Inside Minnesota Politics

Say it ain't so Joe.

All those U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam, died in vain.

So says Joe Repya, the man who wanted to be Minnesota's Republican Party Chair and in the past has tried to quiet any questioning of the occupation in Iraq by questioning the questioners' patriotism.

Thursday on WCCO's Don Shelby show, Repya said:
"I want to see victory for the Iraqi people. I want to see a safe nation. Because there's 4,000 of my brothers and sisters who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. And I don't want to see them die in vain , much like the 58,000 that served with me in Vietnam died in vain." Listen here

Really? Giving your life for your country is dying in vain?

For the moment, let's take Joe at his word and accept that in his mind, this is true.

That means his argument for staying in Iraq is somehow tied to avenging the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and Vietnam.

Joe, I can understand your anger over having lost friends in that war. But your anger clouds your logic. Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Vietnam taught us you can't fight for a country where its people are against you. Every poll in Iraq shows that the general population doesn't want us there. When the people are against you, the enemy is given shelter and can easily blend in. It's hard to fight a force you can't see.

In the same WCCO interview, Joe admits mistakes were made in how the Iraq war was conceived and executed. Why did those mistakes happen? Because "patriotism" was used as a rhetorical shield against serious questioning of what the Bush administration was doing. It's a tactic Joe and his party has employed liberally in the past. I witnessed this myself when Joe questioned the patriotism of peace supporters for not applauding when the mother of a fallen soldier she said her son would have died in vain if we do not win the "war" in Iraq.

What are we fighting for in Iraq? There's no consensus on what that is. Is it to find those elusive WMDs, bring democracy or for the sake of those who have already died?

It's hard to have "victory," which Joe has said "there is no substitute for," when you don't know what victory looks like. But I know what defeat looks like. Defeat is when our US Constitution is shredded, our liberties curtailed, and our economy collapses under a huge war debt.

If we're looking for a clear-cut definition of victory, returning our constitution, our liberties and our good economic (and diplomatic) standing in the world would seem to be something we can all agree on. As Will Rodgers once said, the first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. I suggest we do it before we reach 58,000 lives lost.

Whoops. That rust on bridge and lack of maintenance might have had something to do with the 35W bridge collapse after all. NTSB Chair Mark Rosenker is backing off from his earlier statement that a design flaw in the gusset plates was the "critical factor" in the collapse of the bridge. As reported here earlier, Minnesota Congressman Jim Oberstar took him to task for that statement.

Rosenker writes back to Oberstar in an apologetic tone, saying
"Please be assured that it was not my intent to get ahead of the ongoing NTSB investigation or to hypothesize about the root and contributing causes of the bridge collapse.

"It was not my intent to characterize this single conclusion as the possible probable cause determination of the Board."
What he MEANT to say was corrosion was not found on the gusset plates where the collapse likely started. So while the gusset plate design flaw may not have stopped the bridge from collapsing, it may not be in Rosenker's words "the straw or straws that broke the camels back."

You can read a pdf of Rosenker's letter here.

The National Transportation Safety Board usually follows a strict policy of not announcing the cause of an accident until the investigation is completed. Yet last week even though the NTSB reported it had not determined the probable cause of the 35W bridge collapse, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said a design flaw in the bridge's gusset plates "tells us why the bridge collapsed."

Minnesota Congressman Jim Oberstar is taking Rosenker to task for his remarks, calling them "unfortunate" and suggesting that they could compromise the NTSB's investigation.

In a letter sent to Rosenker today, Oberstar writes:
"I consider it highly inappropriate for you to have stated as you did in the press conference, that the poor design of the plates 'tells us why the bridge collapsed.' Although you admitted you do not have complete information on corrosion, you nonetheless insisted that poor design was the 'critical factor.'
"Such announcements undermine the process and create the potential for committing the board to conclusions that will be difficult to change if the subsequent investigation suggests other conclusions.
"I strongly urge you to adhere to the Board's established process of not announcing the cause of an accident until the investigation is completed."

In the letter Oberstar indicated that holding the press conference was the right thing to do since other bridges may have the same design flaw. A pdf of the letter is here

Also posted at TheUpTake.org Probably the most significant aspect of Tuesday's US Senate DFL debate at Minneapolis Roosevelt High School was not the candidates, but the audience. With the election still nearly a year away, the debate drew enough people to fill the auditorium's lower level. A good portion of those in the audience were there to back Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. His campaign volunteers and supporters had packed the auditorium. Nelson-Pallmeyer does not have as much name recognition or money as Mike Ciresi and Al Franken. But he is apparently strongly organized in Minneapolis where he unsuccessfully ran for the 5th Congressional District DFL endorsement in 2006. By now, if you've watched a couple of DFL U.S. Senate debates you can recite the candidate's stump speeches from memory. For those who want substance on last Tuesday's debate please check out an excellent text summary from DJ at www.idonthateamerica.com If you want style, we give you something different. A few quick jokes from moderator and DFL State Chair Brian Melendez and then The UpTake-O-Meter (patent pending) on the response each candidate got when introduced to a crowd of about 700 people. This is Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's backyard and "Back Jack Pack" which jammed the auditorium let everyone know that. Video: Greg Skog Text, editing and photos: Michael McIntee

Steve Sarvi filed the papers today to run for Congressman John Kline's seat in the 2nd Congressional District. Sarvi is seeking the DFL endorsement. If he runs again, Kline , a Republican, will be seeking his 4th house term.

For new listeners and readers I'm repeating an interview I did in May with Steve Sarvi while he was still in Iraq.

Listen to the podcast here. Runs 10:27
Just as it takes courage to jump out of a plane or serve in Iraq, it takes courage to leap into politics. Steve Sarvi has done both and has been mentioned as a possible DFL candidate to face Congressman John Kline (R- MN02) in 2008. Steve has been in the Army for nearly 20 years and is on track to be part of the longest deployed Minnesota National Guard unit in Iraq. He's been there since March of 2006 and is hoping to return home in late July or early August. He's also the former Mayor of Watertown, MN.

Inside Minnesota Politics has an exclusive audio interview with Steve you can listen to here. Since he's on active duty in Iraq, he really can't talk much about running for office, but we did get to talk about how he's helping local governments get started in Iraq and how the City of Victoria, Minnesota (his employer) has been very supportive of him and his family while he's been in Iraq.

On his website, Steve describes his political leanings. "Simply put, I am a Democrat. That my ideas and values spread from center to left of center, speaks to the strength of the Party. I appreciate the willingness of Democrats to embrace the things that bind us together, rather than focus on that which sets us apart".

Here are some text excerpts from the interview. The entire interview is in the podcast audio.

Why are you in the military? Why do you take this type of dangerous work to do?
Steve Sarvi: I've been in the military since I was 17, other than a break in service when I got off of active duty. I felt like I needed to give something to my country at a young age and found I was good at it. I guess I've really never had that question asked of me... why do you do it? I guess someone needs to do it. I'm good at it. I'm good at working with my soldiers and I get a lot of satisfaction for the work that I do. It certainly is not an easy thing to do, obviously, to volunteer for something like this. To say good bye to my family, my friends, to work... and have to come over to an environment like this. But I don't think I could have looked my soldiers in the eye and watched them go off and stayed behind. That's just not the kind of person I am.

What are you doing in Iraq?

Steve Sarvi: I'm what's called a Civil Military Affairs Officer. And what we're doing is helping the local Iraqis with reconstruction projects. My main focus is in rural villages ...they're in some very bad shape as you can imagine. Infrastructure wise they're in need of just about everything. So what we do is we go into these areas and we do an assessment. We meet the people. Find out what their needs are. And then we work through with the local leaders either the Sheik or the village Mayor. And we work through with them the process of doing projects for them. But what we really want them to do is learn how to do it themselves. So it's a real mentorship process to get the locals to figure out ways to identify projects that are needed and then go to their own government and get approval.

What the military does then is come in with funding for smaller level projects. So we're able to provide the funding while they end up doing all the heavy lifting and getting approvals through their government.

It sounds like you're helping people learn how to run a local government.
Steve Sarvi: Yes, to a certain extent. It's different than the work I was doing in Kosovo, where I was actually working and helping to mentor a small village government. Here the local governments are almost non-existent. So we're not really doing much as far as that goes with setting up a government and talking through process and procedures. It's much more "we need a school in this village" so how do we engage the minister of education. How do we insure that we're going to have teachers come here. How do we get the approvals through them.

And then as we provide the funding we like to use the local workers because unemployment is so very high. We like to hire locals to actually build the facilities that go into their own villages.

As you can imagine it's a very complex environment. There's inter-tribal conflicts. There's conflicts between individuals. You've got construction workers. You've got contractors who are all basically tottering on the edge and they need jobs and it's a life or death matter to them. So there's a lot of emotion. There's a lot of pent up demand. This is four plus years since the invasion. They thought their lives were going to improve immediately. So there's a lot of expectations we have to knock down as well.

It's a growing process. They get infrastructure needs identified and some taken care of. And on our side we gain security by becoming friends to them, in some sense. And they look out for us. It's working out well in the areas we operate in.

How has your work in local government helped you out with the work you do now in the Army?
Steve Sarvi: It seems like I gravitate towards these positions. Same with in Kosovo. I'm an infantry soldier. And as a platoon Sergeant, my job is to train my soldiers for combat. And I did that at Camp Shelby when we were going through training and for the first three months that we were here. But we quickly learned that we needed to do civil-military projects even in the remote areas. My battalion reached out to me because of my background in the city government. I've been a city administrator for the City of Lanesburo, City Administrator in Watertown and currently in Victoria. And plus six years as the Mayor of the City of Watertown. So a lot of the issues, as far as infrastructure goes, a lot of those things apply. Learning how to engage people, talk to them, figure out what their needs are, work around issues... interpersonnel issues. A lot of those skills I think directly reflect on how we do it.

Plus of course we got to bid projects. The bidding process, as you can imagine it's a far different environment than what you have to deal with in the United States. But I understand the basics of it from the work that I do in the US and I've learned an awful lot being over here about the way that they work.

You gravitate towards these positions no matter where you are in life. And for some reason whether it was in Kosovo or here, I just end up doing these types of projects. Maybe it's my strong suit. And I get to see a different side of the war than most people get to see.


What kind of support have you received from home to get through these months, these years that add up when you're overseas?
Steve Sarvi: I'll tell you, without a family, without friends, I can't imagine getting through this. So my wife, my kids have been just wonderful about it. It's difficult of course, but they understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And they've been fully supportive. My family has been completely supportive. Work (City of Victoria) has been just marvelous. The City of Victoria has time and again been called to be true patriots. What they've been doing is maintaining my current salary and I just give them my guard pay. So I'm not losing any money by being over here. And that's a huge financial burden for many soldiers that come on active duty from the guard. The end up taking quite a large pay cut. But the City of Victoria in my case, and many employers in Minnesota are doing the same thing, and it's very encouraging for us. Without that support system, you take your eye off of what you're doing over here. You're worried about what's going on at home. You have to stay focus obviously when you're here.

We wish you the safest travel from Iraq back to the United States.
Steve Sarvi: Thank you. And I hope everyone pauses for a moment on Memorial Day and thinks of the soldiers that we've lost not only in this war, but in other wars.

Photos courtesy of SteveSarvi.com

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has a tough choice to make on Monday. Legislators have sent him a letter indicating he can either show up to tell a legislative committee how the money he said he had for the 35W bridge disappeared just as suddenly as the bridge did, or he faces delaying other transportation projects.

The "Transportation Contingent Appropriations Group" is the legislative commission that must approve Governor Pawlenty's request to use money from the state's reserves to cover costs for the 35W bridge rebuilding. Earlier this month, Governor Pawlenty convinced legislative leaders that a special session on transportation was not needed because the Federal Government was paying for the 35W bridge reconstruction and the state had plenty of funds to cover its obligations.

Since then, President George Bush has threatened to veto the legislation that contains the funding for the 35W bridge. Also, the Minnesota Department of Transportation has said it needs to use the state's reserve funds to pay for the 35W bridge or it will need to delay other construction projects.

Before the special session Lt. Governor Carol Molnau, who is also the head of the Department of Transportation testified that the funds were there. This is a portion of her testimony to the Joint House and Senate Transportation Committee:

Senator Steve Murphy: Lt. Governor, I believe the question is: are there going to be other projects delayed because of this delay in payments from the Federal government?

Molnau: I’m hoping that there will not be. I don’t believe so. I think we do have some resources that we can, can move to if we have a project we’re going to let, we can bond rather than pay out in full right now, if we have to do that, and then reimburse the bonds using those Federal dollars. So, I think we can pretty much take care of what we need to take care of on this project, if that’s what you’re asking for, with not, hopefully not a lot of negative impact to other projects or delays.

Murphy: The bonding authority that you’re talking about, where is that from?

Molnau: I’m assuming… now I think we can bond for something, that we do have some authority to do some additional bonding. So I think we can do that…ah... on some of it. Knowing that it would be short term, or we can do short-term borrowing from other accounts, and we can do that.

Murphy: the (undecipherable) funds?

Molnau – We could use some of those, yes but we also have opportunities, at least from what we’ve heard …as we’ve talked to the department of finance of being able to… and we’ve done this before knowing there are dollars coming in behind it to do some short term borrowing.
The commission has sent the Governor a letter asking him to appear before it on Monday to explain why the financial information he and the Lt. Governor gave lawmakers last month turned out to be wrong.
Because of the unprecedented nature of the request, we believe it will be to the public’s benefit for a full discussion of the request made by your administration. It is our hope that you, and your representatives, will attend the meeting to provide insight into the reasons behind the request and the delay in federal funding promised to the state to meet the reconstruction needs of the I-35W bridge.

We look forward to the opportunity to discuss this matter during this important public meeting. The commission meets Monday at 11 AM in room 15 of the State Capitol. If Governor Pawlenty shows up, he will face some rather pointed questions such as, "how did the money you said we had disappear?". If he doesn't show up, it is very likely the Department of Transportation will need to delay construction projects, which will cost taxpayers even more money.

US Senator Amy Klobachar (D - Minnesota) has made a couple a votes that have upset some progressives. In this interview I did for AM950, she talks about her vote on the Foreign Intelligence Security Act also known as FISA and a resolution condemning a newspaper ad that said General Petraeus was “cooking the books for the white house” when he gave his report on Iraq.

We also talk with her about the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan that she supported, but President Bush has threatened to veto and legislation she sponsoring to protect consumers against questionable cell phone charges.

Listen here.

After 17 years in Congress, Republican Jim Ramstad of Minnesota says he is not going to run again. He won his last election by a huge margin. You might think that means the Republicans have the edge in this district for 2008. I have been crunching the numbers and that might not be so. Watch the video for more details (Cross posted from The Uptake) iPod video file It’s been 17 years since anyone other than Jim Ramstad has represented Minnesota’s Third Congressional District. Now that he’s decided not to run in 2008, the question is which party is more likely to win the seat. Ramstad has won his seat by huge margins. So on the surface it seems like a safe bet that any other Republican would have the same advantage in the third district. But a look at voting trends from the last several elections indicates it may not be that easy. Let’s look at how the Third District has voted in recent races that Jim Ramstad was not in. First there’s last year’s US Senate race. DFLer Amy Klobuchar won the third district by 15 percentage points. Hardly a close race. But those same voters also backed Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty by a larger margin than he got statewide. In the other statewide races, which tend to be less partisan the Republican Attorney General candidate was just 311 votes better than the statewide winner DFLer Lori Swanson. The DFL won the State Auditor’s race in Ramstad’s district, but lost the Secretary of State’s race. So the Third District has a lot of ticket-splitters. It’s not a shoe-in for a Republican candidate. But trends indicate this may be a Congressional seat the DFL could take in 2008. The DFL has picked up a total of seven state legislative seats in Ramstad’s district since 2004, indicating the area may be trending Blue.

Click To Play Congressman Jim Oberstar talks about how he has introduced a bill to fund rebuilding the I-35W bridge that collapsed. Currently the cap on emergency funding is $100 Million. Oberstar's bill would increase that to $350 Million. Congress made a similar exception earlier this year when a bridge in California was destroyed in a tanker fire. Video provided by Congressman Jim Oberstar's office.