Pawlenty’s Problem

Being the guy who said let’s not get too overheated about Eliot Spitzer, I must reinforce the same point about Gov. Pawlenty’s sex quip the other night on Mike Max’s (a perfect porn name, isn’t it?) WCCO love-in.

In case you missed it, Governor No was lauding First Lady Mary Pawlenty’s enthusiasm for fishing and general outdoorsyness when he noted, “now if only I could get her to have sex with me.” Maybe this was just a bit of regrettable boys-will-be-boys quippery from our Christian soldier, but perhaps it was a look behind the veil, “scenes from a marriage,” if you will.

And if the First Lady is withholding, let me suggest that when you are Governor No, there might be no other way for a right (left?)-thinking First Lady to get her objections across than with a cinching up of the chastity belt. No Central Corridor LRT? No seat belt primary offense bill? No dangerous plastics ban?

Then no love.

Now I’m sure one or another of the local TV stations are going to chime in with a segment on husbands who want more sex than their wives and how healthy communication blah, blah, blah—they’re missing the point. Mary Pawlenty is a DFL plant in the gubernatorial bed, and she might have found the way to turn Governor No into Governor Yes.

Governor, get that LRT bill done, and get things right with the first lady, and mspmag.com will contribute a $10 gift certificate from Victoria’s Secret to celebrate your being back in the public and marital good graces!

Is Rev. Wright Al Franken’s Accountant?

I was staggered this week to see Al Franken on the cover of both local newspapers! Did he refuse to shake another college student’s hand? Did he grunt while exercising? Did he tell a joke that people didn’t understand?

No, it was for releasing the information that due to an accountant’s error, he had failed to pay taxes for speech income in states he was not a resident, mistakenly paying (overpaying) those taxes in New York state, where he then lived.

The Star Tribune story is massive and strikes me as a local distraction from a very important Senate race. Should we be offended by Al Franken or perhaps the newspaper?

Perspective is a bitch, I know, but that doesn’t let the paper off the hook. I mean, so Al Franken’s accountant screwed up? Big deal. What next, stunning news that his cleaning lady put a plastic-wrapped microwave burrito in the compost?

It has got to be a meaningful and important story because the Strib put it on the front page and jumped to a nearly full page following. But the media refuses to make essential connections and put things in context. Why does this matter? What does it tell us? (I know, not their job. They’re objective. Please.)

GOP apparatchik Ron Carey is deputized for that. He’s “troubled” and “offended” because of the “double standard.” (What double standard would that be, Ron? Maybe I should direct that question to the newspaper?) Sen. Coleman is “troubled” because thousands of local small businesspeople “meet their obligation” in tough economic times. And if their accountant screws up, they pay the tax and interest and penalty just like Al did. (Then their troubled neighbors burn their houses down and chase them out of the county.)

The fundamental point in all this is that our political campaigns are too long. After a few weeks of discussing the issues, the media tires and preoccupies itself with nonsense. In the case of the national media, it starts immediately.

So how stupid are we? How easily distracted? I’m not sure Al Franken is the savviest politician—he has not sanitized and glossed every aspect of his resume or recast his positions to suit the zeitgeist. But if we’re stupid to enough to fall for the idea that this tax thing is meaningful in any way, shape, or form, the media and their manipulators who play us for fools have won again.

Good Legislators, Bad Politicians

We’re in the quiet period now, as the legislature and governor do their dance, pre-session end. The nail biter is whether the DFL majorities can convince Governor No to sign onto a restoration of $70 million in bonding money for Central Corridor LRT or whether the line is delayed two or more years until the next bonding session while other transit initiatives fall like dominoes in its wake.

I’m placing my bet on “no,” for primarily this reason—I think the Senate and House DFL leaders are poor politicians. Note: I did not say poor representatives of their constituents. Politics is the art of the possible, the art of compromise. We can watch our federal government to see the outcome of government by executive fiat and partisan impasse.

And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I wonder what Sen. Larry Pogemiller and Rep. Margaret Anderson Kelliher were thinking when they signed off on a bonding bill that left the governor’s top priorities out and exceeded his stated limit by $100 million bucks? I mean, he has a line-item veto! Did they not grasp that?

And how did they think he would wield it? On lots of $3 million projects scattered all over the state in various constituencies or on one or two big-ticket projects with limited geographic impact in constituencies where he is already unpopular? Then factor in Pawlenty’s inevitable pique at having his transportation funding veto overridden by these same metro-area legislative leaders.

Should anyone have been surprised that Central Corridor was line-itemed? Apparently Kelliher and Pogemiller were. Which really calls into question their savvy and political skills.

As gasoline spirals up toward $4 a gallon, who anymore questions the need for a serious public transportation infrastructure in this metropolis? So it’s all the more ironic that when the Central Corridor was needed more than ever, our legislative leaders decided to play political chicken with it.

The Media’s New Story Line

If you watched the first hour last night of MSNBC’s coverage of the Pennsylvania election results, you would have been preparing last rites for Hillary Clinton. It was all the drying up of her fundraising base, how long can she continue, etc., etc. There were no returns in yet, so it was conjecture driven, I assumed, by exit polling they were not acknowledging, portending an Obama surprise of some magnitude.

What happened was exactly what the pundits predicted a few days earlier. Hillary matched her Ohio margin and got enough of a bounce to go forward. See ya in Charlotte.

Wait, no.

Somewhere between 8 and 9 p.m., as our Tivo was taping Hell’s Kitchen, the story changed. The results didn’t, but the media decided the expected outcome was in fact unexpected. Hillary then gave a “great” speech. Obama gave a “flat” speech. Why can’t Obama close the deal? Hillary has raised two million dollars in the last hour. In Scranton she beat Obama by 50 percentage points. (Obama had similar margins in Philadelphia, but it was apparently not notable.) If he can’t win in Indiana, bordering his home state, is Obama no longer inevitable?

I hate to take you back to Chomsky and the idea of manufacturing consent, but this is how the press drives perceptions and expectations. PA was a push. Clinton didn’t see a bounce to indicate she had grown her piece of the action, and Obama didn’t deliver the coup de grace. As expected. But Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Pat Buchanan, and Joe Scarborough decided to move the goalposts to keep it interesting.

By this a.m., the networks were full of talk about how the Obama campaign had peaked, can’t expand beyond blacks and tweedy whites, and how Hillary is forming her strategy to turn back the superdelegate tide, and all it will take is a win in Indiana.

Don’t get me wrong—this is shaping up as a very complicated choice between two candidates who could well lose to John McCain. A Hillary candidacy will be predictable, sharp-edged, and the victory, if it comes, will be narrow, the Presidency inevitably fractious—more of the same.

An Obama candidacy will be unpredictable, perhaps dispiritingly ugly, with the possibility of a landslide loss, but with the potential for incredible upside, rearranging America’s attitudes about race and remaking the tenor of our political campaigns.

But can we be honest and say that was the story six weeks ago, is still the story today, and will probably be the story after the final primaries on June 3?

Insider Take: Clinton Trying to Save Dems from Selves

This link from the respected DC website Politico is to an interesting article contending that Hillary and Bill Clinton continue to hammer so hard at Barack Obama for reasons other than their collective ego and sense of entitlement. They are apparently convinced that the Republican machine will chew Sen. Obama up so assiduously that he’ll be running to Rev. Wright screaming “God damn America” by October.

At first I found the reasoning compelling, in a cynical way. I mean, when do the ads from Weather Underground Victims for Truth start airing? John McCain might be principled, but he can’t stop that stuff.

But in the end, I find its logic unsatisfying, though it does make the Clintons appear a bit less craven. If you think Obama can win at this point, it’s on the premise that he can convince enough Americans to ignore the slanderous ads from 527 groups and vote their hopes, not fears and knee-jerk sensitivities.

The worrisome question is to what extent can Obama get the media to ignore trivialities? Part of why George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson could not see the obdurate arrogance of their questioning last Wednesday (“Will you commit on this stage . . .”) was they and the nation’s entire insider political realm, whether media, campaign hacks, consultants, ad producers, etc., are steeped in this culture Obama is trying to deviate from.

They believe this is all part of the game and that you are not ready or worthy until the process has vetted you or destroyed you. They believe as much because to believe otherwise is to devalue and call into question the very way they have chosen to spend their careers and lives. To believe anything else makes them cynical hacks. Your call.

Obama might well fail, might be too naïve for this. But it’s about time someone tried to break the cycle, isn’t it? Bill Maher posited Friday night that things are bad enough in this country for people not to fall for and propagate the kind of political reasoning that got us two terms of GW.

Disgusting, Disgraceful, Demeaning

I watched the first forty-five minutes of the two-hour ABC Democratic debate tonight then turned off the TV. The exchanges encapsulated everything wrong with the American news media as Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent the time peppering Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with an unending litany of gotcha questions rooted in meaningless campaign contretemps.

Rev. Wright, the flag pin, the Bosnia exaggeration, the Weather Underground guy . . . belch.

I know what ABC will say after the hammering they are surely taking all over the blogosphere: Democrats are concerned about electability, and these questions explored how these controversies affected the candidates’ electability.

And it’ll be a self-serving lie like it always is.

Bloggers might be drunk on their own influence, but it is only the validation and incessant repetition from the mainstream media that legitimize this crap and mutes discussion of real issues. I know the campaigns surreptitiously push these controversies in the press’s face, but George and Charlie don’t have to bite.

But they’re bored with the issues and in love with the horserace. They are in their own insider bubble, out of touch with what’s afflicting this country and the change in tone Americans crave—even the Americans who are too simple-minded or vulnerable to resist these hot-button manipulations.

So they devote the most-watched portion of a debate capping the unending PA campaign to a recitation of vomit that demeans the election process, disgusts and wearies voters, and turns politics into a cesspool.

Here’s my vow: I will not watch an ABC news or politics program through the remainder of the election cycle. It’s the only way I have to express my disgust at its trivialization of the most important American election in four decades. I urge you to do the same. 

Bankrupt, Completely Bankrupt

A family member nearly filed bankruptcy last year. They overextended themselves, got caught up in the housing bubble, and made some overly optimistic assumptions about their earning potential. But the 2005 toughening of the bankruptcy laws dissuaded them from filing bankruptcy.

Those changes were made by Congress at the behest of the banking industry, which insisted Americans were abusing bankruptcy after bacchanals of overspending to discharge their debts. And based on my relative’s experience, that seemed plausible.

Of course, people declare bankruptcy because they lose jobs, have crushing medical bills due to a lack of adequate health insurance, or perhaps receive a home loan at predatory interest rates in which the payments ratchet up to unaffordable levels, and they can’t sell their house because the lender and appraiser colluded on a phantom value, and the house wouldn’t sell when the market tightened.

Whatever.

But if you read The New Yorker, James Surowiecki’s always illuminating Financial Page had some surprises this week.

According to the column, bankruptcies fell 62 percent from ’04 to ’06, and credit card issuer profits rose 30 percent in the succeeding years. But promised drops in usurious-card interest rates and outrageous fees for late payments and the like—no longer needed to cover the costs of all the debtors who had their obligations discharged by bankruptcy courts—have not taken place. Are you surprised? (I switched to a credit union two decades ago and haven’t looked back.)

Surowiecki’s column makes a couple other interesting connections, suggesting nations with the most lenient bankruptcy laws have higher rates of entrepreneurship because people can start over quickly and become productive participants in the economy again, and a suggestion that the housing bubble might have been exacerbated by changes in the bankruptcy laws.

Of course, he notes, credit card issuer profits were tripling over the decade before the bankruptcy laws were tightened—meaning the “threat” Congress dealt with was “imaginary.”

Sure, the GOP Congress loved to do the bidding of its patrons in the banking business. But even average Americans, when given the option, prefer punitive to permissive, a kick in the ass to a lift off the ground. But now that so many Americans’ economic lives are messed up, perhaps Congress and the next President will see some wisdom in unfixing a system that wasn’t really broken.

Pawlenty’s Revenge

I have heard, from people who have worked with and for him, that Tim Pawlenty has a hot temper, can be petty, is a micromanager, and has his eyes very keenly set on national office. He doesn’t show much of that to the public—we see the smiling, soft-toned suburban dad who just doesn’t like taxes, gosh darn it.

Jeepers, Governor, then how do we interpret your line-item veto of $70 million in design work for the Central Corridor LRT? I mean, you put half that much into your own bonding proposal and indicated an openness to the needed $70 mil if the Met Council and other stakeholders settled on a route the feds would fund (they did, weeks ago).

I mean, it’s only the highest priority unfunded transportation project in the metro area, and T-Paw line-item vetoes it out of a $900-plus million dollar bag of goodies and pork? The net effect will be to push the line’s opening back a year at minimum and jeopardize the federal government’s willingness to pay for half of it. The feds prioritize funding decisions based on clear evidence that the state or municipality is behind the project.

This looks like an act of pique. Governor No is still sulking from the override of his veto of the transit-funding bill and is taking it out on Central Corridor because it gores the ox of all the folks who drove that override. He’s throwing a fit and calling it fiscal responsibility. And I’m sure it raises his flagging street cred with all the right wing crank yankers who want John McCain’s veep nominee to be as rigid an ideologue as possible.

Now I’m sure some out there will say this is a bargaining chip, and T-Paw will eventually agree to fund the line in a separate bill in exchange for something he wants. But that sort of thing is said every year, and it’s never accurate. Pawlenty is not a wheeler-dealer, he’s an autocrat dressed as your neighbor.

Something’s Rotten in the Land of Swanson

Do you have a bad feeling about attorney general Lori Swanson? I never much cared for her patron Mike Hatch, and her election to the office was solely due to her association with him, a tough lawyer with Spitzerian tendencies (professional).

Swanson has presided over a wholesale exodus of experienced and capable attorneys from the AG’s office. I’m seeing names of respected lawyers I have dealt with in journalistic endeavors all leaving due to questions about Swanson’s management style, politicization of priorities, and an obsessive and hypocritical vendetta against attempts to unionize her office.

Don’t these accusations (except union busting) seem strangely similar to all the hubbub Bush-appointed US Attorney Rachel Paulose created? She was hung out to dry by the columnists and pundits, probably with good cause. The Bush administration has de-professionalized and politicized the federal law enforcement effort, and Paulose was the local embodiment.

Is Lori Swanson on the same track, or is she simply a megalomaniac with bad people skills? There seems to be disagreement in the union halls about the appropriateness of organizing the AG’s office, but when Swanson goes out and makes a political appearance at a union protest the same week (the MPR story is a showpiece of reporter as dupe and is entirely without any journalistic purpose), she’s clearly engaged in damage control. And if you read the coverage, local DFLers and union honchos seem reluctant to criticize her for political reasons and out of fear of losing her support.

The basic question has to be what has gone wrong in the AG’s office that a bunch of white-collar professionals feel they need a union to protect them? Swanson’s inability to respond coherently and directly to the question is even more troubling. The fact that the AG is making staged, pro-union, image-management appearances while she tries to keep a union out of her office is zany.

Something’s rotten in the land of Swanson, and it’s a good thing the legislative auditor is investigating. Did you think you’d be pining for Matt Entenza this soon?

Panic Mode

There’s a really interesting analytical article in the current Rolling Stone by political writer Matt Taibbi (articulating better than anything I’ve read or heard) about how the media, with its preoccupation with manufactured controversies, distorts the political process, particularly in the current Democratic race for president.

(Taibbi also appears regularly on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, which is must-viewing for its candor and willingness to hold pols and the media to account.) His prose and commentary is rife with juvenile profanities, which will turn some people off, but look past it because this is, in a nutshell, the story of our culture right now.

“Through scandal after idiotic scandal, the election process has become a painfully prolonged, deeply irritating exercise in policing conventional wisdom . . . keeping the public in a state of heightened, dumb animal panic, and ultimately turning the election itself into a Darwinian contest. . . .

“What we’re getting with all of these scandals isn’t a sober exchange of ideas but more of an ongoing attempt to instill in the public a sort of permanent fear of uncomfortable ideas, and to reduce public discourse to a kind of primitive biological mechanism, like the nervous system of a squid or a shellfish, one that recoils reflexively from any stimuli.”

Taibbi seems to be in Obama’s camp, but this is not merely about Rev. Wright and “God Damn America.” Taibbi also has no patience for the Geraldine Ferarro contretemps and the uproar over John McCain’s end-of-days preacher. And that’s the point—it’s a game all the campaigns play to because they know the media can’t resist.

Taibbi is appropriately critical of the public and the campaigns, but this is a media-driven trend, uniquely exacerbated by talk radio and cable TV networks with hours of “news programming” to fill and no budget to do any real journalism.

Ultimately, our plethora of choices has degraded the discourse, not improved it.

Sarah Jane’s Lockup

I will not defend or minimize Sarah Jane Olson’s self-indulgent protest crimes, legitimize the ridiculous Symbionese Liberation Army, nor attempt to discern if Olson actually feels remorse for building bombs and robbing a bank where someone was murdered.

And I can’t argue with them hauling her back in last week after releasing her from prison; the sentence is the sentence.

But I question the imprisonment to begin with, especially a sentence well beyond what her co-conspirators received. I know, she conspired to build bombs and participated in a robbery in which an innocent person, a mom such as her, died.

But after you’ve evaded apprehension for nearly three decades, lived a subsequent life of magnanimous rectitude, and become a parent . . . I don’t know what was gained except to satisfy the victim’s family’s sense of vengeance, not what we should be concerned with when crafting justice.

Olson had teenage and pre-teen children in her home at the time of her arrest. It’s a given that the absence of these kids’ mom for a decade will have an irreparable effect on their adult lives. Maybe it will be garden-variety dysfunction; maybe they will become criminals themselves; maybe they will abuse or abandon their children, either physically or emotionally, as they were abandoned.

If a person is a danger to society, we must incarcerate them. If a person is not a danger to society but functions without any benefit to society except to commit crimes, I accept imprisonment as well.

But if they are not dangerous and living otherwise productive, relevant lives, what do we gain when we send parents to prison? A domino effect of troubled adults rearing troubled children that the broader society suffers and pays for.

Couldn’t we have sentenced Olson to a decade of community service? Forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, for ten years, plus the first five years in-house arrest outside the service? That sentence benefits society, at little actual cost to taxpayers, and does not wreak damage on the lives and psyches of Olson’s kids, the other innocent victims of her crimes.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe her kids, all of whom are now legally adults, have navigated the last decade unscathed and will go on to live lives unaffected by all this. But the fact remains that America has a larger share of its population in prison than any democracy, and the Olson case is another example of the insanity of how we mete out justice in the USA.

Both Sides Now

Anyone who spends any time in any major American city understands that a century-and-a-half post-emancipation and forty years post-civil rights, there remains no group of Americans as deeply troubled as black Americans. The endemic poverty, lack of upward mobility, criminality, lack of schooling, and family dissolution are phenomena of such stunning complexity that they are not discussed in the political sphere anymore. Until this week.

Barack Obama’s surprisingly candid speech about race in America perhaps portends an opening. Could it be that this mixed-race American has the courage and insight to move the nation as a whole to accept some collective responsibility while engaging the black community to look in the mirror?

I realize in an election season gripped by a failed war and foreign policy, the detritus of one of the worst presidencies in American history, and a desperate bubble economy, not many of us would rank making real headway in bringing black America back into mainstream America as a top priority.

But it’s clear from his speech in Philadelphia that Barack Obama sees it from both sides. He understands the perspective of the angry African American who sees his community as the victim of centuries of mistreatment, and he sees the perspective of the frustrated white American, tired of being repeatedly asked to help a community that seems incapable of self-renewal.

It may not be the reason, in and of itself, to vote Obama. But the Illinois senator might be the first American leader in two generations to portend real action and engagement on America’s racial malaise.

Political Blog of the Season

If you’re actively following the Clinton/Obama race, you need to be reading The Field. It’s a thinly financed, shoestring, one-man operation helmed by veteran political reporter Al Giordano that has become a must-read by all the big-name pundits—it is housed under the banner of an organization called RuralVotes, which is working to revitalize and make sure the needs of rural America aren’t ignored this political season.

Giordano has done a tremendous job handicapping the race, analyzing and predicting delegate math, and separating spin from reality. He is evidently backing Obama, but it hasn’t affected the soberness of his number crunching or the general salience of the effort.

His lengthy piece this week, explaining why Hillary is a lock to decisively win Pennsylvania and why Obama will lose by raising expectations, tells you everything you needed to know with six weeks to go. If you love the game, but have a limited amount of time to play, play The Field.

Earth to Pundits: Men Like Sex

The punditry is not covering itself in glory this week, it’s covering itself in delusion. A couple notable examples, ripped from the headlines:

Our Internet friend Jason DeRusha asked on WCCO-TV: “Why do men do that?” Meaning go all Spitzer.

His package failed to quote Chris Rock, whose message on men and sex remains the only one of any value or insight: Men cheat because they can. All men want to cheat. They do it in direct proportion to their opportunity and desirability.

Our culture has become so feminized, and feminine values so dominate today’s relationship norms (probably a good thing, on balance) that men understand female sexuality better than women (and some men) understand male sexuality.

Some politically correct men won’t even own up to theirs. (Was Spitzer one of those guys who frowned at dirty jokes and billboards for Hooters?) It’s one area where the Christian right and the over-educated left come together.

The male sex drive is like a mind-altering drug. It compels us to take risks and clouds our judgment about the magnitude of those risks. The biological imperative at the root of the sex drive also compels men to seek variety in sex partners. Spread the seed and multiply.

Or, as the saying goes, “show me a beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a guy who’s tired of ------- her.” Not because she isn’t beautiful anymore. But because his sex drive has moved on as it’s programmed to. That’s why AIDS spread so fast in the gay community—monogamy is much harder to sustain without a woman in the mix.

If women could see a running display of men’s thoughts, they would be horrified. They’d lock the door and not come out of their house. And it’s not just the cads on construction crews, trust me. It’s the IT guys at your office. It’s the lay pastor at your church. But on balance, most men are pretty good at keeping it in their head and their pants.

Which is why what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

When I turned eighteen, the guy I worked for that summer bought me a hooker for the afternoon. It was a sprung on me a la “here’s the motel key, she’s waiting in room 104 across the street.”

I was insecure and overwhelmed and turned the gift down to the girl’s face. My boss said I’d regret it in about an hour. (It was more like two.) I tell this story to women, and they think my boss was sleazy. I tell this story to men, and they want my ex-boss to teach seminars across America on management.

I’m not endorsing prostitution; I’m not claiming most men don’t love their spouses. (I’m not sure they’re mutually exclusive. Women would inevitably disagree.) What I am saying is that male sexuality is in an ongoing battle with monogamy and intimacy and will be until they make us take a pill to stop it. All these ridiculous “why?” discussions just deepen the culture’s denial.

Eliot Spitzer cheated not because he was power mad, not because he is low down and no good, and not because he has a psychological disorder. He cheated because his brain was telling him what all men’s brains tell them and he, like many men, gave in to it because he thought he could pull it off without consequence.

The genuinely interesting question is not why do men cheat? It’s why didn’t Spitzer realize he was more vulnerable than most guys, and who brought him down?

****

Earth to Pundits: Mississippi is not America

Last night, during the Mississippi primary coverage, it was interesting watching the press unable to maintain its impulse control. I had MSNBC on. The pundits were atwitter over Clinton apparatchik and ex-Rep. Geraldine Ferraro’s unapologetic remarks that Barack Obama would not be in position to win the Dem nomination for president with so little time in government if he weren’t black. And she was being pilloried for having the nerve to say it.

The pundits were incredulous that a Democratic pol would dare to imply that some black people get a free pass in our culture.

Ferraro’s right in broad strokes but wrong in specifics. There are amazing opportunities for black Americans to jump the queue in our society. They can go very far, very fast, in many professions. And they don’t have to be as good as the non-minorities they are competing against in many of those situations.

Admitting that does not distort the reality of life in black America today or minimize the challenges black Americans face. Why would anyone imply that it does? I don’t know why that isn’t obvious to Keith Olbermann.

But that’s not why Barack Obama is leading Hillary Clinton. It’s because he is an inspirational, transformational figure while she is a lunch-bucket politician and a fairly ruthless one, we are discovering. Americans are looking for leadership, and he seems like a leader.

Admittedly, there are liberals who are ultra-besotted with Obama because he’s black, and his election portends a transformation of white attitudes. But for most of us, it’s because he inspires and portends a reordering of American politics . . . maybe.

The punditry was equally useless in analyzing Obama’s win in Mississippi. Obama’s white support was less than in Wisconsin and Virginia. It was a “disturbing trend for the Obama campaign.” So was exit poll data that, for the first time, showed Clinton’s supporters more unwilling to accept Obama as the nominee than vice-versa.

Uh, it’s MISSISSIPPI. Look at the demographics. Obama underperforms in states where the bulk of the white population is undereducated. But we can’t admit the truth about Mississippi on TV, so we just cite “disturbing trends.”

Why can’t the pundits accept that the fundamental dynamic of this campaign has not changed in weeks and will not change until the end? As in all campaigns, Clinton and Obama have disparate bases with divergent makeups, and each has difficulties attracting the other’s base. The question for the superdelegates (and it’s why they’re there) in August will be which one will be better at cobbling together 270 electoral votes against John McCain?

But every Tuesday the pundits seek to label the natural state of electoral politics as a “disturbing trend” portending some revised end game. It’s nonsense. (And why end it so fast boys? Aren’t MSNBC’s ratings higher than in years? That’s not due to Lockup: Raw, trust me.)

Last week Clinton was ascendant. Obama couldn’t close the deal. This week we’re back to where we were two weeks ago: the numbers just don’t add up for Clinton. Dontcha feel a little used?

And now we’ve got six weeks to Pennsylvania. It’s not going to get any clearer. It’s just going to get more stupid.

Courage Under Pressure

You will probably see no more courageous political stand in our state this year than that of six House Republicans who voted to override Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the DFL transportation bill.

They stood in the face of withering criticism from anti-tax zealots, threats to their own status within the legislature, and promises of electoral retribution from their own leadership, I’m sure. They stood up for constituents against a cynical campaign designed to do nothing more than position legislators to win elections and burnish the image of a governor who is mostly hat and no cattle.

It was a rare win for the higher calling that our elected officials occasionally rise to. (Especially GOP Reps. Heidgerken and Hamilton, representing districts well outside the metro, presumably lacking a constituency clamoring for congestion relief.) They are deserving of our thanks and respect. Please take time to call or e-mail their offices at the capitol. Let them know, as they are being deluged with outrage, that their efforts are appreciated.

Rep. Jim Abeler (Anoka), 651-296-1769, rep.jim.abeler@house.mn
Rep. Ron Erhardt (Edina), 651-296-4363, rep.ron.erhardt@house.mn
Rep. Rod Hamilton (Mountain Lake), 651-296-5373, rep.rod.hamilton@house.mn
Rep. Bud Heidgerken (Freeport), 651-296-4317, rep.bud.heidgerken@house.mn
Rep. Neil Peterson (Bloomington), 651-296-7803, rep.neil.peterson@house.mn
Rep. Kathy Tingelstad (Andover), 651-296-5369, rep.kathy.tingelstad@house.mn

Sanny Wants Somethin’ for Nothin’

If you want an example of the vacuousness of modern conservative fiscal policy, look no further than my friend Bob Sansevere’s commentary on Eyewitness News Thursday night. Bob’s a decent guy and plays the everyman role well for the St. Paul newspaper, KQRS, and Channel 5. If you ran into him at a watering hole, you’d like him.

But his statement, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I want our roads and bridges fixed, and I want them to find a way to do it without raising taxes,” nearly caused me to choke on my quiche. I mean, I would like a new 3 series BMW, and I’d like it for $100.

Yesterday the legislature passed a substantial tax increase (sales, license tab, gas) to address a transportation picture that has grown desperate. It’s so frickin’ large a package because nothing’s been done in twenty years in this state. Several metro area Republicans voted for it. On MPR, I heard Anoka GOP Rep. Jim Abeler say, “If you want to see Highway 10 rebuilt in your lifetime, we need to do this.” And from Bloomington Republican Neil Peterson, “My party is not doing what it needs to do because of politics,” or something to that effect.

Governor No is going to veto, and an override in the Senate is assured next week. The House will be close. There are some who theorize the Governor wants the bill passed, secretly, as long as he can remain opposed to it. I doubt that.

He says it’s bad policy to raise taxes in a recession. When we weren’t in a recession, he said it was bad policy to raise taxes with gas prices going up. If the economy improves and gas prices fall, he will not support a tax increase either. No-tax is his second religion.

Fundamentalist Christians, who dominate Republican politics, apply an almost biblical approach to government. You are good or evil; policy is right or wrong, every belief is a “value,” compromise is immoral. That’s the way Tim Pawlenty talks about taxes because I suspect that’s how he looks at the world.

The tax issue has become so politicized that most Republicans fear for their political lives when they vote for one. They have built taxes into such an evil with voters that their constituents go ballistic when they feel compelled to support one.

As for Sanny and the vox populi, they have simply bought the b.s. hook, line, and sinker. They’ve lost track of one of life’s great truisms—you get nothing for nothing. Tell me what you pay for in your taxes that you think the state or local government should stop funding to pay for roads, bridges, and maybe transit? Schools? Parks? Police?

We live in an age where greed and selfishness are validated by our culture. Where Christian values are flaunted but not lived. And where people will apparently believe anything—like you can have better roads and lower taxes (a gas tax not raised in twenty years and not indexed to inflation is a tax cut—ask any economist).

Veto-proof majorities are hard to achieve. Winning the Governorship or the Presidency is a better route. If Gov. Pawlenty’s veto is sustained, it will be another black mark on a DFL party that cannot produce leaders inspiring enough or appealing enough for the public to support. Where is Minnesota’s Barack Obama?

Less To Life

I’ve been puzzling over this new marketing slogan for the Twin Cities—“More to Life”—and wondering how we’re going to keep up with the Bostons, Portlands, and Austins of the world. Places people are flocking to.

Last year, my company produced a book for local corporations to use to sell prospective employees on the Twin Cities. Apparently they are having trouble selling MBAs and creative classers graduating from Stanford and Georgetown to settle here in the tundra.

They think, says the research, that we’re cold, provincial, and dull as Steve Berg explained on MinnPost. And they don’t even suspect that we fund our schools, transportation infrastructure, and state university at levels below most of the states we compete with.

The “More to Life” slogan is meant to connote that we live better here because we combine the amenities of a sophisticated metropolis without the grind and long commutes of huge cities. But we have the proximity to nature and clean living of hip small cities, such as Bend, Oregon, or Boise, Idaho. I know, the slogan is obtuse and doesn’t serve its purpose. And it was chosen over a much better option, “North of Ordinary,” which conveys specialness and a snap of wit.

I muse about this as we slog through an obscenely cold, dark, winter. One of the more wearying in memory. It’s not supposed to crack zero on Friday . . . again. My home is a petri dish of viruses, which bounce between me, my wife, and kids who are trapped inside. The legislature has embarked on another session of unproductive rancor. And I’m not convinced most of us care.

KSTP-TV surveyed a bunch of us and discovered that a neither a majority of out-state or metro-area residents support a gas or other tax increase to fund transportation improvements. We like it here just the way it is.

In 1981, I moved to a Minnesota that tried harder. Though the Twin Cities of 2008 is a more sophisticated place, I think the efforts that kept the Twin Cities moving forward, trying harder, were not an organic expression of a progressive populace but the work of a small cadre of business, arts, and political elites who counted on consensus and got things done.

Without that consensus, you need leadership. Someone with the ability to counter the incredibly seductive siren song of self-interest—convince people to pull their heads out of the sand. But the DFL seems so rooted in identity politics that it does not produce visionaries or inspiring leaders. Rybak, Murphy, Pogemiller, Kelliher, Klobuchar—I doubt they could sell me on a hand warmer this Friday. I thought Al Franken was perhaps a leader who could inspire people, but after hearing about his thoroughly infantile display with the Republican student in Northfield, I’m losing hope.

There is a bankruptcy of leadership and vision in today’s Minnesota (sorry, you can’t convince me that the very able and effective Gov. Pawlenty and his playbook of “no” is leadership or vision). That’s apparent when you see someone of Barack Obama’s skills. When your leaders lack the capacity to sell their constituents on the value of repairing dangerous bridges and educating citizens, it’s time to question the efficacy of those leaders.

“More to Life” is a lousy slogan. But perhaps we need to rethink the product we’re selling as well.

Hillary Can’t Win

Super Tuesday is upon us, and those of us who are eager to see a real change in how our country is governed face a difficult conundrum. Hillary Clinton has paid her dues, knows her stuff, and is eminently qualified to be President. I would vote for her in a minute. But she can’t win.

The math is simple. John McCain is the presumptive GOP candidate. He is the one Republican who polls well with independents, key to creating an Electoral College majority. Ralph Nader is making noises about running again as an Independent. The two of them will steal votes at Clinton’s margins. McCain gets the Independents and Nader the anti-war types who can’t abide Hillary’s “yes” vote on Iraq.

More than 90 percent of the electorate have made up their minds about Clinton, say the polls, and half would never vote for her. And the Clinton-haters will use her presence on the ballot to gin up turnout. Can you really see Hillary Clinton attracting more votes than Al Gore did in 2000 after eight years of democratic success? Against a more qualified Republican?

To me, it’s amazing that after the last seven years, the Democrat is not considered the presumptive winner in November. But it’s a testament to Clinton’s unpopularity; the nation’s dislike of class-driven, interest group politics; and the country’s general preference for the messages of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and laissez faire government.

That’s why I’m going to be casting a preference vote for Barack Obama Tuesday night. Not because I think he would make a better President than Clinton, not because I even like his platform any better than hers. But because he is the one in the race who has the potential to break the cycle of polarization that has split American government.

Americans want a positive leader. They prefer incremental to dramatic change. They want less government even when the government could protect them from the worst excesses of our economy. And we have big problems to face that require leadership and a national consensus: climate change, the coming bankruptcy of Social Security, an economy that lurches from bubble to recession to bubble, wars we’re fighting all over the world.

What I fear is that women voters, who are proud of and attached to the Clinton candidacy, cannot see the writing on the wall. It’s Hillary’s turn, and as the NOW director in New York noted the other day, winning seems secondary to fielding a female candidate.

The GOP appears to have put its interest group politics aside in favor of a very conservative candidate who is nonetheless eclectic and independent enough to reach beyond the base. They chose McCain over niche candidates who satisfy slices of their base.

The Democrats face a different kind of choice. It is Hillary’s turn. But she can’t win. It’s unfair, but the question is, what do Dems want more: to be right or to be in the White House again?

My Compact: Denial Is Not Virtue

We are a nation of fanatics. How can one conclude anything else? We have to turn everything into a religion. Osama would be proud.

Consider the acolytes of the Compact, an anti-materialist venture that requires its adherents to buy nothing new for a year. (Does Internet porn count? A friend was wondering.)

One of the Compacters the Strib quoted yesterday said the $1 bins at Target she once loved now “repulsed” her. That bin filled my kids’ stockings last month I’d have her know. And she’s still buying diapers (our kids used cloth; think of the water we wasted).

It takes goofy ventures such as the Compact (or this silly young family in NYC that is going without petroleum or its offshoots for a year—no deodorant) to illustrate why liberals seem so feckless to the rest of the country.

I mean, isn’t it enough to recycle, take public transit now and then, trade in your SUV, compost, recycle your feces into handy tools and implements . . .? Sorry, got carried away—I have liberal leanings.

And I’m in the media, who are fellow travelers. The press, by and large, hates consumerism—though it’s what pays its bills. The Strib is going to follow these Compactors for a year, mind you. So it can revel in their self-denial and sense of righteousness. So it can feel righteous, too!

Throughout the years, I’ve tried to divine the contempt that so many of my peers in the local media feel for the magazine I work for. We don’t hurt anyone, we don’t take cheap shots, tear anything down. We build up, we tell stories, we recommend.

I used to think it was because earnest journalists believed that the only form of professional legitimacy was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. (Which we don’t do all that much of here.) But most journalists aren’t that stupid.

What most of them are, though, is addled with contempt for those who don’t share their values. And journalists are offended by the consumerism that lifestyle magazines are rooted in. There’s a kind of proud asceticism in writers and academics though I generally regard it as snobbery rooted in false virtue.

I wish I could go to the other side, but they’re worse albeit less smug. I mean, I’m pissed off that all these greedy bastards in banking and investing created this lending bubble that has got our economy in the tank. Canada’s economy is fine, you’ll note. So is Australia’s. Greed isn’t validated in those societies, and there are more checks and limits on it. And I have no sympathy for the rubes who took out mortgages they didn’t understand either. Own up to your own greed, I say.

There is something about people preoccupied with consumerism to the exclusion of everything else that is chilling. Perhaps it’s the abdication of a sense of responsibility for anything but yourself that nags at me. Whatever. It’s just a different kind of fanaticism. I mean, would it hurt you to read a paper or think about something besides when the next issue of Lucky arrives?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a seat in business class, a 42-inch plasma TV, a trip to New Zealand, an iPhone, and some granite countertops that I have my eyes on. But I am not so distracted by all of it that I’m paying no attention to the world around me.

There is more to life than gratifying yourself and earning more money so you can gratify some more. But why is it that so many of the people who understand that are not people you’d want to have a beer with?

The City That Smirks

Maybe it’s because I’m from Chicago, which justifiably calls itself “The City That Works,” but I’ve never been particularly impressed by Minneapolis city government—with its ineffectual mayoralty and a City Council driven by left-wing ideological factionalism and tilting at windmills. Two topics in the news right now have me shaking my head again.

The first is the once-lauded effort to wire the entire city for wireless internet access. This endeavor has proved disastrous in other cities, where the wireless providers have backed out after the process proved too costly and non-remunerative. US Internet of Minnetonka won the bid hereabouts, and was supposed to have finished wiring the city by now. They are months behind, and every time I check the progress map on their website, ever more and more of Minneapolis is grayed-out, meaning it won’t be wired.

USI is finding the city harder to wire than it thought, due to all the trees and stucco exteriors, which are proving impenetrable to wireless signals. Residents are complaining about the hideous apparatus sprouting all over telephone poles, and on web discussion boards there are many complaints about the quality of the USI signal and constant outages.

Only in the tech industry would things like trees and stucco be an acceptable after-the-fact excuse. Wasn’t it USI’s obligation to do its due diligence before it made its bid? If there weren’t enough available places to hang apparatus, why didn’t it know that beforehand? Why wasn’t the company aware that wi-fi couldn’t penetrate stucco and trees? Isn’t that wireless 101?

My address in Kenwood, hardly the outer reaches of the city, is now considered “outside of the Minneapolis coverage area.” We won’t be getting wireless, according to the website. Neither will CIDNA, Lowry Hill, East Isles, and several other south side neighborhoods. Well then, why are my tax dollars paying for it?

Minneapolis has had nothing but good things to say about USI, perhaps seeing a disaster in the making and trying to cover its rear. Wi-fi is one of the few citywide endeavors of the ineffectual Rybak administration, and it’s not going well. There goes that Senate run.

Topic two is garbage. The city is again about to be sued by the consortium of private haulers (Minneapolis Refuse Inc.) that has operated in a no-bid, sweetheart-contract environment for decades. Several council members have been trying to get an open bid process to see if they can save the taxpayers some money. Some oppose this because trash collection is considered to be satisfactory and this consortium includes small mom ‘n' pop haulers which could probably not bid competitively against BFI or Waste Management.

The consortium successfully sued the city in 2006 because it failed to follow statutory procedures before it opened the bidding. Now the city has jumped through the hoops the law dictates, but the consortium is again planning to sue, saying the city has still not followed the letter of the law.

It’s unclear to me if this bunch of monopolists will stop at nothing short of endless litigation to maintain its monopoly or if the city has again stepped in it. But more and more the city seems capable of managing less and less without a great deal of mess. Who is our Mayor Daley?

The Mouth That Roars—My Journalist of the Year

Later this month, when Brian Lambert joins this site, any of my future attempts at media commentary will inevitably provoke fits of outrage from his gaggle of smitten college-age hangers-on, his venomous mad-dog attorneys, and his peyote-addled new-age sycophants, so I thought I’d get one in while I still can.

A year ago I would have argued that the Star Tribune lacked a metro columnist whose work was impactful. Doug Grow is a very nice guy, but was a very quiet columnist. His role was in need of reinvention. The paper ended up forcing the issue.

Kathy Kersten, though she has improved her photo, has yet to write a word which gives me any reason to believe she is capable of philosophically independent thought (as opposed to parroting a canned ideology).

Nick Coleman seemed to be devolving into self-parody. From his high-handed railing against everyone from Carl Pohlad to Don Samuels, to his populist regular guy shtick, to an evaporation of his great biting wit, Nick seemed past his best days. (When newspapers, or any media outlet, cannot find prominent roles for new talent and fresh voices, it sows the seeds of its own irrelevance. The Twin Cities media is worse than most in this way.)

Then the bridge collapsed.

Since August 1, Nick Coleman has been the most important opinion journalist in the Twin Cities, and one of the most important journalists, period. He has almost single-handedly called to account not just the Governor, not just Lady Molnau, but the entire culture of fiscal starvation that passes for leadership in this state. And he isn’t letting up.

It’s polarizing, surely, drawn in too-broad strokes at times, but in doggedly pursuing the forces that shaped the state’s greatest public sector disaster, Coleman manifests journalism’s higher calling: not letting the big lie go uncontested.

I suspect he’s doing it at some peril to his own career. This is a newspaper that doesn’t like controversy, doesn’t like risking its access to the powerful, doesn’t like perceptions it is imbalanced. Only in its coverage of the Vikings and Timberwolves does the Strib seem to allow rank negativity to prosper.

I know some will argue that Nick has been engaged in a months-long witch-hunt when all the facts aren’t in. That he’s scapegoating figureheads who would never be expected to have a command of small details in any other walk of life. But Coleman gets the larger point: unless there was a tiny earthquake under the Mississippi last August 1, bridges don’t collapse unless something is neglected. Not willfully, but because of a philosophical approach to the public welfare.

And Coleman isn’t the only one. The paper’s primary reporters on the after-story, Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe, have been dogged as well. For all I know, there may well be a Pulitzer in it for them.

Ironic, isn’t it, that it took an unprecedented disaster to give an atrophying newspaper a reason to live?

Stadium Games

The long slog to settle the land cost of the new Twins Stadium has concluded, and the team has agreed to kick in an extra $15 mil to cover the overrun that the negotiated settlement of $28.5 million exceeds the legislature’s limits on what the county can spend on land and infrastructure. There’s been so much spin on this topic that it’s hard to tell where the facts lie, but both sides obviously felt their case was tenuous enough in a court battle to split the difference in a settlement.

Now’s the time to start discussing what this area will look like in three years' time. Take a walk around the immediate ballpark area. It’s not inviting. The county garbage burner is hideous, its adjacent office building even uglier. They are surrounded by a no man’s land of wide streets and commercial structures. Target Center is a wall of concrete that looms over the site. An I–94 freeway ramp separates the ballpark from the adjacent “village” being planned, a massive physical barrier that inhibits connecting the ballpark with the adjacent neighborhood.

Real efforts are going to be required to overcome these things, but the ongoing real estate crisis is likely to limit additional short-term residential development in the area. The city of Minneapolis appears ready to fulfill county commissioner Mike Opat’s fears, and under-fund the infrastructure for which it is responsible, resulting in a rebuilding of the 5th Street bridge that will not accommodate a pedestrian crossing to the “ballpark village” and public plazas that are Spartan and unwelcoming.

Now I know the council is weighed down by a core of liberal activists who spend more time preoccupied with social justice than working to make the city function, but decisions that make the adjacent area unfriendly to visitors only serve to deter them from finding their way into downtown to spend their money.

If the council looks at the Pohlad family’s bailout of the stadium land purchase and sees more money raining from the heavens to absolve the city of its obligations, it may be in for a rude awakening. The land purchase had to get funded. I’m not sure the Twins need attractive plazas and good pedestrian flow from downtown. But downtown Minneapolis’s merchants sure do.

Update: The Tuesday Strib revealed that “the county will forgo some planned street improvements in the Warehouse District around the stadium, such as plantings, new streetlights and repaving.” I’m pretty sure these were the improvements the county was hoping to get the city to fund.

I would also note for the Pohlad bashers out there that the Twins’ payroll is higher than three of the four teams competing for baseball’s league championship, and well below at least one of the upcoming World Series contenders. Small-market teams can win with 52 percent of their revenues going to player salary.

Abandoned By the Watchdog?

Many of us have been waiting to see if this year’s staff purges at the Star Tribune would diminish the newspaper’s role as community watchdog. The answer is becoming clearer, and it’s not good news.

The best recent example is the I–35W bridge design coverage. Globally renowned architect Santiago Calatrava wanted to design the bridge, a coup which would have resulted in a design that honored the victims of the collapse, brought even more architecture-driven tourism to the Twin Cities, and created a lasting monument of beauty for Twin Citians to enjoy every day of the year.

Spend some time on Calatrava’s site (click on “Projects,” then “Past” or “Recent Projects”), examine his bridges, and ask yourself if what we are getting is even a fraction as compelling.

Calatrava was consulted on a hastily assembled design by Walsh Construction/American Bridge, but the extent of his involvement in the proposal is unclear. Of the four options offered to MnDOT, the (selected) Flatiron and (rejected) Walsh proposals were the best of an underwhelming group. Had the process allowed the state and city to actually engage Calatrava, the result could have been momentous.

The Strib bought out longtime architecture reporter/critic Linda Mack earlier this year (she will be writing for Joel Kramer’s Minn-Post.com when it debuts). She did pen an important commentary for the paper in August on the new bridge, but the newspaper’s ongoing coverage was limited to articles by metro reporters and transportation writer Jim Foti, and seemed to lose track of the question.

There was never a coordinated effort to explore the process and its unfriendliness to a great design, or to have MnDOT and the governor justify shunning the greatest living bridge designer. The paper’s meek after-the-fact editorial about the design neglected to even mention Calatrava.

Had Linda Mack still been on staff, the topic would have been followed in proper context, and Mack’s credibility would have allowed the paper to galvanize discussion around the issue.

Make no mistake, I blame MnDOT for this mess, and, of course, Governor No, not the paper. But the largest newspaper in the region needs a staffer who can write with expertise about design and architecture. The Star Tribune’s death by a thousand cuts is making it ever less useful, and increasingly irrelevant.

Al Franken Is Not Funny!

I wrote a sarcastic post a couple weeks ago. I thought it was pretty obvious and people would get the point. I intended to mock gossip columnist CJ chasing down sex scandals among TV anchors who haven’t worked in Minnesota in years and nobody remembers anyway. I mean, if CJ can’t find a good TV anchor sex scandal in town, is she really worth the $100K or so the Strib devotes to her in an era of plummeting resources? But it hardly seemed worth explaining, so I went the sarcasm route.

I asked, ironically, whether anyone would want to bother with Joel Kramer’s MinnPost.com when such sterling stuff was coming out of the Strib. Yesterday, a reader questioned why I would slag Kramer’s fledgling effort.

Humor or sarcasm is apparently tough to relate the way you intend it. That’s why so much beloved humor is silliness and pratfalls. And that perhaps explains why Al Franken, if you believe the Strib’s Minnesota Poll, has such high negatives.

I like wit and sarcasm. Sometimes that’s all a topic deserves. And humor makes life far more interesting. But a lot of people don’t get or like it. The president of my company equates Bill Maher with Ann Coulter. The two couldn’t be more different. Maher is a trenchant social commentator without rigid political alliances who is willing to make unpopular points. Coulter is a dogmatic bomb-thrower who exists to outrage and call attention to herself.

But Maher is irreverent. He mocks when he could merely feign outrage. He demeans when he could be offering a white paper. That means his point is lost to a lot of people. And I think that’s what Franken may be suffering from. (Though I would argue most of the Franken coverage to date has been the media pushing a GOP talking point: Franken is angry, irreverent, disrespectful. Is he electable?)

We live in strange times. Our president is a draft-dodger who trumped up a war that has cost thousands of American lives and may yet bankrupt the country. Our senator who represents him is a political chameleon who postures and preens but appears to have no core values. To me, Al Franken looks like a guy of real substance: smart, passionate, well-informed. You’re entitled to disagree with him, but not because he made jokes for a living twenty years ago.

So he called Rush Limbaugh a “big, fat, idiot.” So he called Norm Coleman Bush’s “butt-boy.” That’s the same crap all of us say at the office or the gym or the bar. Why is it we say we want candidates who keep it real and then vote for the phonies? Why is it that we say we want politicians who believe in something but become uncomfortable when they manifest that passion (see Howard Dean). And why is it that humor is the currency that makes life interesting but politicians who use it are always pilloried?

Reverence, as Jesse the Body would say, is for the weak-minded.

Calatrava’s Folly

I was shocked to learn that architect Santiago Calatrava was interested in designing our new 35W bridge. His iconic designs are landmarks all over the globe and single-handedly put Milwaukee back on the map. Since the revelation in Tuesday’s Strib, I’ve not heard a word of it, and am left with the impression nobody who matters cares.

Calatrava apparently was involved with one of the construction teams that did not get picked and is now protesting the process by which a builder was chosen (with good cause, from what I read). What’s been so confounding in this whole bridge-replacement process is figuring out what actually is going on and who is driving it. It seems to be proceeding with a life of its own, but the Star Tribune always seems behind the curve.

The bridge’s design is controversial in that it could add cost and perhaps construction time (Calatrava says he could meet the state’s budget and time constraints).

But the sense I get is that this exurban and rural crowd that runs the state could care less about design. They are the Wal-Mart shoppers, the folks who live in massive homes lacking in detail and charm because raw square footage matters more than aesthetics. They are also, I’d suggest, the folks who want to live near “nature” and see the city as alien and place no value in it being beautiful or even pleasant to be in.

It’s hard to tell if Tim Pawlenty is in that camp, but you pretty much know where Carol Molnau stands. I fear the single-issue liberals are staying away from the topic because it doesn’t speak to their base either. (Perhaps if we banned circuses from using the bridge . . . . )

The problem is the rest of the western world and progressive America understands that design matters, and even pays. Architecture-driven tourism is transforming cities, ours included. Wal-Mart and its lowest-common-denominator mentality are on the outs.

I’d guess that Calatrava wants to design our bridge because the tragedy was a global story that resonated with him. (A colleague just back from Italy says the bridge is now what foreigners associate with Minneapolis.) If Minnesota intends to turn its back on this opportunity so politicians can pander to a Luddite base or because the Wal-Mart crowd can’t see the big picture, well, we are more provincial than I could have imagined.

Earth to NASA

I was at the Getty Center in LA last weekend, the architecturally stunning museum complex high in the mountains overlooking the city. The friend I was there with noted that his mother, upon first viewing the expanse of galleries, gardens, and grandiosity, suggested the money should have been spent on the homeless. It’s hard to even offer a response to that level of reductive thinking. 

Until you read about the newest mishap with the Space Shuttle. In case you missed it, yet another liftoff debris encounter has punched a gash in the heat shields that is so severe that NASA fears it may burn up on reentry without a spacewalk repair, perhaps even with one.

The Space Shuttle seems to be the latest embodiment of American idiocy and impotence right now. Something so badly thought out that it can’t function without frequently grave consequences and waste of life and human energy. Something of so little apparent utility that we have no intention of designing new ones that work properly. Yet something we just won’t give up on.

I won’t go so far as to say the whole manned space program has been a giant waste, but I’m open to persuasion. And you do wonder, as with the Iraq war, what higher purpose could have been achieved with the billions of dollars, millions of man-hours, and handful of lives that have been sacrificed for a program that devotes much of its in-flight time to assessing and repairing damage brought on by inherent design flaws.

Most of us pay so little attention to NASA and these “routine” flights that there is no public outrage or sense of national shame. Can our government and its retinue of outsourcing partners do anything right anymore? Or are we destined to pour billions and billions of dollars down various rat holes in the interest of satisfying the whims of politicians for whom there is no fact as compelling as the religion of manifest destiny?

Ripoffs, Pizza, and Bad TV

OK, enough bridge talk. On to other matters of great importance.

+ Are prices for soft drinks, and especially iced tea, out of control in restaurants? I mean, $3.75 for a glass of flavored water? I think restaurants are using our thirst to cover their losses on rising meat and commodity costs. And while we’re at it, if you price your wine at $14 a glass, you’re not selling any to me.

+ Pat Reusse doesn’t get enough credit. He’s the best sports columnist in town by a mile.

+ If you want to read an insightful piece on how one pundit went from pro-Iraq war to anti-, check out Michael Ignatieff’s essay in last Sunday’s New York Times. It’s a bit long and abstract, but the comments about how Bush’s lack of real-world failures lead him to imagine himself infallible seem right on.

+ The Cubs’ surprising drive to win the NL East must fail. As a born-and-bred Chicagoan and Cubs fan, the most fitting record the Cubs should hold is to go a full century without a title. They are the embodiment of failure and perseverance. Win it all, and they’re just another bunch of short-term heroes. This is year 99, if I’m counting right.

+ If you’re headed to LA anytime soon, don’t miss a meal at Nancy Silverton (La Brea Bakery) and Mario Batali’s new Pizzeria Mozza. Killer. Makes Punch seem like Pizza Hut, and I love Punch.

+ HBO’s Entourage has lost me entirely. Does anyone care about the characters or find the show the least bit fresh or original? How quickly it went stale. If you want fresh and original, tune in at 9:30 p.m. Sundays for Flight of the Conchords. It’s smart and not the least bit crass, which is Entourage’s stock-in-trade.

+ While I’m on the subject of TV, there’s an awful lot of good stuff this summer. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America (Can Fox’s version this fall be anywhere near as good?); Damages and Rescue Me on FX; Mad Men on AMC; this hilarious new reality show Flipping Out on Bravo about an obsessive-compulsive house flipper in LA. My only reservation is that it’s summer. Run these shows when it’s cold, not when we want to be outside.

+ Who do you think won the Zimmern/Bourdain battle of New York this week on Travel Channel? Andrew’s clearly the better dresser. And he tells me his ratings were better. You will find over time that my TV recommendations are far better than Zimmern’s.

+ Can we all agree that websites that play music when you land on the homepage are a plague that must be snuffed out? Yes, that’s you, Via.

+ I have not given money to Minnesota Public Radio in a long while. I’m just not a big fan. But I’m considering writing a check because The Current (89.3 FM) just gets better and better. Could they start a similar station for all the great music that’s more than two years old that never gets any airplay?

+ Spent last weekend in San Diego, a metro area that’s about the size of ours. Want to know what life is gonna be like here in a decade if we don’t invest faster in roads and transit? It’s gonna be gridlock seven days a week. Traffic in San Diego is so bad, so much of the time, that it’s actually a deterrent to visiting. And that 75 and sunny every day really wears on you.

+ Finally, one more bridge item. The Strib’s cutesy headline after the collapse—“Buckling and Swaying, Then Down, Down, Down”—was tacky. Just as the headline “Terrorized” was after 9/11. I don’t know what consultant told them that factual headlines don’t work after big news events, but the cutesy crap trivializes it.

Bridges or Schools or Stadia?

Nick Coleman has lived up to his hard-ass rep, post-bridge collapse, with a series of polemical columns all but calling for us to burn down Edina in retribution for the state’s misguided priorities. Nick is too often turned up to 11 for my taste, and I find his workingman routine a bit fake, but a newspaper needs a columnist with a bit of wit, big cojones, and a willingness to go ballistic.

But here’s where Coleman and the other liberal polemicists are overreaching. It’s one thing to condemn the mentality that funds new stadia but not new bridges. Fair point. It’s another thing to say they have anything to do with one another in a real-world way.

First of all, I don’t know many folks who supported the Twins stadium tax who don’t support better transportation funding. It’s much the same constituency.

Or take the example of schools: I have a kid in the Minneapolis Public Schools. The schools are battered in every direction: by a goofball teacher’s union, societal problems they did not create nor can they solve, and years of discontinuity of leadership and vision. But money would help. Money to reduce class sizes, buy textbooks, replace 1950s desks, you name it.

My state senator, Scott Dibble—who voted against the legislation to authorize Hennepin County to tax for the stadium—used the schools in the same way Nick does the bridge—as a manifestation of misguided priorities and a reason to oppose good things. But the Legislature, which funds schools and bridges, was not asked to spend a penny on the Twins. Hennepin County levied the tax.

Had we given the Twins (conflict-of-interest notice: my employer publishes the Twins’ magazine under contract to the club) Nick Coleman’s middle finger, the bridge would have still collapsed and the schools would still be bailing water. The bleeding-heart segment of the DFL has abdicated on public works, period. That there are jobs for their constituents, economic development for their communities, and intangible benefits all around is seemingly irrelevant. Or as Hennepin Commissioner Mike Opat described the mentality earlier this year, “That’s not going to solve poverty, therefore we shouldn’t do it.”

The problem here is the right’s unwillingness to tax and spend period, not to tax and spend for things that aren’t sexy. The problem here is the left’s relentless focus on inequity to the detriment of everything else. The problem here is an electorate easily lured by “taxes and government are bad” reasoning.

Nick Coleman raised the right question. But the us vs. them stuff has so little resonance these days outside the political fringe that he lives in that I’m not sure Nick’s polarizing wrath, entertaining as it is, is what we need to convince those on the fence to vote for politicians who see a mandate beyond equity, terrorism, and taxes.

Molnau = Pawlenty. Don't Forget It.

Lt. Governor Carol Molnau, also the state's transportation commissioner, responded angrily at a Friday news conference to implications that the state DOT put cost control ahead of safety and thus brought on the bridge collapse. She noted that her daughter drove the bridge twice each day.

I'm not sure if that's a deliberate attempt to distort all the criticism the Pawlenty administration is getting, or just an angry reaction by one of the most combative anti-spending politicians in the state. But Molnau is missing the point.

Nobody in their right mind believes anyone wanted that bridge to fall, wanted children to die trapped in a car filling with water, unable to escape. But they have to accept responsibility for setting priorities that created unacceptable levels of risk to protect their anti-tax street cred. It's all about politics.

This gang that is running the state is simply contemptuous of government, period. Their modus operandi is to starve government of all but its core function of public safety, on the premise that the public sector uses its taxing power irresponsibly, largely to redistribute income from those who work to those who don't.

If we've learned one thing in the last six years, it's that people who hate government should not be in government. If you have no confidence in your instrument, why should we trust you to use it properly. It is manifestly clear that the Pawlenty/Molnau regime has starved the state of funds vital to make it function. They figured the DOT could make do. After all, government is so wasteful.

Molnau is an easy target because she projects such a disagreeable image. But this is governor Pawlenty's policy.

No, they did not want the bridge to collapse. But they are, deservedly, drowning politically as the public comes to genuinely understand their extremism. If this was Japan, they would resign in shame. In our "I'm not to blame" culture, they will just use political surrogates to try to shame those of us who insist they take responsibility for their actions.

Random Thoughts on a Tragedy

Like most of you, I’m still trying to process my thoughts about what’s happened in Minneapolis. I’m going to avoid jumping to conclusions until a little more is known, but here is what I’ve been thinking and some questions I’ve been asking.

This Doesn’t Happen Here: When I moved to Minnesota in 1981 we were the state that got it right. We maintained our infrastructure, invested in our public facilities, and most of all had a sense of communal well-being that would not allow a bridge to deteriorate to the point of collapse. Louisiana and Minnesota were at opposite ends of the Mississippi and the universe. A massive bridge collapse is something that happens in states that fail to fund vital functions adequately. Someone convince me that this isn’t just another sign that Minnesota is regressing to the mean.

Are the Watchdogs Out There? In highly politicized times, where various government agencies manifestly fudge the truth, we need independent watchdogs. I seriously doubt the FOX9 Investigators are up to telling us why the bridge collapsed. Are there enough journalists left at the Star Tribune to get to the bottom of this? And if there aren’t, is it their fault, or ours? Some of both, I imagine.

The Good Guys: That said, one of the few truly independent federal agencies has long been the National Transportation Safety Board, whose findings are often ignored by the government agencies who have to implement the fixes the NTSB proscribes. If there’s anybody I trust to tell us why this bridge collapsed, it’s them.

The Farm Bill: I know there are a lot of hard-working, knowledgeable pros at the state Department of Transportation. But please convince me Minnesota has been well-served for the last five years with Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, a Chaska farmer and anti-spending/anti-tax advocate, as the state’s DOT boss.

You Get What You Pay For: We hear week after week on the national, state, and local level that our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling and under-maintained. Is it irresponsible to wonder if the chickens of Minnesota’s refusal to fund roads, bridges, and transit adequately for two decades are coming home to roost?

What Now? Highway 280 is a surprisingly elegant and proximate alternative to I–35W. But 280 has half 35’s capacity and the stretch of I-94 that you need to detour over to access it is congested all day long. Metro Transit noted that it had twenty-five extra buses at its disposal. Let’s see, 140,000 cars a day on the bridge, detour routes near capacity already, and twenty-five buses are all that stands between us and three years of gridlock. If time has value, this is going to be a very expensive next few years for folks who live or work north of the river.

Economic Victims: If there are any plusses to this tragedy, it is that the adjacent commercial nodes to the bridge, Dinkytown and the East Hennepin district, have numerous