A bridge too dear

© harrington

Welcome. Thanks for dropping in. I hope you've got your ice house off the lake by now. If not, stop reading and go take care of it. First things first. Open water's coming. If you're still here, celebrate with me the last day of the meteorological Winter of 2012-2013. Followed by sequestration kicking in tomorrow for the federal government. Don't forget to wear a hard hat to protect yourself from whatever pieces fall off due to furloughs and whatnot. Meanwhile, downstream of where this picture was taken, My Minnesota, aided and abetted by co-conspirator Wisconsin, is getting ready to spend about $750 million dollars on a bridge we don't need. The project has been supported by normally intelligent Democrats and the Tea Party supporters who want taxes cut and government to spend less, until it's their project that gets cut. As near as I can tell, the only real thing the St. Croix bridge has to support being built is that folks have been talking about it for a long time. For the record, I'm not objecting on environmental grounds, but on the basis of fiscal (in)sanity. If they actually do charge tolls for using the bridge, I'll fell a litle better, but not enough. So we've got sequestration, no federal budget as yet for a fiscal year that's half over, the prospect of a federal government shutdown by the end of March and a gerrymandered congressional district map that makes something like 99% of the seats safe for whichever party is currently filling them. Constitutional Convention anyone? Maybe it's time to hit the restart button. After all, Spring is a new beginning and all that. On a brighter note, and hopefully indicative of a new beginning, the city of Redwood Falls is one of  a growing number of local governments in Minnesota to adopt resolutions “recognizing the 150th anniversary of the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862 and declaring 2012-2013 the Year of the Dakota.” Minnesota Prairie Roots has a nice posting about it. As you leave here, why don't you stop by there and take a quick look. Maybe, just maybe, not everything is going to hell in a hand basket right now. Drop in again tomorrow. Rants and raves served daily. Some days, like today, both provided for the price of one.