This electron microscope photo shows a taconite fiber breaking up into smaller fibers in rat lung tissue.

1.
2.
3.
4.[click on document to enlarge]

caption, plus 1 and 2, from here
3 from here
4 from here

of interest, see here re provable impairment plus fear of cancer, here re ditto, and here re general nature of a "fugitive dust" cause of action

first where there is fugitive dust there is no neighborhood workers comp shield if there is actual harm to a class representative having also a fear of cancer

second of interest is a quote from one above-referenced item

Citing a recent study by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice in Santa Monica, the high court on Monday said that asbestos litigation has consumed about $50 billion already and that the total cost may exceed $200 billion.

not chump change

and that is asbestos litigation, not parallel but separate arguably different though comparable "taconite fiber" litigation - will there be a deep pocket at the end of that trial-lawyers' tunnel

the Ciresi firm knows how to ask questions in cancer litigation and has wherewithal to represent a class

state coordinators for PUBLIC JUSTICE are listed here


***
- and they said I could not put up a post without being wordy -

Larry Zanko and the direction of interest shown in his NRRI work - use it, please.

I have seen the underlying item, but my Google Alert for "taconite tailings" just gave me this link, to go with my morning coffee.

It is not news to many who have read anything on this blog, or elsewhere about use of taconite tailings in paving aggregate in the road bed in front of your home.

Larry wants it done, Larry was paid to do the study, Larry likes tailings, and at the end of the abstract it is clear that, "In terms of the marketing potential, low-cost rail transportation and a workable distribution plan would be key for expanding the use of coarse taconite tailings as aggregate in markets beyond Northeastern Minnesota."

And that quoted part from the link explains Elwyn Tinklenberg's major if not sole concern with the stuff. He is not health risk oriented. He is a promoter for use of the stuff, whatever the current state of knowledge and the uncertainties of health risks might be.

The quoted text is what Tinklenberg has been and apparently still is being paid money to want to see done. It is what you can read of and see how he has focused upon that as his personal goal, in his reporting to NRRI to justify his continuing contract status with NRRI. He has touted his many and varied thoughts and efforts to contact people to advance the stuff being disseminated exactly in the way that above quoted text envisions. It is his mission with NRRI, that sentence basically being his mission statement.

Marketing the stuff and arranging low-cost shipping ways and means is why Elwyn Tinklenberg contacted shippers and railways, and went to trade shows, (Mesabi Hard Rock hockey puck in hand), to influence and impress people.

It is why he produced a repeatedly played trade-show short video presentation for that marketing purpose, for use in marketing "Mesabi Hard Rock" at trade shows; a video which his campaign people have yet to put on YouTube - for the rest of us - those whose vote Elwyn solicits.

This is posted because it conveniently fits the longer posting, below, from earlier this morning.

So, hey --- Pick a cup, any cup.

_______UPDATE_______
I believe I must emphasize this as strongly as possible. This link is very, very important. It gives you online access to the underlying study Larry Zanko did at NRRI.

You can read it and form your own opinions about whether it entirely begs the question of whether there is or is not any inherent health hazard in the taconite tailings material, itself, independent of any questions over whether it contains asbestos when from the east end of the Iron Range or from the west end.

Whether it's from east or west of a boundary line, is it safe or unsafe, independent of when and if it does or does not contain asbestos?

Does Zanko answer that? Does he even consider it? Are taconite fibers and/or clevage fragments the problem independent of asbestos considerations?

Read the entire Zanko thing.

Think for yourself. Figure things out for yourself. Does Zanko's work beg the question of whether or not taconite fibers and/or cleavage fragments pose a health risk even if asbestos is not a minor component?

TACONITE TAILINGS - I had a brief phone conversation with Judge Lord. Is asbestos a shiboleth? Am I the monkey pointing at the wrong cup?

When having the opportunity to talk by phone with Miles Lord, he left me feeling like an acolyte for the first time meeting the voice of Yoda, aided to see a glimpse of the dark side in a place I had not thought to look because my attention was directed to look for darkness forcefully at play in a familiar publicized place and way - led easily enough to look down the path others have for years looked - what is the threat to health from asbestos and how should we react to it?

Misdirected, perhaps. Perhaps by circumstance and the neutral force of collective thinking, perhaps by a skilled hand of the dark side of the force pointing me in the path of collective "wisdom" and questioning.

But I felt like the monkey, chumped to pick one cup to guess about, when the basis of the game was the issue.

The most fundamental question about use of taconite tailings, (outside of the occupational exposure questions of their mining and the host of threats it poses locally), is not, "Where on the Iron Range is asbestos-in-tailings a problem or not and is there evidence some tailings are asbestos free so that those tailings pose no asbestos threat?".

Instead the first and most basic question is: Does the hard rock itself, the substance of the tailings pose a health risk possibly greater than or at least more widespread than the secondary risk of whether some or all of it contains differing amounts of asbestos? Is the asbestos question, posed in the context of safety of using "Mesabi Hard Rock" as paving aggregate overlooking the much more fundamental question - independent of asbestos, is this stuff, itself, a major menace that sane people would not spread around?

In effect, the first level of questioning should not merely be, "Does it contain asbestos," but, "By itself and independent of possible asbestos content, what is its basic makeup and what threat might it pose, with small fibers in the 1 x 3, or 1 x 5 micron range, or smaller, fiber or cleavage fragment, when inhaled into human lungs?"

That, ultimately would get into the chemistry and crystallography of the material, the biochemistry at DNA and protein chemistry levels within the lungs, how are particles of that material and that size range lodged into tissue once reaching lung walls, and what following upset might be caused (after they become lodged) to the DNA and protein chemistry in regular cell functioning and in a cell that neighbors on embeds the micro-fine material when the cell is dividing.

Given that we do not know much of anything about any of that, i.e., we have not successfully done any of that basic science giving us capability to give any reliable answers that way, then once we admit we cannot give mechanistic expressions at the most basic level of insight, epidemiology and incidence statistics studies are what we are left with and those approaches always are where the forces wanting a particular action wish to steer us to indecision.

If you want an outcome - people smoking cigarettes with abandon or using "Mesabi Hard Rock" with abandon as the desired action generating for you some actual or potentially great profit - you, given human nature, would be the one always saying, "The proof against it is inconclusive," or "We need at least one more study," or as we hear from a politician who took money to promote something, "You have to prove Larry Zanko wrong."

Such voices with pecuniary interests may think quietly, "But while that's being strung out by us, forever hopefully, stay the #&$&%^&$! out of the way of any and all of our profitable mischief."

Of course the latter would not be said at all, and certainly not that directly.

But stripped of euphimism, is it not the message in saying I have a burden to prove Larry Zanko and NRRI wrong before I may be listened to?

Perhaps not. Perhaps there is no dark motive whatsoever in a message false in both its bias against the precautionary principle, and in its capacity to misdirect and mislead by saying Larry Zanko in the first instance siezed upon the right tack to take, and I should question or debate his results so that if I ask something different I am ignorant or a troublemaker.

Yoda said beware of how the dark side of the force operates.

If I will not be the monkey dutifully pointing at the wrong cup, or choosing one of three on the table, put there by "the authorities," then I am even less than a dumb monkey.

And my thinking is accordingly of no consequence in deciding which cup an intelligent monkey should be induced to choose.


***
I have a weakness for quotes because my writing falls short of the quality of things better writers have thought over and tightly written. There is this quote that I put into a comment thread from a different post, which an interesting website attributes to Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom,

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires — desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Almost all of us have a desire to think analytically or to believe we do, and to see if we find truth or fiction and credibility vs. weakness in evidence, especially if it is presented as "science" and gets into a journal, of which there are many of varying quality. In the process, misdirection is something often overlooked, via the forest and the individual trees analogy.

And I do not say there was deliberate misdirection by either Larry Zanko or Elwyn Tinklenberg. If deliberate misdirection was there it was by different people, the ones pulling the strings, funding Zanko, and giving the marching orders. People probably not in Minnesota or caring about its people and public health, and brighter by far than either Zanko or Tinklenberg. Philadelphia lawyers, whatever. People thinking if "we" keep "them" thinking only of asbestos, where it is or is not and thinking of mesithelioma only, where it occurs in abnormal incidence levels or where baseline data exists, then "we" keep "them" from asking if the pea is under a different cup or if the game is entirely different and the problem is not asbestos in or absent from "Mesabi Hard Rock" but the propensity of that material, itself, to form small fiber or cleavage fragments of a particular size which, by itself, because of something in the very nature of "Mesabi Hard Rock" itself and independent of asbestos presence or absence, poses a potentially major health threat.

Reversing "we" and "they" as used above, with "we" now being the public --- If the cause of a range of disease and death or disablement is in the tailings themselves, independent of asbestos, then "we" collectively are the monkey pointing to the wrong cup - or being led into the game of pointing to one cup or another that "they" put on the table.

"They" have wealth and ways and means of defining the game they present, and most of "us" are in no position to be ever vigilant against being misdirected.

"We" should be pointing at and questioning the hard rock itself, independent of any set of three misleading cups "they" offer.

So, the quest is not to watch the hand being quicker than the eye, and to then guess, but to say more fundamentally - what is the quality and threat of the pea, and of any or all of the three cups?

If the shell game has been set by the shill to take the mark by basic misdirection and by luring the mark into wishing to even play that game by the shill's rules, then the mark's been taken or is at risk of it. So, avoid being taken. Ask the bigger basic threshold question - and the natural follow-up:

[1] Independent of asbestos, what's the hazard of that Mesabi Hard Rock in commerce?

[2]And short of having an answer to the first question, WHY NOT be prudent and follow the precautionary principle?


***
Or do we simply follow their Golden Rule, that they have the gold so they make our rules?

Jack Nelson Pallmeyer - a letter to the editor.

Jack's family, Hannah, Naomi, Jack, Sara, and Audrey Nelson-Pallmeyer, from "about Jack," on the campaign website.

Blue Man in A Red District republishes the short May 25, Strib leading letter of the day, from Barbara Calrson of Shrewood, saying mainly:

Over the past few days, I have read with interest all the hype and hand-wringing over the U.S. Senate race. In all of this, I have failed to see the name of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer mentioned.

We do not have to look to a humorist or to someone proven to back his party no matter what, in order to have a viable alternative candidate for the U.S. Senate.I urge you to go to Jack's website, jackforsenate.org, and see for yourself.

You should do that, visit the website, but first read this, one of the earlier pieces of campaign literature the household received from Jack prior to precinct caucus, showing much of what he offers as a candidate that is appealing [click to enlarge the image]:




Legitimately using Wellstone green, Jack expresses vision more than ten years out, talking about the global view and not what's he done in the past for Blaine or such. Hopes. Expressing a sense of justice and goals - where if you quit on that out of cynicism or belief in starting small, or myopia over only immediate goals, then you've given away the store before you start and try, never mind keeping after it.

Please look at Jack's website. And that of Franken. He also is good.

AP - One of the bleakest views of how bad the housing market slump is and may be.

Locally, last week's Friday, May 23, 2008, print version of the Anoka County Union, in its legal notices, all 32 pages of its Section D were mortgage foreclosure sale notices. Then, 18 out of the 22 pages of Section E were the same for a total of forty pages of foreclosure notices [and I noted there were two postponement of sale notices in that batch]. At roughly 8 - 9 notices per page, at 40 pages, that is 320 - 360 for the most current full single week. I believe there is a multi-week publishing requirement for foreclosures, but for a snapshot in time, that many notices far exceeds prior norms.

For a local and anectodotal comparison, an arguable baseline or trend - Anoka County Union past legal notices section -- Oct. 18, 2002, 8-1/2 pages; Feb. 27, 2004, 13 pages; March 26, 2004, 13 pages; Apr. 2, 2004, 11 pages; Nov. 5, 2004, eleven pages; Nov. 12, 2004, 9-1/2 pages; Feb. 11, 2005, 9-1/2pages; March 11, 2005, 10-1/2 pages; June 16, 2006, 17 pages; and earlier this month, May 9, 2008, 36 pages.

While it's the evidence gleaned from papers still around the house, and not a random sample, it still is an indicator to compare with what's to be seen years later, a baseline of 8-13 pages through early 2005, a slight jump in summer 2006, perhaps, but with only a single sample, and then wonked out through the roof to 36-40 pages before the end of this month.

Record Anoka County mortgage foreclosure activity was noted in the blogs, after being reported in the print news, with the Strib having an online March 2, 2008, article on Anoka County foreclosures at a then record level, per 2007 statistics. See also, here and here; and we have all read the stories about one place or another, so that is enough background.

Clearly those predicting last summer that the trend had peaked and this year would start a rebound have yet to be proven correct.

It currently appears that things are quite high now and still trending upward, from the informal ACU legal notices indicator.

Nationwide there is this, an AP feed, online here, saying, with little excerpted out:

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER - AP ECONOMICS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Like spring flowers, the "For Sale" signs are sprouting in front yards all over the country. But anxious sellers are facing the most brutal environment in decades, with a slumping economy, falling home prices and rising mortgage foreclosures.

And even the faint promise of better days ahead might not come true, given all the headwinds the housing industry is facing at the moment.

"This is going to be another difficult spring," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "I think we are at the beginning of the end of the housing downturn, but it is going to be a long and painful end."

The devastation is certainly a far cry from the boom years from 2001 to 2005 when sales of new and existing homes were setting records for five straight years. During that time, home prices were soaring, luring thousands of investors into the market, hoping to buy homes and flip them for quick profit.

But since 2006, the country has been mired in a housing bust which, in many ways, is the worst since World War II.

Construction is expected to drop to the slowest pace since the 1940s and prices are expected to decline by the largest amount since the Great Depression.

Hardest hit are the states where sales boomed the most: California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and parts of the Northeast. In the Midwest, the problem is shrinking jobs in the auto industry, making homes hard to sell. But virtually all of the country has felt the aftershocks of the housing slump, either through weaker home sales or the massive drag housing has imposed on the overall economy.

Housing has shaved more than a full percentage point off economic growth, trimming the gross domestic product for the past two quarters to a barely discernible 0.6 percent rate and raising the threat that the country could topple into a full-blown recession.

The National Association of Realtors reported that 46 states saw sales decline in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2007. Two-thirds of 149 metropolitan areas saw prices decline during the same period, the largest percentage of cities reporting price drops in the history of the NAR survey, which goes back to 1979.

The state with the biggest sales decline was Maryland, with sales down 38.6 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2007. The drop nationwide was 22.2 percent.

The price decline nationally was 7.7 percent in the first quarter, with the biggest plunge a 29.2 percent decline in the Sacramento, Calif., area.

As the spring sales season got under way, the slump was continuing. The Realtors reported Friday that existing home sales fell 1 percent in April, the eighth drop in the past nine months, with the median home price falling 8 percent compared with a year ago, the second-biggest drop on record.

So just how much worse will things get?

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors, sees some hopeful signs. "Lower prices and low interest rates are starting to generate results," Yun said, noting that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.92 percent in April, down from 6.18 percent in April 2007. That reflected an aggressive rate-cutting effort by the Federal Reserve to try to keep the country out of a recession.

Sales should also be helped in coming months, Yun predicted, by the reappearance of more mortgage products as lenders reopen the tap for certain loans. That supply had been closed following the credit crisis that hit last August, triggered by rising defaults in subprime mortgages.

Other economists are not so optimistic, noting that the Realtors' latest report showed the number of unsold single-family homes jumping to a 23-year high, reflecting, in part, a rising tide of mortgage foreclosures, which are dumping more homes on an already glutted market.

Adding to the foreclosure problem is the weak economy, which has resulted in four straight months of job layoffs, an indication to some analysts that the country has already fallen into a recession.

Rising job layoffs and higher gasoline and food prices have sent consumer confidence plunging - not a great environment to mount a rebound in housing.

And then there is the problem of the huge overhang of unsold homes generating further declines in prices, which seem to be keeping more prospective buyers on the fence.

"Right now a lot of people are staying away because they don't want to buy an asset that might lose value right away," said Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight.

Newport predicted that prices, which by some measures have fallen by about 15 percent nationwide from their peak two years ago, will decline another 10 percent before bottoming out in the spring of 2009. A 25 percent fall in prices would be the biggest since home prices plunged by about one-third during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, said he believed sales will bottom out by the middle of this year and then start to move higher by the end of this year.

He said builders, trying to control inventories, will continue slashing production, with housing starts expected to drop by 39 percent this year following a 30 percent decline in 2007. That will push activity to the slowest annual pace since the end of World War II. Seiders predicted a gradual rebound in construction starting next year.

"This is stacking up as the most dramatic housing contraction in the post-World War II period," he said.

And while sales, construction and prices should all start to recover by next year, the rebound is not expected to be a rapid one. Some analysts are forecasting it will take a couple of years for housing to regain its footing.

"It is going to take some time first to restore confidence that housing is a reasonably OK investment, then to work off this inventory and then for the financial system to revive," Zandi predicted.

So, it is unlikely the GOP can engineer any October Surprise this time, in housing.

Michele Bachmann has been on the House Financial Services Committee which has made some sensible proposals, probably falling short of a real and complete answer, but it is unclear where Bachmann stands on the plight of families losing their homes vs. her key concern for ultra-high income tax payers not being taxed more. I have not seen any indication she is in line with majority proposals from that committee.

In fairness to Bachmann, I have not seen any politicians running for federal office committing to any detailed proposal as a solution to the foreclosure crisis, nor have I seen any go as far as I would that being born into citizenship in the wealthiest nation on earth is an entitlement as a right and not a privilege to freedom from hunger, from homelessness, and from denial of medical care.

Jack Nelson Pallmeyer comes closest to that perspective which is one reason I favor him; his heart is in it; and Bob Olson while a candidate had a proposal that if we became serious about alternate energy and ceased transferring so much wealth from the nation to buy foreign oil, we could create more energy sector jobs and have that cash flow to spend for relief of domestic suffering. That and ceasing a deficit funded war, another thing he suggested, would help.

Olson lost the endorsement and Jack still has a chance but appears trailing too far in delegate count. The two making the most sense and being truest to core progressive values long given lip service in their party seem distrusted too much, in their own party. In the ultra-conservative and fence-straddling middle segments of their own party.

That is very sad. I hope Jack somehow gains the endorsement. He is closest to Wellstone and others who kept the faith.

RAMSEY - They put Environmental Policy Board agenda and minutes online. There's nothing comparable for the Finance Committee. Legacy intent?

Either it is stupid to continue to not have minutes for critical Finance Committee activity online, or continuing legacy intent, from days of James Norman.

However, in trying to unravel the exact initial contact point on record between Tinklenberg Group and City of Ramsey, I met a stone wall at December 2002.

Online records do reference that there were contacts or at least one contact made before James Norman and Elwyn Tinklenberg were exchanging correspondence that was put on record, (although with a reference to "enclosures" from Tinklenberg that never made it into the full agenda for the council).

[As always, click on the image to enlarge to readable size, or open it in another window]




These images present Council minutes and full agenda evidence of at least one mid-December face-to-face visit between Elwyn Tinklenberg and James Norman. Those resource items reference a crucial Jan 14, 2003 finance committee session involving the Tinklenberg for-fee proposals, with no paper trail of what transpired before the matter days later going to Council. Perhaps, just perhaps, the enclosures not in the full agenda were on the table before Finance Committee, and if their agenda and minutes were published online we'd see the full package. Perhaps not. But without it online, it is like the infamous 18-minute gap in the Nixon Tapes. A black hole.

That was back when David Elvig headed that committee, (if I recall correctly). Perhaps in a blog comment David might share his recollections of all he knows about the initial Tinklenberg insinuation of himself into Ramsey affairs, for a fee, with Tinklenberg Group thereafter ultimately taking payments from Ramsey totalling $840,000, according to City spreadsheet records I have seen.

Some schmoozing, or fair arms length contact, who's to say which without a paper trail, happened leading up to the Tinklenberg Group's first appearance in minutes (that I could find), Dec. 2002 - Jan. 2003.

Not putting Finance Committee agendas and minutes online -- It is like the refusal to televise council work sessions.

Indefensible.

Do they not keep minutes of such an important deliberative activity? Is it a feeling that while minutes and agendas do exist, they are not worth posting? Or worse, is there no maintained paper trail at all?

Either way, not putting Finance Committee matters online in full disclosure form, minutes and full agenda, is shameful and should change.

After all - the money and situations concerning the money - what is more important to citizens to know and weigh?

Setbacks from wetlands? Sure that is important.

But get real.

I shall publish favorably the names of any council candidates filing this July and running for election, who will publicly commit and inform me of the committment to have work sessions televised again, and minutes taken and posted electronically for the Finance Committee.

Indeed, why not televise finance committee and public works committee? Parks gets televised. Finance and public works does not. That's strange.

For now, on the "Documents" laser fiche page, all I could find are four "outcome" categories; nothing deliberative - no hint of decision processes before finance matters are presented council.

Transparency is good, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Justice Brandeis pointed all that out as far back as 1914, regarding dealings in "Other People's Money."

__________UPDATE_________
SOMETHING certainly happened at that 18-minute gap meeting of the Finance Committee. While there is no paper trail record of it online except the following reference back to a decision having been made then, off camera, for later on camera pro-forma approval and the Tinklenberg letter agreement even referencing that the day after the stealth meeting, James Norman and Elwyn Tinklenberg negotiated a deal where conveniently enough for the both of them, James Norman would be Elwyn Tinklenberg's official contact person in dealings - and I have presented in earlier posts evidence that after Norman's precipitously abrupt ouster/leaving Ramsey, he was a Tinklenberg Group affiliate - he had his revolving door, in the lobby, much like Elwyn's.





________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Interestingly, that initial Tinklenberg-to-Norman Happy New Year letter embodied the "federal dollars" or "federal funds" theme that much on the Internet indicates as a repeatedly used theme of Elwyn Tinklenberg in soliciting or finalizing cash-flow business for his Tinklenberg Group:

Also, I would like to discuss with you the idea of using federal dollars to advance the official mapping of the TH 10 corridor. I think the potential exists and it may serve the City's interests well.

The man apparently does have that as a sales-pitch approach he likes and relies on time and again.

***
For something completely unrelated and wholly different, this photograph:

A big to-do list, the Gray Plant Mooty falling bridge report, tails of tailings, etc. THE BRIDGE.

Finance and Commerce reports the Gray Plant Mooty report on paper weighs 30 pounds. Not as much as the I35W bridge weighed, but hefty. Heavy reading.

On Wednesday, Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, sets before Rep. Bernie Lieder, DFL-Crookston, the voluminous report on the 35W collapse compiled by the law firm of Gray Plant Mooty. (Photo by Bill Klotz)

Picture and caption are from the above F&C link.

Where in that stack of paper will we find the name or fingerprints of Elwyn Tinklenberg, when it talks of MnDOT look-the-other-way benign neglect?

A report of the report indicated there were seventeen years neglect of a known problem. There also were fiscal implications. Elwyn might not have wanted bridge spending to constrain him when Hiawatha was saying "Build me, and they shall ride."

The Report is online [here].

I expect the first thing I shall do is a search of each of the report subparts for "Tinklenberg" anywhere in the text.

My suspicion is the circumspect lawyers did not name names that way, but I have yet to study things.

The report may be less about finger-pointing than about moving-forward.

State Sen. Steve Murphy and Rep. Lieder issued an initial joint committee press release Dec. 19, 2007, online here, explaining initiation of the Gray Plant Mooty firm's investigative involvement, and describing the joint committee makeup and tasking. In a press release contemporaneous with the release of the May 21, 2008 report, Murphy indicates it is less about blame than ongoing procedural tightening, but politicians are political animals. "Improve communication," is a cliche, but he uses it. He indicates he needs to study reported things in more depth, so I have esteemed company, that way, while I study.

MnDOT's formal response to the report is here.

For more background about the report tasking history, see here, here, here, and here.

Any reader with additional good resource links should add info via a comment.

Certainly Elwyn Tinklenberg's spending goals when MnDOT head highwayman were not to rock any boat or precipitate discord over whether a key bridge needed to be shut down a substantial time and fixed, or redone. Infrastructure decay now is a stated motive for his becoming a reluctant candidate, he's said, but back when it mattered because he ran the shop, it must not have been his thing. He was to have his Hiawatha legacy. It needed much cash to be brought to reality, a big money sinkhole, so was the bridge back-burnered with a fig leaf study run comparable to the Larry Zanko taconite-asbestos fig-leaf thing instituted at NRRI? ("fig leaf" being a term I probably don't need to explain)

See prior Crabgrassing, two items, first this; then this, expressing second thoughts the same day, from a less judgmental perspective.

So, after reading Gray Plant Mooty & Bridge, which is longer than Brothers Karamazov, will my view of that MnDOT commissioned study become one of those instances, "I thought I was wrong but was not?"

More study of the report from back then, by those knowing more of the engineering and having the right to take depositions of persons with direct knowledge, i.e., by the lawyers representing the collapse victims advised by their consulting experts, may be needed before the question of whether Elwyn or subordinates at MnDOT ordered a valid [or a fig leaf] study as cause [or excuse] for postponing [neglecting] funding of bridge repair [shutdown and replacement] during the Tinklenberg-Ventura watch at MnDOT.

Surely, knowing James Oberstar as he does, Elwyn ought to have been able to get the funding - except which party in DC controlled the House then? That was when Mark Kennedy was my representative, I think, not as far back as Bill Luther. And if you are told before Christmas, you can have the fire-engine wagon toy, or the video game upgrade, not both, you choose - and lil' Elwyn chose the light rail instead of the more mundane girder bridge. Life is a string of choices, isn't it? Toys for Christmas, or socks and underwear. Who wants the more mundane but wiser choice?

Bottom line - can you tell from the 30 pounds Gray Plant Mooty dutifully churned - Was that one study mentioned in the earlier linked posts flawed? Was it a fig leaf to cover, "We know it's deficient, so here's a consulting contract to reach a predetermined conclusion, saying 'bad' is not 'too bad' and we can muck along just as we've been doing bridge-wise, and build that frigging light rail?

Will study of the Gray Plant Mooty study give a definitive answer? It's conjectural until the details of the many megabytes are sifted and considered.

Finally, Elwyn Tinklenberg has three studies as part of his Blue Dog, fleas, and scratching situation.

First there is the Larry Zanko study and the question of whether cancer risk is being impropitiously promoted, to be spread around as a consequence of spreading around taconite tailings as paving aggregate, a threat that nobody needs or wants in front of their homes.

Second there is this MnDOT Final Study 2001-10 of the I35W bridge status during Tinklenberg's head highwayman tenure - and was there any unwise neglect of the mundane bridge when a sexy light rail legacy to tout was an alternative way for Tink to spend? Will study of the Gray Plant Mooty study give a definitive answer to that sort of consideration?

And again, for the earlier MnDOT sponsored bridge report info, see these two U.Minn. TC campus, "Center for Transportation Studies" links to full pdf materials; here, and here. And for a lets-give-the-benefit-of-doubt expression, until more evidence is available and perhaps determinative, see my thinking, here.

It's only a conjecture until the details of the many megabytes are sifted and considered. It may still be a conjecture after the effort, but the sifting has to come first.

Third there is the MnDOT Highway 10 high-priority highway upgrade study that was propitiously wrapped up May 2002, before Tinklenberg left MnDOT Oct. 2002, and formed the Tinklenberg Group in Nov. 2002, got his head together with James Norman at City of Ramsey in mid-December 2002, and had his first Highway 10 related contract as best as I could discover what was "first," Jan. 2003, surprisingly with City of Ramsey, contact person, surprisingly, James Norman.

He could write a book, "How to Become a Millionaire - Through the Revolving Door and Prospering From a Study."

Perhaps he could get Rupert Murdoch to pay him a cash advance, to do it.

With three extended studies to study, [1] Gray Plant Mooty, [2] Zanko and others on taconite fibers and cancer, and [3] Highway 10 saga pages; pinning the tail on the donkey might require a substantial investment of time.

I expect the GOP may have more time and motive to invest it in study than I, (they certainly have more at stake, Bachmann's seat, while I am solely a private citizen with concerns). Also, there are things I enjoy more than thinking about Tinklenberg out of whatever time the reaper may leave me.

However, I wonder if the GOP and Bachmann people are up to the task of real and substantial research effort and thought, vs. Brodkorbian style mud-slinging.

We shall see.