Minnesota Bridge Collapse

The collapse left vehicles scattered along the rubble of the bridge.

Photo: Heather Munro/Star Tribune, via Associated Press


CNN interviewed the Minnesota governor this morning, and he said well, this bridge did show structural issues in an inspection last year, but there are 80,000 other bridges in the country with the same level of deterioration; and that's not the worst ranking. Apparently there's a list of tens of thousands of other bridges that are even more structurally deficient.

ABC News says that more than a quarter -- 27% -- of the country's 600,000 bridges are structurally deficient:

According to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, more than a quarter of the country's bridges are structurally unstable. A federal report in 2005 said Minnesota's Interstate 35W bridge was structurally deficient and may need to be repaired.

Ron Beasley at Middle Earth Journal puts it this way:

[W]e should be looking at the revenue starved collapsing infrastructure of the United States. A much greater threat than al-Qaeda could ever be.

And why is our infrastructure revenue starved? It's the crazy Republican fetish for tax cuts. And the absolutely insane Iraq war, where we will spend more than a trillion dollars according to the Congressional Budget Office. Imagine if we had used that money to repair our crumbling infrastructure. Some people in Minneapolis might be alive today.