I've just finished watching the news and I'm hopping mad - so incensed that I've been pacing around the house and shouting obscenities at the TV.
Why? Because my taxes are going up, at the hands of the DFL-controlled Minnesota Legislature.
Today, the state House of Representatives voted to overturn Gov. Tim Pawlenty's veto of a $6.6 billion transportation bill (Star Tribune story is here). Why did Pawlenty veto the bill, you ask? Because the DFL got greedy.
The collapse of the I-35W bridge last August brought the state's "crumbling infrastructure," as some have called it, into sharp focus. Lawmakers, political leaders, government officials, and media pundits all began jabbering about our chronically under-funded infrastructure. They had valid points - most of us Minnesotans would probably agree that our roads, generally, aren't in the shape they used to be. (Of course, later the NTSB said that, preliminarily, its investigation was pointing toward a construction flaw that would ultimately doom the I-35W bridge, not some negligence of the Minnesota Department of Transportation and lack of funding...but never mind that.)
Even the governor seemed open to the idea of a gas tax increase, and a lot of Minnesotans along with him. A couple of cents seemed reasonable - a compromise between no taxes and the sky's-the-limit attitude of the DFL. But DFL legislators drafted a transportation bill that would raise it a whopping 8.5 cents per gallon by next year (3.5 cents of that is "temporary," for bonds authorized under the plan, but you can bet they'll find some excuse to keep it permanent). In addition, the bill hikes up the license fees on new cars, and - this one really riles me - enact a new quarter-cent sales tax on the seven-county metro area without a referendum.
Translation: In a year, I'll spend an average of an extra 85 cents every time I fill up my car to satisfy the state's appetite for spending. And I'll be paying an extra 25 cents on every $100 I spend here in the metro area - where I live and do 95 percent of my shopping - even though no one offered to let me vote on it.
That's only a few cents out of anyone's pocket, you may argue. On any given day, that's true. But over time, that money adds up. It especially adds up for the Minnesotans who are struggling to make ends meet, who are facing foreclosure with an adjustable rate mortgage that is about to send their monthly payments skyrocketing, who may have just lost a job as the state's economy teeters on the brink of a recession, and who are paying more and more for food, fuel, energy, and just about every basic necessity.
DFLers probably weren't thinking about those folks when they were congratulating themselves today and celebrating "making history" with the first override of a Pawlenty veto. That might be because your average state legislator won't feel the pinch nearly as much as your average Minnesotan. Many of the legislators who represent us are successful lawyers and businesspeople. Many own their own businesses. Many have incomes that can afford these tax increases. Perhaps, as Gov. Pawlenty suggested, they are a bit out of touch with their party's base.
The veto override passed with 91 votes; 90 were needed. It wasn't exactly along party lines, but close. The few Republicans who supported this bill are taking a lot of heat, and defending themselves by saying they voted on conscience, believing that passing the bill was the right thing to do. I don't take issue with that, providing their vote reflects the majority of the people they represent. But I do take umbrage with the DFL as a whole, crafting such a greedy, bloated bill and then foisting its tax increases onto Minnesotans all at once, at a time when milk is $4.30 a gallon.
The DFL bills itself as the party of farmers, unions, and blue collar workers. But its transportation bill will disproportionately hurt those Minnesotans who are most economically vulnerable.
Since Daddy DFL knows best how to take care of Minnesota, there are a couple of logical next steps: (1) It ought to craft a bill regulating the price of milk and dairy products. And, (2) it ought to immediately suspend all government subsidies for the energy boondoggle otherwise known as ethanol. That would free up even more money for transportation, and in the process, decrease the demand for corn, which is driving up the price of all sorts of goods.
I suppose that's too much to ask - unless, perhaps, it involves a new tax.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Man versus the manhole
More on the subject of this post in a minute. First, the next installment of my great misadventure to Chicago:
Having just heard the pilot announce our maintenance delay, the plane pulled back into the gate. And we sat. After 15 or 20 minutes, we heard from our captain again: They were thinking it was just the indicator, but were going to look at things a bit more closely just to be sure the hydraulics system was functioning normally. Well, OK - no arguments on that. And, he said, they'd have another update in about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, a maintenance truck appeared outside the DC-9 and bundled-up mechanics could occasionally be seen walking near the rear of the aircraft. It wasn't too long before the flaps slid out from their bay in the wing and drooped toward the ground, then retracted. The wing spoilers flapped up in a salute, shaking off some snow. These are parts of the hydraulic system - a good sign.
This captain was punctual, and after that 15 minutes had passed, he had another update. They thought they had discovered the issue, and had fixed it. The paperwork had been completed, and after a few more final systems tests, we "should be ready to go." Hmm. Should isn't exactly the same as will.
So we waited some more. I glanced at my watch and say that our delay was stretching past 9:30; I had two-and-a-half hours to get to Chicago to catch my return flight. It was going to be tight.
By 9:45, snow had piled up visibly on the wings. We still weren't moving, and a maintenance truck was still parked conspicuously underneath my window near the starboard engine. We heard from the captain again: The operations people wanted maintenance to look a bit closer at the problem, because they still weren't convinced it had been fixed. In the mean time, the captain had put in a request to look for a new plane, and had called the gate to get someone to come open the door so we could get off if we wished.
This is never a good sign. Some of the teenagers sitting around me, on the way home from a school trip, started to get antsy. One had a college interview scheduled that afternoon. But clearly, this plane was going nowhere.
Shortly after 10 o'clock, we got word: The gate door had been unlocked, and the plane's door was open. Anyone who wanted to get off could do so.
Naturally, everyone stood up and surged toward the front of the plane like snails fleeing salt.
By the time I stepped off the jetway and back inside the terminal, all 22 rows worth of people ahead of me were in line at the check-in counter to re-book, complain, or God-knows-what. It was clear now that I had no chance of making my noon return flight, so I strolled briskly up the G Concourse until I was several gates away.
I got less skepticism than I expected when I explained my predicament to a couple of gate agents who happened to be at the counter of an otherwise empty boarding area. Maybe I'm not the only one who spends part of a Saturday jetting around the country for fun. They rebooked me on a 2:25 p.m. flight out of Chicago - still on a DC-9, fortunately. I returned back to gate G19 to learn that we had a new plane after all, and a new gate. So it was back the way I'd just been.
The plane was just arriving at the new gate, and the agents told us politely, but firmly, to stay out of the way while its passengers deplaned. What, were they expecting a mad rush of passengers storming the gate door?
Waiting, waiting, waiting. We waited while the plane was cleaned and prepared for us. I munched on Nestle Rasinettes - which I'd brought precisely in case of such a delay - and pondered the scene. Throngs of people crowding every available chair at the gate, tapering flakes outside, gusty winds buffeting the window.
Northwest 126 was scheduled to depart at 9 a.m. It was now going on 11 o'clock. Tune in next time as the adventure continues...with photos!
Now, what you've all been waiting for...our voyeuristic videos of the awesome power of the infamous I-35W manhole geyser. If you're not familiar, Interstate 35W south of Minneapolis has a storm water tunnel underneath it that doesn't have enough capacity for the runoff created by a heavy downpour. All that pressure has to go somewhere, and the result is spectacular. Of course, it's nearly as incredible that the traffic whizzing along seems largely unconcerned with what's happening in the median.
On the other hand, I'd probably stop, too, if I saw that giant manhole cover lying in the middle of the road. But get out of the car to look at it? I don't know what this person was thinking - but I'll bet they were soaked by the time they were sprinting away.
This is as good as anything I saw at Yellowstone. If someone charged admission to watch this sucker spout off live and in person, I'd pay it!
Having just heard the pilot announce our maintenance delay, the plane pulled back into the gate. And we sat. After 15 or 20 minutes, we heard from our captain again: They were thinking it was just the indicator, but were going to look at things a bit more closely just to be sure the hydraulics system was functioning normally. Well, OK - no arguments on that. And, he said, they'd have another update in about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, a maintenance truck appeared outside the DC-9 and bundled-up mechanics could occasionally be seen walking near the rear of the aircraft. It wasn't too long before the flaps slid out from their bay in the wing and drooped toward the ground, then retracted. The wing spoilers flapped up in a salute, shaking off some snow. These are parts of the hydraulic system - a good sign.
This captain was punctual, and after that 15 minutes had passed, he had another update. They thought they had discovered the issue, and had fixed it. The paperwork had been completed, and after a few more final systems tests, we "should be ready to go." Hmm. Should isn't exactly the same as will.
So we waited some more. I glanced at my watch and say that our delay was stretching past 9:30; I had two-and-a-half hours to get to Chicago to catch my return flight. It was going to be tight.
By 9:45, snow had piled up visibly on the wings. We still weren't moving, and a maintenance truck was still parked conspicuously underneath my window near the starboard engine. We heard from the captain again: The operations people wanted maintenance to look a bit closer at the problem, because they still weren't convinced it had been fixed. In the mean time, the captain had put in a request to look for a new plane, and had called the gate to get someone to come open the door so we could get off if we wished.
This is never a good sign. Some of the teenagers sitting around me, on the way home from a school trip, started to get antsy. One had a college interview scheduled that afternoon. But clearly, this plane was going nowhere.
Shortly after 10 o'clock, we got word: The gate door had been unlocked, and the plane's door was open. Anyone who wanted to get off could do so.
Naturally, everyone stood up and surged toward the front of the plane like snails fleeing salt.
By the time I stepped off the jetway and back inside the terminal, all 22 rows worth of people ahead of me were in line at the check-in counter to re-book, complain, or God-knows-what. It was clear now that I had no chance of making my noon return flight, so I strolled briskly up the G Concourse until I was several gates away.
I got less skepticism than I expected when I explained my predicament to a couple of gate agents who happened to be at the counter of an otherwise empty boarding area. Maybe I'm not the only one who spends part of a Saturday jetting around the country for fun. They rebooked me on a 2:25 p.m. flight out of Chicago - still on a DC-9, fortunately. I returned back to gate G19 to learn that we had a new plane after all, and a new gate. So it was back the way I'd just been.
The plane was just arriving at the new gate, and the agents told us politely, but firmly, to stay out of the way while its passengers deplaned. What, were they expecting a mad rush of passengers storming the gate door?
Waiting, waiting, waiting. We waited while the plane was cleaned and prepared for us. I munched on Nestle Rasinettes - which I'd brought precisely in case of such a delay - and pondered the scene. Throngs of people crowding every available chair at the gate, tapering flakes outside, gusty winds buffeting the window.
Northwest 126 was scheduled to depart at 9 a.m. It was now going on 11 o'clock. Tune in next time as the adventure continues...with photos!
Now, what you've all been waiting for...our voyeuristic videos of the awesome power of the infamous I-35W manhole geyser. If you're not familiar, Interstate 35W south of Minneapolis has a storm water tunnel underneath it that doesn't have enough capacity for the runoff created by a heavy downpour. All that pressure has to go somewhere, and the result is spectacular. Of course, it's nearly as incredible that the traffic whizzing along seems largely unconcerned with what's happening in the median.
On the other hand, I'd probably stop, too, if I saw that giant manhole cover lying in the middle of the road. But get out of the car to look at it? I don't know what this person was thinking - but I'll bet they were soaked by the time they were sprinting away.
This is as good as anything I saw at Yellowstone. If someone charged admission to watch this sucker spout off live and in person, I'd pay it!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The blog is back, Jack
Finally!
We're up and running again. BlogOLink is back.
For a while, it was going passably well: Quasi-regular updates, musings on this and that, and the tale of the saga of the air conditioner. But then came the Great Black Hole...an information blackout that has descended for nearly seven months.
Well, I'm back, and I have a good excuse: Life is what happens when you have other plans, but getting married prevents you from making them in the first place. You must focus, concentrate, and Obey Your Wife.
You fall into new routines, once you're married. You come home at the end of the day, and have dinner together, or watch TV and eat, or watch TV. And you talk. Time on the computer -especially for the man of the house - becomes a string of stolen moments. You have to hop on when your wife isn't paying attention, lest she drag you off, or you must get there before her, or she'll spend the whole night gawking at pictures of dogs in need of adoption on Craigslist.
Eventually, you find your happy mediums. She realizes that she will never keep you away from the computer as much as she prefers, despite her pleas that you exercise more (well, we're working on it). You resign yourself to the fact that you will never be as buff as she, and you feel OK about it. She gives you time for silly hobbies like home computer flight simulator, and you accept the fact that, sooner than later, she's going to bring home a dog.
This is marriage, and so it goes. But you know you'd never be as happy - or enjoy life as much - without her. And so coming home is a pleasure every day.
Perhaps the sign that things in the new marriage are off to a good start, at least, is when you come home from work one evening and say the following to your wife:
"I just had this crazy idea at work today. There's an airfare sale on, and fares to Chicago are dirt cheap. I think I might go there on a Saturday next month...just to fly there and back. It will cost me $110. What do you think?"
About now, the average husband might expect to get a frown, a disapproving look, or an exclamation: "What? You moron! Why would you want to do that?!"
But not my lovely wife. She said, "I think you should go! I think you would appreciate it a lot, and you would have fun."
Score!
Here's the backstory: I wanted to catch a ride on a DC-9. They're a familiar sight to those of us Minnesotans who travel through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport: slim jets with twin engines at the back of the fuselage and a red T-tail (not to be confused with the much smaller, and much newer, CRJ). Why? Because Northwest is the only airline in North America that still flies the DC-9 on regularly scheduled passenger routes. You'll see a few DC-9s working as cargo haulers, and you'll find them on just a handful of passenger airlines elsewhere in the world. Today, Northwest is the world's largest operator of DC-9s...significant because these planes were built before I was even born.
They're being phased out now, like the 727 before them, in favor of newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft. These are your Airbuses, your next generation Boeings, your Embrarer E-jets, and a new yet-to-be-developed line from Bombardier called the "C Jets." Northwest has the oldest fleet of any of the major U.S. airlines, and the DC-9s are a big reason why. Many of these planes were delivered from the manufacturer more than 30 years ago, to airlines like Eastern and Republic that don't even exist anymore. They're still flying today thanks to a regimen of regular and thorough maintenance checks...the same that any airliner in the U.S. undergoes.
DC-9 pilots have said the jet is built like a tank and flies like a sportscar. But within a few years, you won't hear them thundering through the skies above Minnesota any longer. Every era of aviation eventually comes to an end. And with a looming (possible) merger between Northwest and Delta, there was speculation that the retirement of the DC-9s might be moved up significantly. I didn't want to miss out on another chance to fly them.
So I took advantage of a cheap airfare and bought a round-trip ticket to Chicago for last Saturday. Departing Minneapolis at 9 a.m., and turning around at O'Hare and coming back to MSP over the lunch hour. Both flights on a DC-9. Now that's passion.
Saturday morning saw me up in the pre-dawn hours, and out the door at 7 a.m. for a drive to the Ft. Snelling LRT station park-and-ride. No sense paying to use the ramp at the airport when the park-and-ride was two minutes and $1.50 away by train. Snowflakes swirled through the air as I boarded. True to the schedule, two minutes later I was stepping onto the platform at the airport's cavernous underground LRT station. Up several flights of escalators, I found a check-in kiosk. Going through security was a snap, though I overheard one of the TSA guards tell another that what she was looking at in my bag, via the x-ray machine, was a big camera lens. Fortunately, no one asked questions.
I was at Gate G19 a few minutes later, and settled in a chair by the window to watch the snowflakes fall on the lineup of morning departures. When it was time to begin boarding our plane, the gate agent announced a 10-minute departure delay because of a problem with the plane's PA system. It was fixed by the time we boarded, and everything was squared away for a nearly-on-time pushback of flight 126. The engines spooled up to a throbbing roar.
Then we sat. Two minutes went by. Then the pilot's voice crackled over the PA: "Folks, from the flight deck, we have a hydraulic indicator here, and we need to figure out if we actually have a problem with the system or if it's just the indicator. So we're going to taxi back to the gate and get this figured out. It's probably going to take us 15-20 minutes. We apologize for the delay, and we'll update you as soon as we have more information."
I glanced at my watch. Just under three hours until my return flight from O'Hare was scheduled to depart. And now, another delay. Outside, the snow was falling harder, and the flakes were getting bigger...
We're up and running again. BlogOLink is back.
For a while, it was going passably well: Quasi-regular updates, musings on this and that, and the tale of the saga of the air conditioner. But then came the Great Black Hole...an information blackout that has descended for nearly seven months.
Well, I'm back, and I have a good excuse: Life is what happens when you have other plans, but getting married prevents you from making them in the first place. You must focus, concentrate, and Obey Your Wife.
You fall into new routines, once you're married. You come home at the end of the day, and have dinner together, or watch TV and eat, or watch TV. And you talk. Time on the computer -especially for the man of the house - becomes a string of stolen moments. You have to hop on when your wife isn't paying attention, lest she drag you off, or you must get there before her, or she'll spend the whole night gawking at pictures of dogs in need of adoption on Craigslist.
Eventually, you find your happy mediums. She realizes that she will never keep you away from the computer as much as she prefers, despite her pleas that you exercise more (well, we're working on it). You resign yourself to the fact that you will never be as buff as she, and you feel OK about it. She gives you time for silly hobbies like home computer flight simulator, and you accept the fact that, sooner than later, she's going to bring home a dog.
This is marriage, and so it goes. But you know you'd never be as happy - or enjoy life as much - without her. And so coming home is a pleasure every day.
Perhaps the sign that things in the new marriage are off to a good start, at least, is when you come home from work one evening and say the following to your wife:
"I just had this crazy idea at work today. There's an airfare sale on, and fares to Chicago are dirt cheap. I think I might go there on a Saturday next month...just to fly there and back. It will cost me $110. What do you think?"
About now, the average husband might expect to get a frown, a disapproving look, or an exclamation: "What? You moron! Why would you want to do that?!"
But not my lovely wife. She said, "I think you should go! I think you would appreciate it a lot, and you would have fun."
Score!
Here's the backstory: I wanted to catch a ride on a DC-9. They're a familiar sight to those of us Minnesotans who travel through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport: slim jets with twin engines at the back of the fuselage and a red T-tail (not to be confused with the much smaller, and much newer, CRJ). Why? Because Northwest is the only airline in North America that still flies the DC-9 on regularly scheduled passenger routes. You'll see a few DC-9s working as cargo haulers, and you'll find them on just a handful of passenger airlines elsewhere in the world. Today, Northwest is the world's largest operator of DC-9s...significant because these planes were built before I was even born.
They're being phased out now, like the 727 before them, in favor of newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft. These are your Airbuses, your next generation Boeings, your Embrarer E-jets, and a new yet-to-be-developed line from Bombardier called the "C Jets." Northwest has the oldest fleet of any of the major U.S. airlines, and the DC-9s are a big reason why. Many of these planes were delivered from the manufacturer more than 30 years ago, to airlines like Eastern and Republic that don't even exist anymore. They're still flying today thanks to a regimen of regular and thorough maintenance checks...the same that any airliner in the U.S. undergoes.
DC-9 pilots have said the jet is built like a tank and flies like a sportscar. But within a few years, you won't hear them thundering through the skies above Minnesota any longer. Every era of aviation eventually comes to an end. And with a looming (possible) merger between Northwest and Delta, there was speculation that the retirement of the DC-9s might be moved up significantly. I didn't want to miss out on another chance to fly them.
So I took advantage of a cheap airfare and bought a round-trip ticket to Chicago for last Saturday. Departing Minneapolis at 9 a.m., and turning around at O'Hare and coming back to MSP over the lunch hour. Both flights on a DC-9. Now that's passion.
Saturday morning saw me up in the pre-dawn hours, and out the door at 7 a.m. for a drive to the Ft. Snelling LRT station park-and-ride. No sense paying to use the ramp at the airport when the park-and-ride was two minutes and $1.50 away by train. Snowflakes swirled through the air as I boarded. True to the schedule, two minutes later I was stepping onto the platform at the airport's cavernous underground LRT station. Up several flights of escalators, I found a check-in kiosk. Going through security was a snap, though I overheard one of the TSA guards tell another that what she was looking at in my bag, via the x-ray machine, was a big camera lens. Fortunately, no one asked questions.
I was at Gate G19 a few minutes later, and settled in a chair by the window to watch the snowflakes fall on the lineup of morning departures. When it was time to begin boarding our plane, the gate agent announced a 10-minute departure delay because of a problem with the plane's PA system. It was fixed by the time we boarded, and everything was squared away for a nearly-on-time pushback of flight 126. The engines spooled up to a throbbing roar.
Then we sat. Two minutes went by. Then the pilot's voice crackled over the PA: "Folks, from the flight deck, we have a hydraulic indicator here, and we need to figure out if we actually have a problem with the system or if it's just the indicator. So we're going to taxi back to the gate and get this figured out. It's probably going to take us 15-20 minutes. We apologize for the delay, and we'll update you as soon as we have more information."
I glanced at my watch. Just under three hours until my return flight from O'Hare was scheduled to depart. And now, another delay. Outside, the snow was falling harder, and the flakes were getting bigger...
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