[Dialogue] Are the Dead From the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Victims of Conservative Ideology?

Fri Aug 3 12:10:35 EDT 2007

AlterNet

Are the Dead From the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Victims of Conservative
Ideology?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on August 3, 2007, Printed on August 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/58716/

The tragic <http://origin.mercurynews.com/ci_6525097>  collapse this week of
a stretch of I-35 spanning the Mississippi river in Minnesota was shocking
but should come as no surprise. America's core infrastructure has been
falling apart in very visible ways during the past few years. It's a
predictable outcome of the rise of "backlash" conservatism; we've swallowed
30 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.

Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, reacted to the disaster by
calling a press conference and, with a steely determination worthy of Rudy
Guiliani, lying to the American people. Pawlenty insisted that inspections
in 2005 and 2006 had found no structural problems with the bridge. But the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported
<http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1338970.html>  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.

According to the  <http://www.twincities.com/ci_6522474?source=most_viewed>
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 vetoed
<http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/newlawsart2007-0.asp?yearid=2007&sto
ryid=615>  a bipartisan transportation package that would have "put more
than $8 billion into highways, city and county roads, and transit over the
next decade." At the time, he was applauded by many Republicans for his
staunch fiscal "conservatism."

It's too soon to say for sure what caused this latest disaster, but as
Stephen Flynn wrote
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4219981.html>  in
Popular Mechanics, when all is said and done, "investigators will likely
find that two factors contributed to its failure: age and heavy use." Those
conditions are anything but isolated:

According to a report card released in 2005 by the American Society of Civil
Engineers (ASCE), 160,570 bridges, or just over one-quarter of the nation's
590,750 bridge inventory, were rated structurally deficient or functionally
obsolete. The nation's bridges are being called upon to serve a population
that has grown from 200 million to over 300 million since the time the first
vehicles rolled across the I-35W bridge. Predictably that has translated
into lots more cars.

It was the second U.S. bridge collapse this week -- a span in California
fell the day <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291544,00.html>  before,
with far fewer injuries and no loss of life. The tragedy occurred just weeks
after an 80-year-old steam pipe in Manhattan blew
<http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/20/america/NA-GEN-US-Manhattan-Explo
sion.php>  up, killing one and injuring dozens more. A year earlier, a
section of tunnel in Boston collapsed, killing
<http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/9495984/detail.html>  a woman as she
drove home. A year before that, hundreds of thousands of Americans became
refugees after New Orleans' pitiable levees collapsed -- a graphic
illustration <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0112-15.htm>  of
shortsighted public policy if ever there was one. The AFL-CIO estimates that
more than one in four roads are in "less than good condition." Minnesota
ranks low on their list, with about one in eight failing to make the grade.

It's all part of a larger picture. We have a crumbling power grid
<http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html> and are falling
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR200611070
1230.html>  behind the rest of the world in broadband infrastructure. 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
<http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index2005.cfm>  grading 15 categories
of America's once-premier infrastructure. In 2005, that "core"
infrastructure collectively got a "D-," slightly worse than the "D" it
received in 2000. Ironically, the nation's bridges received the highest
score -- a "C" -- in 2005.

Experts have been warning of our gradually disintegrating infrastructure for
years. ASCE's engineers estimate that it would take an investment of $1.6
trillion over the next 10 years to bring it up to modern standards. That
investment would create of tens of thousands of decent jobs and, most
economists agree, would likely unleash a new wave of productivity growth.
But just as Minnesota's Pawlenty vetoed an increase in that state's highway
funds so he could play a fiscal conservative in TV commercials, the
GOP-controlled Congress rejected a Democratic proposal in 2002 that would
have increased highway funding by $4 billion in a straight party-line vote
(because they couldn't stand the fact that the bill also called for a
minimum wage increase and an extension of unemployment benefits --
ultimately, a pork-laden
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR200508100
0223.html>  version with nothing for workers did pass in 2005). Governance,
ultimately, is a matter of priorities, and infrastructure takes a back seat.

One of the primary reasons for that is that there aren't organized
constituents lobbying for public goods like highways and bridges -- people
take those things for granted. A thousand grifters have gained office
promising to cut taxes as if they existed in a vacuum, without mentioning
the cost; no politician has ever won office promising to keep highways from
collapsing on their constituents. For 30 years, we've been told by a series
of right-wing snake-oil salesmen that they could deliver more and better
public services while constantly cutting the taxes that pay for them, but it
was always a fraud. The result is that the United States enjoys the
<http://www.oecd.org/document/15/0,2340,en_2649_201185_35472591_1_1_1_1,00.h
tml>  third-lowest tax burden among the 30 most advanced economies as its
public spaces gradually come apart at the seams.

I would argue that skimping out on infrastructure investments in the name of
a low tax burden is a triumph of ideology over commonsense, but it goes
beyond that. Conservative philosophy stresses limited government, not bad
government, and nothing can change the fact that the public sector remains
the only way to organize collectively when there's no profit involved. So
nobody seriously believes that the hidden hand of capitalism is going to
step in and inspect and repair bridges that are open to the public. When
lawmakers don't fund that work, they know full well that it won't get done.

What's more, the evidence that infrastructure investments result in
increased economic productivity is fairly conclusive; some studies have
estimated that every dollar invested in public infrastructure yields 104
percent return through increases in productivity (PDF
<http://repec.wesleyan.edu/pdf/frrodriguez/2006013_rodriguez.pdf> ).

So something more is going on. Stephen Flynn says, "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."

Perhaps. And perhaps it has to do with American exceptionalism -- in every
other country, citizens understand that their society is as good as they
make it, while many of ours seem to believe that we're a leading nation
according to some divine plan and no amount of bone-headed governance and
skewed priorities can ever change that fact.

That's something to ponder as you drive over that bridge or through that
tunnel on the way home. 

Joshua <mailto:%20joshua.holland at alternet.org>  Holland is an AlterNet staff
writer. 

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