Getting what you pay for

Bridge collapse report critical of transportation agency

We can take several lessons in the aftermath of the 35W bridge collapse. One of which is that keeping taxes low and starving government can have negative implications. The independent report suggests that the funding situation at the Pawlenty/Molnau Department of Transportation was part of the blame with mistakes in the inspection process and tainted decision making on what to do with the substandard bridge.

This is what the no taxes, smaller government argument gets you. Governmental agencies incapable of performing vital tasks for the welfare of the people. Is there government waste? Hell yes. But the more constructive discussion is over what spending is important, where is the waste, and how can the revenue be properly and fairly raised? You can't get something for nothing with government too.

Remember, the reason Pawlenty put his Lieutenant Governor in charge of the Department of Transportation in 2003 is that he had made "cutting waste" at the DOT a priority in his campaign. Retrospectively, we can see this was an ill-advised policy that had a role in a major disaster.

Happy Tax Day

Happy tax day! It is an as good a day as any other to reflect that we are one country, pooling our hard-earned money for the general and greater good.

What's that? Where do we spend our hard-earned tax dollars? Well, for lots of things of course! The biggest one just happens to be war. For fiscal year 2009, expenditures for past, present, and future war actions account for 54 cents on the dollar. Makes you feel good inside.



Courtesy of the War Resisters League. They explain their methodology here.