Damn Right, Nick.

When he’s right he’s right, and Nick Coleman makes a spot-on point in this morning’s column. Minnesota, like much of the rest of the country, is digging itself deeper and deeper into a very serious infra-structure repair deficit, in no small part due to fear of so-called “taxpayer advocacy” groups who force/blackmail cowardly and cynical politicians into signing “no new taxes pledges” and avoiding the basic responsibilities of governance.

When the final report is in, the collapse of the 35-W bridge may be tagged to something no one has yet imagined. Maybe Osama bin Laden did order a hit on Minneapolis. But all early signs point to garden variety, duly noted age and inadequate maintenance, both of which, you can argue are a consequence of, as Nick says, politicians’ on-going, craven attempts to govern “on the cheap.” As though the world we live in getting less and less expensive — rather than the reality that confronts the rest of us every day.

Few reactions are more unappealing than your average “progressive” candidate tucking his tail between his legs at the thought of taking heat for making a stand for adequate funding — i.e. new taxes. Never mind it may be for some indisputably vital, relevant cause — like major infrastructure repair — which, by the way, can’t be out-sourced to China, and rattles nicely around the local, middle-class economy.

Who and what are they afraid of, largely? Op-ed pieces in either paper? Give me a break. What they fear are the knee-jerk acolytes of mass media demagogues, people who will camp out at their intellectual masters’ microphones for hours every day and robotically fire off angry letters denouncing every peril — mostly imagined and mostly paranoid — of “big government,” the first among them being any kind of taxation (usually because of the way liberals waste money on lesser classes of citizens).

Maybe it takes something as enormous and grotesque as the collapse of a major freeway bridge to remind this stunningly self-absorbed crowd that even their lives are imperiled by the steady rot of arteries we all depend upon, and that the last time I checked, “private initiative” has re-built very few freeways in this country.

Anyway, nice job, Nicky Boy. Not badly written either. Although, a la any New York Times piece the Strib handles, another half-dozen editors might have tightened it up here and there.