There have been a lot of politically and ideologically motivated attempts to blame the I-35 bridge collapse on different groups and individuals. These range from the most popular (blaming Pawlenty's veto of gas tax increases) to The Taxpayer's League and Republican theory that "Liberals caused it" by spending too much money on bike paths and public transit. The fact is that blame for the collapse rests completely with the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Sadly, we are about to reward them for their failure with a huge gas tax increase.

The I-35 bridge collapsed not because MnDOT lacked money but because it chose to spend the billions of dollars it had on expansion rather than maintenance. MnDOT receives at least a billion dollars each year from taxes that are constitutionally dedicated to highways. For example, proceeds from the state gas tax (which amount to over $450 Million per year) must be spent on highways. Even if the legislature had control over how MnDOT spends its money (which they don't), they couldn't force MnDOT to spend gas tax money on transit or bike paths. They would first have to amend the state constitution ...and highway interests aren't about to let that happen. It's the same with license tab fees and a portion of motor vehicle sales taxes. On top of this, MnDOT receives hundreds of millions in federal dollars dedicated to highways. Their total yearly budget tops 2 billion dollars, some years even more, such as when the legislature appropriates bonding money or some major federal project receives funding. What does MnDOT do with its multi-billion dollar budget? Like all major government agencies, it tries to expand.

MnDOT had dozens of new highway expansion projects going on this summer, including the expansion of the I-35 Crosstown ...even as they were letting their existing infrastructure rot. In an August 11th article, The Minneapolis Star Tribune detailed that, over the last ten years, MnDOT has spent anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 times more money on new construction than on maintenance and operations. In 2007, they budgeted $760 Million for expansion and just $218 Million for maintenance. Millions more went to debt service to cover the costs of prior expansions. This focus on expansion over maintenance is a nationwide problem. All state DOTs (and many other big government agencies) would rather expand than maintain what they already have, because there is more money, jobs and political pork in expansion. The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership in Washington DC and other national groups have studied this phenomenon extensively and come to the same conclusion.

What we need is a "Fix it First" policy that forces MnDOT (and other state DOTs) to spend more of their funds on maintenance. Increasing the gas tax will just reward the agency's failure and give them the funds to pave over the rest of the state with financially, socially and environmentally destructive highway projects. If we really want to stop global warming, sprawl, and the deterioration of Minnesota's air quality, we need to get people out of their cars. We do this by using public transit, commuter rail, more affordable urban housing and better urban and regional planning. Giving MnDOT money to build yet more freeways will only make matters worse. I urge people to oppose a gas tax increase and force MnDOT to use it's existing money to "Fix it First."

Once again, Democrats in California appear to be smoking crack. On the one hand they passed a law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (though its implementation provisions are very vague). On the other hand, Don Perata and company, balloted, advocated for and passed a so-called "Transportation" bonding proposition that was over 75% money for highways! We simply cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously build new highways. New highways increase driving, sprawl and overconsumptive human development patterns. Ironically, many of the highway projects paid for by these bonds will pave over the very urban areas where most of the state's Democratic voters live. The saddest part of it all is that Democrats balloted the highway bond AFTER they killed (for the hundredth time) a bonding bill for high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles, one of the most highly traveled corridors in the country. We should be spending every available transportation dollar on public transit. Global warming and diminishing world oil supplies may soon render our highway system useless.

FALSE CHOICES IN IRAQ  (Andy Singer,  9/2/06)

Last Week, in a press conference, President Bush again reiterated his position on the Iraq war. He framed the issue as a choice between staying in Iraq or leaving, and he explained that leaving would be disastrous for the US, the Iraqis and his so-called "War on Terror".

As always, Bush and the Republicans are allowed to frame the debate as a false choice between two extremes. In reality, the choices are much more complex. If we stay, are we going to continue to back Nouri al-Maliki's government in an effort to create an intact Iraqi state? Or are we going to allow Iraq to be carved up into 3 separate countries, representing the 3 major ethnic groups? If we leave, can we work with Iraq's neighbors to ensure that any ensuing civil war (if it escalates) is contained within Iraq's borders and doesn't end up spilling out into the entire region?

Iraq was a failed state from the moment it was artificially created by the British in 1921. The British cobbled together a random collection of disparate lands with no attention to the conflicting ethnic and religious make up of their inhabitants-- Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The British even made up the name "Iraq" and the national flag. To add insult to injury, they imposed a Hashemite Arab prince, Faisal, as "King" of the newly made up country, a man who had no native roots or connections to the region. From the beginning, the history of Iraq was a history of uprisings, civil wars, coups, foreign interventions and political assassinations. From its inception, the only way to hold Iraq together has been with force. Isn't it time to consider breaking it up? We could give the Kurds the homeland they've always dreamed of, put Shiite holy places under Shiite control, and grant Sunnis their own region or perhaps cede it to Syria, with whom there is some ethnic and political affinity? At what point do we say that the effort to create a democratic, federal Iraqi state is impossible and is not worth the lives, money and resources that we and the Iraqis are pouring into it?

These are the sort of subtleties that the Bush Administration refuses to address. They are obsessed with a potentially impossible goal and incapable of evaluating or modifying that goal or their strategy for achieving it. By contrast, those who advocate immediate pull-out lack a strategy for containing an expanded civil war, should one arise. They are also guilty of a failure to communicate with some of Iraq's biggest neighbors like Iran and Syria who really should have input into such a decision (just as they should have had input into the decision to invade Iraq in the first place). Like a 3-way partition of the country, an exit strategy needs to involve all of Iraq's major neighbors-- Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There needs to be some mutually agreed upon framework ensuring that these countries are not drawn into or destabilized by an Iraqi civil war and don't escalate it with massive weapons shipments or other military aid.

I hope our current political discourse has room to discuss these subtleties and different strategies for achieving them. As it is, we seem gridlocked into sound bites and false choices.

To learn more about the history of Iraq, I recommend reading the book "The Reckoning" by Sandra Mackey (W.W. Norton 2002).

"PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSISM" (Andy Singer,  January 11, 2006)

In the last 4 years, many people have accused the Democratic Party of being "Wimpy" in its opposition to President Bush. In the first three and a half years of the Bush administration, this was certainly true. In the last year and a half, however, something quite different is happening. Democrats like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, John Edwards and others who supported the Iraq war are acting tougher and more hawkish than the Republicans.

I chalk it up to what psychologists call "Pathological Narcissism". This theory says that people don't want to think badly of themselves and those that they love. Sometimes, they become so afraid of self criticism that they build up elaborate lies or self-delusions to avoid having to face their mistakes, traumas or short comings. When refusal to admit wrong causes a person (or Country) to become delusional it's called "Pathological Narcissism". The Psychologist M. Scott Peck (who died recently) wrote about this phenomenon in his book "People of the Lie" ...and felt like it was the root of human evil. He was on the Congressional commission that investigated the Mai Lai Massacres during Vietnam. There he witnessed Pathological Narcissism on the scale of an entire Platoon, where many soldiers and commanders who participated in the massacres where simply unable to face up to what had happened.

Today, we face Pathological Narcissism on a national level. President Bush got a majority of Senate Democrats, the media, so-called liberals like Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Friedman, Salman Rushdie and others to endorse his war ...and he got a majority of the US public to agree to pull the trigger. In so doing, he made us all complicit in his atrocity. While a majority of the public has woken up, many Democrats, pundits and others feel they must continue to defend the war or lose face. They argue that "The war has simply been mismanaged", that "ousting Saddam was worth it", that "Saddam was acting like he had WMD", that "Our intelligence seemed reliable", that "The possibility of WMD could, itself, justify what we have done".

In reality, however, we invaded a sovereign country on a made-up pretext, ignoring overwhelming international objections. In the process, we killed two thousand of our own troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians ...and we permanently maimed tens of thousands more. We have now destabilized an entire country, plunging it into a partial civil war of car bombs and death squads. That's a tough pill to swallow.

Every nation has bad things that it just doesn't want to admit. The Turks don't want to admit they slaughtered Armenians. Israelis don't want to admit that they took Palestinian land by force in 1948 and 1968, despite their former prime minister Itzhak Rabin (and many others) admitting to taking part in forced expulsions as young army officers. The US has TONS of stuff it doesn't want to admit-- what we did to native Americans, to African Americans, to the Vietnamese, to Iranians, to the Nicaraguans ...the list is endless. Now, many people, including leading Democrats are having a hard time admitting what we've done in Iraq.

As anyone who has gone through Alcoholics Anonymous or any 12-step program will tell you, the first step towards improving your life is to admit your mistakes to yourself and to other people. Only then can you face reality and make positive changes in your life. The Democrats and many others need to first admit they made a terrible mistake-- that a mixture of manipulation, fear and arrogant paternalism made them believe that they could impose Democracy and "Regime Change" on another nation. We can't even solve chronic poverty in a single US city ...how could we possibly have invaded and rebuilt an entire Mideast nation about which we knew nothing?!? Once we admit our mistakes, we will be able to see the current situation for what it truly is and have the potential to improve it.

Hopefully the Democratic party will admit its mistakes, do a little soul searching and the "Pragmatists" (like Howard Dean, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and others) will come out on top. If not, we are going to be in this mess for a long time to come.

AMTRAK FIRES ITS PRESIDENT (November 10, 2005)

For those of you interested in public transit, the very competent and successful president of AMTRAK was fired yesterday by a bunch of Bush's crony recess appointments to the AMTRAK board. It is a move by Bush to privatize and dismantle AMTRAK over the objections of Congress and the US voters. I urge people to contact their congress people and President Bush about this. Gas Taxes and user fees pay just 60% of Federal and State highway costs, so highways are THOUSANDS OF TIMES MORE SUBSIDIZED than AMTRAK. Below is a link to and text from a New York Times article on David Gunn's firing.

Amtrak Fires Its President in Dispute Over Future
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: November 10, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/politics/10amtrak.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - Amtrak's board fired the company's president on Wednesday morning, widening a divide between the Bush administration and Congress over the future of the railroad.

David Gunn, who is widely credited with improving the railroad's management, cutting costs and imposing better financial controls, was fired today by Amtrak's board of directors.

The board chairman, David M. Laney, said that the president, David Gunn, helped develop a strategic plan that would have injected more competition into passenger operations, but that Mr. Gunn's "enthusiasm and commitment seems to have drained away."

Mr. Laney said Mr. Gunn had failed to move forward on simpler initiatives, like outsourcing maintenance and catering in a way that would cut expenses.

But in a letter to the board dated Nov. 9, Mr. Gunn said, "I can assure you that we have already begun to work on those initiatives that are wholly within our control." In a telephone interview Wednesday he said some changes would require action by Congress.

Mr. Gunn, who is credited with turning around New York City's subway system in the 1980's and came out of retirement three years ago to steer

Amtrak successfully during a financial crisis, described the reason for his dismissal as "ideological."

"Obviously, what their goal is - and it's been their goal from the beginning - is to liquidate the company," Mr. Gunn said in the interview.

The Bush administration has proposed putting the railroad tracks of the Boston-to-Washington Northeast Corridor, which are Amtrak's major asset, in the hands of a federal-state consortium, an idea Mr. Gunn has vehemently opposed. The board has voted for now to put the corridor in a separate subsidiary.

Mr. Gunn said he did not oppose injecting some competition into the system if it was done carefully. He pointed out that the administration had discussed bankrupting the railroad, which would mean breaking it up, as a way to reorganize.

"They want at least one transportation mode that is totally free market," Mr. Gunn said.

But highways, airports and ports are all federally subsidized, he said, decrying "all this angst over an operating deficit of 500 million bucks for the whole country, and the bulk of money going into capital or infrastructure."

The action Wednesday was a sharp turnaround for the board. Asked in September about Mr. Gunn's performance, Mr. Laney told a Senate subcommittee, "Mr. Gunn has done, as far as I am concerned, a splendid job." He said Mr. Gunn had "righted a ship that was listing and about to spill over."

Mr. Gunn is known as a rail-turnaround artist. He was brought in to fix the New York City subway system in the 1980's, and provided leadership in the construction of the subway system in Washington.

Amtrak's supporters in Congress reacted swiftly and bitterly to Mr. Gunn's removal. Democrats sought to contrast what they said were his successes, including cutting expenses, increasing ridership and improving the railroad's physical condition, with the recent failures of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricane Katrina.

"We have learned recently that there is room for cronies in this administration," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota "and we've learned the cost of cronyism. And now we've learned today there is not room for straight shooters."

Senator Charles E. Schumer Democrat of New York, questioned the board's legal ability to fire Mr. Gunn. Only one board member, Mr. Laney, has been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Schumer pointed out. The secretary of transportation is, by statute, a member, and two other members are recess appointments, whose terms will expire when Congress goes home in a few weeks. There are three vacancies.

"Gunn is more legitimate than the board is," Mr. Schumer said.

He asserted that Mr. Gunn was fired over policy, saying: "The policy difference is that the board wants to kill Amtrak and Gunn wants it to prosper. It's that simple."

The railroad announced Wednesday morning that Mr. Gunn had been "released" from his job, then notified Mr. Gunn. He replied with a memorandum to the board: "For your information, I did not resign. I was removed. It's been fun. Good luck."

Mr. Gunn, 68, was paid $275,000 a year. An Amtrak spokesman, Clifford Black, said he did not know if there was a severance package.

On Sept. 30, the railroad ended the fiscal year with $120 million in cash as operating capital, a strong performance, Mr. Gunn said, especially considering that the Acela express train was out of service for most of the summer because of a brake problem. The Senate just voted

93 to 6 to authorize $11.6 billion for Amtrak over the next six years, although the vote did not actually appropriate any money. That measure, which will probably go to a conference committee to work out differences with a House version, would make the Amtrak president a member of the board.

Both the House and Senate have supported aid packages for the current fiscal year that are far more generous that the White House has proposed.

But the Government Accountability Office said last week that while progress had been made at the railroad, Amtrak needed "fundamental improvements."

Mr. Gunn is widely credited with improving the railroad's management, cutting costs, imposing better financial controls and improving the state of repair of Amtrak's locomotives and passenger cars, which are old, and its tracks, signals and electrical systems, which are truly antique. But while ridership has recently risen to record levels, government auditors predicted that Amtrak's budget deficit would grow sharply in the next few years. The administration has said it is determined to end the perennial subsidies to the railroad, which was created 30 years ago to take over passenger service as the commercial railroads abandoned that business as unprofitable.