Crossposted from the Dkos Rec List
Last night on Countdown Rachel Maddow made a very moving and eloquent case that the Minnesota Bridge Collapse is a perfect symbol of the rot and decay that anti-Government/anti-People Conservatism has wrought.
At the same time on O'Reilly Michelle Malkin - guest hosting for BillO - was making the case that Liberals have begun the "Kossification" of this collapse and just can't help themselves from blaming everything on Conservatives.
The crux of the problem revolves around the age old issue of taxes. Typically Republicans want taxes as low as possible, and sometimes even lower that what's possible under the argument that "government is wasteful and bloated" and the theory that "the free market will provide."
Progressives have a different view, that some tasks are simply too large, too expensive and too unprofitable to expect private industry to perform -- and many of these tasks are fundamental necessities that we simply can't do without.
Thing's like clean breathable air and water. Police, Fire and emergencies services that you can depend on. Access to affordable Health Care. Roads and Bridges that are safe and properly maintained so that they don't come crashing down like a souffle.
Of course there is the argument that Progressives have been a bit quick to assess blame for the Bridge Collapse as this diary explains.
Sure, the entire neo-con evilification of taxes -- a simplistic, mono-syllabic repetition of the notion that all your hard-earned money is simply bled off through liberal-endorsed taxes and then thrown to welfare cheats -- has led to the current situation. Not enough taxes to perform maintenance of infrastructure leads to collapse of roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.
But can the Progressive base please give up a little credit? Only a handful of months ago, Hurricane Katrina caused the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of people.
This bridge collapse killed, what, about a dozen people?
That my friends, is what the neo-con Republicans are doing: learning from their mistakes, killing far fewer people. Hell, by election time, they might be back to only killing Death Row inmates who may actually be guilty of the crimes they were convicted of.
So go up to a neo-con today and thank him or her for not killing quite as many people today as they did last year or the year before. That's real, measurable improvement.
Yes, that's right "We're making good progress" here.
How can we blame Governor Pawlenty for the collapse simply because he vetoed a gas tax measure last year that would have provided more funds for infrastructure projects?
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