Gee…I guess I never got my copy of the internal MnDot document that said the bridge was unsafe, so I was still driving on it. I guess those other Twin City elitists (taxpayers) who died when the bridge collapsed must not have seen the internal document, either. I never got the chance to vote whether the bridge should have structural repairs.
If you have to be a MnDOt employee (with sufficient authority to have access to the documents) to be safe on MnDot bridges and roads, I guess I just don’t feel that MN was a good return on my tax dollars or was truly ‘livable’.
You say it’s the taxpayers own fault for dying (or just getting maimed/injured) on that bridge because they didn’t vote for even more taxes, but I thought the whole gist of this posting was that MN was a veritable paradise for the proletariat because of their semi-socialist redistributive tax system. Taxpayers = expendable, state employees = exempt from accountability. No, I wasn’t a civil engineer with access to non-public safety reports. Neither were a lot of other MN taxpayers. We didn’t get a discount for being kept in the dark.
Again, I was paying taxes at the ‘Twin Cities’ rate, but I wasn’t getting notified that I was in a very specific danger trying to get to work in a Twin City…to pay taxes…during a mass transit strike…on a public road…maintained by the state…
As someone from the state of Kansas (born/raised) and knowing several folks who were born/raised in Oklahoma I can tell you that it’s not chocolate and roses in the Great Plains. In many cases there’s fewer jobs unless you’re in oil, aircraft, or agriculture. If you’re not in any of the three industries you’re in their immediate tangential concerns and if you’re not in those? Well you better get packing to greener pastures. And all this with a supposedly libertarian mindset which is fine with gutting the state government in vital areas like schools and road maintenance (have you been to Oklahoma? I have been to OKC and the roads are rougher than even Kansas’ but we got the Turnpike so I suspect that helps with our highway fund). And as for drugs… You realize Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri are the ground zero for meth right? Like that crap started showing up in the early 2000s and all in the rural parts of each state (Independence and Coffeyville got hammered really bad by meth). So nothing personal, but you can whine about your home state all you want but you’re not from around these parts so don’t speak for us natives here. Okay?
Edit: Oddly enough I moved from Kansas to Iowa and then to Minnesota and half of what you wrote I haven’t seen in the Twin Cities. Mind you, my commute takes me from Roseville to Whittier (MSP) and back again so my view of the state is very limited at least for the metro. So my judgment for your home state is that it’s not much different or worse than Kansas beyond having more people and more jobs.
You didn’t notice that it’s cold in Minnesota? That must be one helluva a car heater…
Uhhhh…since you were born/raised (and educated in geography) in Kansas, may I point out that the Entire. Eastern. Half. of Colorado is the High Plains? That’s where I was born/raised. My parents worked in the agriculture industry (farming) and our farm turned out to be sitting on a shallow field of natural gas (petroleum industry). Not enough to make us rich like the Clampetts, but enough that it just barely covers what I pay to burn gas in my tiny house. Thank da Lord my tiny house is in Denver, not Minneapolis. I turn the furnace completely off as I leave for work, and don’t fire it up gain until about 10 p.m… It’s a manual set-back thermostat of about 5-7 degrees. Go ahead and try that in MN!
Have I been to Oklahoma? No $hit! Shockingly, I find it to be beautiful and take lots of pictures. (I don’t take any pictures in Kansas, except in museums) But then, I minored in Geology, and I find exposed stratigraphy to be fascinating. Did you know one of the hardest parts of maintaining road surfaces is the beating they take during freeze/thaw cycles? In Minnesota, everything freezes up around Labor Day Weekend, and doesn’t really thaw out again until Memorial Day. That’s one freeze/thaw cycle per year. The more moderate the climate (such as below the 40th parallel but above the 30th), the more freeze/thaw cycles. Also, the substrate of the road has a huge impact on the stability. Clay expands and contracts and breaks up even concrete. Most of Oklahoma has red clay and a steep river drainage - you know - that squiggly border. The front range of the Rockies has a clay called Montmorillonite - a more aggressively expansive variation of Bentonite clay. Maybe, just maybe, the difference in climate and geology might also contribute to bad roads. But hey - I’m from the High Plains, and therefore I am handicapped by my childhood traumas of watching tornadoes from lawn chair on the front porch. Maybe always looking around made me more aware of my surroundings, such as when the national news starts showing rescue efforts on a bridge collapse, or the enormous chunk of my proletariat paycheck that goes to the state.
I’m glad you moved to Minnesota, mostly so you can keep turning up the thermostat and sending my mom her gas royalty checks.
Oklahoma is a pretty place but it has a crap government that refuses to pave the roads properly. Freeze thaw cycles aren’t enough for the neglect since Kansas which is also a red state has a significantly better quality of road and neither use any different material for their surfaces (same plain black flat top save for a few sections which are concrete on the I-35 and even that is a mix of asphalt and bare concrete). So you can try to lecture me on the nature of why roads are crap in Oklahoma but I’ve lived even in dead end towns like Norton far out northwest in Kansas and they still don’t have the same low quality roads. So if you want to keep pretending geology is the cause rather than bad governance that’s fine but don’t expect me to take you seriously.
Also, I don’t care if I pay more for heating when we’re a natural gas glut. If you want talk like an adult and admit your libertopian nonsense is just that then we’ll talk. Until then, have fun.
Weird. First meth lab I heard of blowing up was down the street from my last university apartment in Ames, IA in 1993 or '94. Shit was already in Michigan when I moved here in '95. I still don’t know why anyone would ever take that shit. I see no appeal in staying awake for 3 solid days.
I completely agree with you about road quality, blaming freeze/thaw for poor quality roads is a deflection tactic to keep the people from looking too deeply at crap governance. Northern Ohio has approximately the same weather as southern Michigan, but the roads are considerably better in Ohio.
Yeah I might be wrong on the meth lab origin date/location but I never seen them in Kansas until the news started breaking out of Missouri about them (the corner border area working through Arkansas City on the Kansas side).
The original theory of how that crap spread across the country is that Des Moines was the original point of distribution. Seems like it’s been falling out of favor here for some time, though. I haven’t many grey-skinned, toothless people in a good 5 years. Heroin and Oxy, though. ::sigh:: Sooooooo many dead.
Anyway, how’s life in the Cities, these days? I’m considering moving back after retirement. I miss having enough snow long enough that you can have fun with it. Fondest high school memory: cross country skiing through my school’s home course about a day after an Alberta Clipper. Snow on the trees, blue skies, -20 F…it was just peaceful and beautiful, a real moment of zen.
It’s an interesting place to say the least. I’m not much of a person who interacts with others (anxiety and such) so I tend to stay to myself here. The only thing I don’t like is the four year long I-35 project which is in full swing (three more years to go give or take).
Nah. I’ve lived in Kalamazoo and in Cleveland area. Kalamazoo’s roads were much better than Cleveland’s. Kasich “balanced” the budget a few years ago by wiping out road maintenance funds, school upgrades, school busing, teacher raises, etc. Things have gone to shit since then, but Hey, he can claim he “balanced” the budget.
For me, meth was mostly about getting the confidence to go out dancing and talk to people.
The sensation is akin to mania. It makes everything seem real and important…or, paradoxically, it makes it feel like you’re living in a movie. But an important, dramatic one.
I’ve driven to and through Cleveland within the last 3 years. I’ve driven I-75 more time than I care to count in the last 3 years, and stopped in nearly every Ohio town within that time. I drive roads in Michigan every day that I’m not out of state, which is most days. The roads are demonstrably worse in Michigan.
Perhaps you lived in Michigan in the 00’s, back when we sorta made half-assed attempts to keep the roads passable. With full Republican control of Lansing, the roads are no longer in OK condition and funding for roads has fallen. We spend $1B on prison contracts every year, but Lansing can’t cough up more than a couple hundred million for all roads across the entire state.
@Wanderfound: That’s still a hard pass in my book. Too damned much drama in my little world as it is.
