Residual Forces

The Republican Party seems to be getting its groove back.

(AP) St. Paul Republican House Minority Leader Marty Seifert says a special session might not be needed in the aftermath of the Minneapolis freeway bridge collapse.

Seifert says lawmakers don’t necessarily need to raise the gas tax to help rebuild the collapsed bridge and fix other problem bridges. The federal government has pledged $250 million to build a new bridge.

Seifert wants to wait for state finance officials to present a budget forecast in November, in case there’s a surplus that would cover the bridge fixes.

Even though GOP Governor Pawlenty has said he would accept a higher gas tax, Seifert says he doesn’t.

He also says House Republicans won’t go along with raising license tab fees, wheelage taxes and a metro sales tax for transit — all provisions in a transportation bill vetoed last session.

Seifert spoke at the Capitol after newly elected Republican Representative Steve Drazkowski was sworn in.

Good news. It seems that maybe the opposition from with in the Republican Party is starting to trickle up to our leaders.

Priorities are the problem. To quote a certain someone, “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending one.”  

There’s no need for a special session. there’ tons of money in rainy day funds and coming from the Feds. let’s do the right thing and get the Twin Cities put back together again as quick as possible. Now is not the time to reengineer our lives.

I happened to be in the area last night. I came home from Keegans on 35W. You can get on at University and 4ths St. and head north. If you look back to the South from the overpass, you can see the upheaved concrete where the bridge used to be.

I also took notice of the layout there. Just where in the heck are they going to run their cherry dream light rail? They already want to up the number of lanes in the new bridge, and the old one barely fit. So how in the world can they add a train option in the space currently available?

Are they going to put curves in to the highway to accommodate a train bridge in-between the 2 new highway spans? Great, so the social engineers who don’t really want us in our cars in the first place can put big sharp curves in the highway to slow traffic to increase congestion. Brilliant!

Or there would be the other option, they could just tear down more buildings and relocate businesses and residents for the magical choo choo train.

Even if they could prove that LRT made sense (which will take months if not years to know) to include, it just doesn’t seem like it would fit…. with out harming the existing landscape and community, not to mention worsening congestion on the 35W highway.

Now if we can just get the Republican Party to enter the debate. Who knows, we could start to provide Minnesotans with an alternative to the liberal (tax their arses off) mentality that is persistent in the media.