That Sinking Feeling (Chapter LV): More infrastructure deaths in Minnesota

When I read this on this weekend's floods in today's New York Times I did a double take:

In Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty said six people had died, some of them when their vehicles fell into sinkholes in roadways...

The astonishment: As many as six more! That would make for a death toll from faulty roadways in Minnesota of possibly a dozen in Minnesota over a three-week period alone—two years after Tim Pawlenty put on a dumb show for Grover Norquist style conservatives, holding up a giant prop "VETO" stamped as he cancelled an extra $300 million a year for the Minnesota Department of Transportation because it involved a small tax increase. As I wrote two weeks ago, he addressed himself at the ceremony to the public-spirited Minnesota legislatures who dared suggested that Minnesota's roads and bridges needed work: "How dumb can they be?"

Maybe Tim Pawlenty should be impeached.

Two points. We talk about natural disasters, of accidents. It will be the theme of our Katrina blogging this week. How many people have to die because right-wing "government" refuses, like grownups, to prepare for predictable natural disasters and accidents before we learn to speak of these deaths with any clarity: as deaths due to conservatism?

And this. I've written over and over about how the nation's epidemic of sinkholes—caused by faulty, outdated underground pipes—gets covered merely in the media merely as bizarre and unconnected accidents. Sometimes they're covered with sniggering humor.

Like this one, just last week:

SINKHOLE NEARLY SWALLOWS MINISTER'S CAR
By Associated Press
7:24 PM CDT, August 15, 2007

TYLER, Texas — Holy sinkhole! A minister says he prayed "Lord don't take me yet" when his car massed into a sinkhole on Wednesday. The Reverend Ralph Massey pulled into a parking lot to turn around when the ground gave way with no warning...

That was from the short AP dispatch that ran widely in papers around the country—nothing like some good comic relief! The AP didn't note what ultimately causes sinkholes, though the original report in the Tyle Morning Telegraph did a better job: "TxDOT crews shut down a lane of Front Street traffic on Wednesday and Thursday after discovering a damaged drainage pipe that had been in place since at least the 1930s.... Beneath a concrete base, crews discovered the damaged drainage pipe was actually made out of brick."

Out of brick. Can we please stop laughing now?

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