Industry Figure Tom Chappell

Nick Coleman, a columnist for the Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune, has written a damning column about what the horrific collapse of the I-35W bridge says about our government, and our society.

It reads, in part:

…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 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.

…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.”

Read the Full Column at The Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune:
“Public anger will follow our sorrow”
by Nick Coleman
August 2, 2007

And, on the Popular Mechanics web site today, an Expert Op-Ed:

The fact is that Americans have been squandering the infrastructure legacy bequeathed to us by earlier generations. Like the spoiled offspring of well-off parents, we behave as though we have no idea what is required to sustain the quality of our daily lives.

Read the Full Op-Ed at Popular Mechanics
By Stephen Flynn
August 2, 2007

A bridge in America shouldn’t just fall down.