McCain's throat, McCain is hoping that he'll at least be allowed to pick someone he can stand being in the same room with-- like Alaska Governor Sarah Palin or Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Last week Pawlenty probably killed his chances to ever be elected to anything in Minnesota again but he may have had a different audience in mind. And it goes beyond just the fact that in 2006 his biggest campaign contributors were from the real estate industry. He vetoed the Foreclosure Deferment Bill-- something sure to endear him to fat cat GOP donors... and John McCain. He didn't seem to care that "the measure would’ve kept nearly 15,000 Minnesotans from losing their homes by giving them the time and authority to renegotiate their loan terms while they make a required good-faith effort to pay."

U of M professor Prentiss Cox, a former assistant attorney general who helped create the bill with Sen. Ellen Anderson (DFL-St. Paul), says Pawlenty’s reasons for killing the bill are short-sighted. “This is a false allegation in this context, in my opinion,” Cox says. “There is no substantial subprime or negative amortization mortgage credit being issued to homeowners right now. A law can’t have an impact on credit that doesn’t exist.”

The bill would’ve required homeowners with a subprime or negative amortization loan originated before August 1, 2007 to pay either 65 percent of the payments due when the loan defaulted, or the minimum monthly payment when the mortgage was first created, whichever is less, for a one-year foreclosure-deferment period.

The bill’s originators created the plan as a stop-gap to state foreclosures before the federal government implements a solution to the growing crisis. It would’ve been the only law in a series of subrpime-crisis legislation that would provide relief to homeowners in the foreclosure process. So far, Minnesota has been at the forefront of creating anti-predatory-lending laws that make certain types of mortgages illegal and require tougher standards for mortgage brokers.

“This notion that lenders will refuse to make financially sensible mortgage loans of a different character in the future based on Minnesota helping subprime borrowers now can accurately be described as a threat of class warfare,” Cox says. “It may make good, if divisive, politics-- inciting fear in the affluent against homeowners in need-- but it doesn’t make sense from a market perspective. And such threats, which are consistently made against any proposed laws designed to help consumers in the financial services area, have a track record of being wrong.”

Another way Pawlenty decided to burnish his v.p. credentials was to flip flop on (as in against) stem cell research. He went from encouraging the legislature to support research because it "offers tremendous opportunities to improve human health and well-being by addressing serious diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's" to vetoing the bill on Friday. Sounds like a perfect match for McCain.

ABOUT THAT BRIDGE THAT FELL DOWN... IT REALLY IS SOMEBODY'S FAULT-- OR SOME PARTY'S FAULT

"No, turn around, idiot"

When I first met Tim Bedore, he was the music director at a rock station in either Houston or Sacramento and I had a small indie record company. Like most big corporate stations, he never played much of my music but he was always polite and he if he could get away with slipping on a song now and then, he did it. Later he put flowers in his hair, moved to San Francisco and worked at a new wave station, where my records were already oldies. He's also a stand-up comedian and does segments for PRI's Marketplace. A year or two ago he and his wife decided they wanted to raise their daughter back in the Midwest where Tim is from. He lives very close to the bridge that just collapsed. He just sent me this tonight.

Hello from the land of ten thousand lakes and at least one horrific bridge disaster.  I say ‘at least one” because there could be more, here and wherever it is you live.  I live just 3 miles away from the 35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last week, so perhaps, more than you, I am asking the question “What the hell has happened to our infrastructure?”
 
Some of the reasons our infrastructure has been ignored and that bridge went down are, “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem,” that’s a Ronald Reagan quote; as well as the right wing mocking and ridiculing of tax and spend liberals, the “it’s your money, you earned it, you should keep it” drum beat of talk radio, the union busting, outsourcing, we can do America on the cheap philosophy of the Republican party.  I would also like to throw in the bridge to nowhere Republican Senator Ted Stevens got funding for in Alaska when that money could have been spent on our 35W bridge, an existing bridge with a real purpose and a known structural problem for which our Republican governor could not find the funds to work on while vetoing just about every tax hike he has ever seen.
 
Some of you might be saying, this is not a time for finger pointing and partisan attacks.  Is it a coincidence that the very people who say that are the ones who totally screwed things up?  The fact is, this is precisely the right time for finger pointing... a better time would have been a few decades ago... certainly before we invaded Iraq... but here’s the big point I want to make... America has been screwed by conservatives.  How’s Reagan’s service economy looking to you now?  Or would you rather have some manufacturing jobs back here in America?  How much of your 2, 3 hundred dollar tax cut would you give back to know that bridge you cross every day has been checked and the money necessary to keep it safe has been spent?  Hey, Middle Class– have you gotten rich off the trickle down economy?  How are those tax cuts to the rich working out for you, middle class? 
 
My fellow Americans, things that work... like bridges... cost money.  Things that work really well, cost lots of money.  Things that work really well and don’t break because they are maintained, cost lots and lots of money.  Tax money. 
 
My daughter was on a school bus that crossed that bridge a few weeks before it went down.  Now is indeed the time to point fingers and give a failing grade to the political philosophy that says we can run America on the cheap.

-Tim Bedore

LETS NOT MIX UP NICK COLEMAN AND NORM COLEMAN

Nick Coleman is an editorial write for the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune. Norm Coleman, like Tim Pawlenty, is an elected Republican official who thinks his job is to destroy the effectiveness of civil society so that his wealthy campaign contributors can get away with paying less taxes. In the wake of the collapse of the bridge over the Mississippi River Nick Coleman wrote an editorial that everyone in the Twin Cities is talking about. My friend Wouter sent it to me just now:

PUBLIC ANGER WILL FOLLOW OUR SORROW

The cloud of dust above the Mississippi that rose after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed Wednesday evening has dissipated. But there are other dark clouds still hanging over Minneapolis and Minnesota.

The cloud of dust above the Mississippi that rose after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed Wednesday evening has dissipated. But there are other dark clouds still hanging over Minneapolis and Minnesota.The fear of falling is a primal one, along with the fear of being trapped or of drowning.

Minneapolis suffered a perfect storm of nightmares Wednesday evening, as anyone who couldn't sleep last night can tell you. Including the parents who clench their jaws and tighten their hands on the wheel every time they drive a carload of strapped-in kids across a steep chasm or a rushing river. Don't panic, you tell yourself. The people in charge of this know what they are doing. They make sure that the bridges stay standing. And if there were a problem, they would tell us. Wouldn't they?

What if they didn't?

The death bridge was "structurally deficient," we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way.

Would you drive your kids or let your spouse drive over a bridge that had a sign saying, "CAUTION: Fifty-Percent Bridge Ahead"?

No, you wouldn't. But there wasn't any warning on the Half Chance Bridge. There was nothing that told you that you might be sitting in your over-heated car, bumper to bumper, on a hot summer day, thinking of dinner with your wife or of going to see the Twins game or taking your kids for a walk to Dairy Queen later when, in a rumble and a roar, the world you knew would pancake into the river.

There isn't any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble than a bridge falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared.

Only this isn't a metaphor.

The focus at the moment is on the lives lost and injured and the heroic efforts of rescuers and first-responders - good Samaritans and uniformed public servants. Minnesotans can be proud of themselves, and of their emergency workers who answered the call. But when you have a tragedy on this scale, it isn't just concrete and steel that has failed us.

So far, we are told that it wasn't terrorists or tornados that brought the bridge down. But those assurances are not reassuring.

They are troubling.

If it wasn't an act of God or the hand of hate, and it proves not to be just a lousy accident - a girder mistakenly cut, a train that hit a support - then we are left to conclude that it was worse than any of those things, because it was more mundane and more insidious: This death and destruction was the result of incompetence or indifference.

In a word, it was avoidable.

That means it should never have happened. And that means that public anger will follow our sorrow as sure as night descended on the missing.

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

I'm not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not partisan. It is general.

Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while scrimping on the basics.

How ironic is it that tonight's scheduled groundbreaking for a new Twins ballpark has been postponed? Even the stadium barkers realize it is in poor taste to celebrate the spending of half a billion on ballparks when your bridges are falling down. Perhaps this is a sign of shame. If so, it is welcome. Shame is overdue.

At the federal level, the parsimony is worse, and so is the negligence. A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there aren't enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.

And now, one has fallen, to our great sorrow, and people died losing a gamble they didn't even know they had taken. They believed someone was guarding the bridge.

We need a new slogan and we needed it yesterday:

"No More Collapses."

And no more Republicans. Not one. Ever. Anywhere.

CAN PAWLENTY, NORQUIST AND BUSH BE CHARGED AS ACCESSORIES TO MURDER IN THE MINNEAPOLIS BRIDGE COLLAPSE?

I just went upstairs to get dressed for my morning hike and CNN was on. I saw Minnesota Tim Pawlenty speaking. He made a vapid, shallow political speech about the goodness of Minnesotans, upon whose goodwill his career depends. He also talked about the debris removal process. For the sake of the safety of all Americans-- in Minnesota and elsewhere-- that process should include the removal of every elected official who subscribes to the Republican Party ideology voiced by Republican Party Chief Propagandist Grover Norquist (AKA- "Field Marshall of The Bush Plan")

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

If you want Republicans in government, you get the inability for a society to act effectively and efficiently in the case of unforseen tragedies like Katrina or you get bridges with structural problems not being attended to. And low taxes for the very wealthy. You get greed and avarice run wild and contempt for the common good.

As my friend Pachacutec mentioned this morning, "Republican government is structurally deficient. It must be replaced. It kills." Was the bridge structurally deficient? Yes, according to today's StarTribune.

The highway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Wednesday was rated as "structurally deficient" two years ago and possibly in need of replacement.
That rating was contained in the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory database.

...Many other bridges nationwide carry the same designation that the I-35W bridge received.

Minnesota's right-wing governor, Tim Pawlenty, who vetoed a bill requesting funds for highway repairs and who refused to authorize funds for structural repairs on the bridge, denied this morning that inspections in 2005 and 2006 found any deficiencies. I wonder if second degree murder charges can be brought against him. I doubt it.

Bush would have been crossing that bridge in 3 weeks when he arrived for a fundraiser for right-wing Senator Norm Coleman, a rubber stamp hack Minnesotans are sick and tired of. Bush will be speaking at a fundraising dinner for wealthy Minnesotans happy they didn't have to pay taxes (that might have saved the lives lost in yesterday's bridge catastrophe). Of course, who needs taxes, Republicans-- and the Democrats who think like them-- think you can just you can just raise traffic fines to fix deteriorating highway infrastructure. [Please take special note of the comment at that link.]

An editorial in today's Popular Mechanics makes clear we should get used to things like bridges collapsing if we as a society don't want to spend the money to repair infrastructure. Anti-tax (which amounts, in effect, to anti-society) wingnuts have expressed dismay that a major bridge could just fall down in the United States. I guess they missed this one in California three days ago or this problem over Carr's Creek in New York last year. This one in downtown Albany wasn't quite as bad, but that was a miracle. And the famous collapse of a 100 foot deck of the Mianus River Bridge (I-95) near Greenwich, CT was so long ago... 1983... and only 3 people died.

Our politicians will continue collecting campaign contributions and other bribes from the wealthy, cutting their taxes and endangering our lives for as long as we let them. Just keep voting for Republicans and for Democrats who vote like Republicans. I heard Bush on the radio a few minutes ago. He offered Minnesotans his prayers. He should be impeached.


IF ONLY THE TAX CUTTERS KNEW SOONER

"Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was 'structurally deficient,' yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections." But Pawlenty is running around like a chicken without a head trying to close barn doors now.