Minnesotastan: The Newest Third World Country?

Imagine a science fiction film with the following premise: Back in 1982, scientists at the University of Minnesota develop a machine which allows them to peer into the future of Minnesota. They can read newspapers and hear radio and TV broadcasts from the future.

What they find most amazing is not the spread of coffee shops with wireless internet access, however. They are most amazed by the ways in which the state of Minnesota has come to resemble many developing nations, or even the ancient Roman Empire before it fell.

What are the resemblances? The scientists are surprised to discover that entertainment, in the form of a new baseball stadium for the Twins, becomes more important to Minnesota politicians of the future than road and bridge safety. The new Twins stadium is projected to cost over $500 million, only $125 million of which will be paid for by the Twins. The Twins are owned by Carl Pohlad, who has a net worth of about $2 billion, yet somehow Minnesota politicians determined that Carl needed some corporate welfare. If he didn't get it, he might just have taken his team and gone home.

The scientists are particularly shocked to hear the news broadcasts, beamed from the year 2007, which inform them of the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi. The bridge had already shown signs of aging and fracturing in 1982, when the scientists began their experiments. They couldn't believe that Minnesota politicians, who used to be responsible stewards of the public good, would put a $500 million ballpark ahead of a $250 million bridge. They were even more shocked to find out that a Minnesota governor of the future would campaign on the pledge of no new taxes, and then sign a bill that raises taxes for just the citizens of Hennepin County. All of Minnesota would "benefit" from the new stadium, but the brunt of the costs would fall on the citizens of one county. Minnesota, in the time of the scientists, was still governed by fairness and responsible policy-making.

In fact, in the very year the time-bending experiments happened, the Transportation Commissioner of the time, Richard P. Braun, closed the St. Paul High Bridge over strenuous objections. Unlike the current commissioner, Carol Molnau, Braun was an actual civil engineer. The future, the scientists realized, would become rife with political patronage. Bread and circuses, as in the waning days of the Roman Empire, would trump public safety and democracy. The wishes of the citizens would be disregarded in favor of corporate interests and cynical ploys, such as easily broken "no new taxes" pledges.

Conservatives, who used to be watchdogs in the public interest, would lose sight of their goals of keeping government small but efficient. They would cave in to an exclusive focus on the wealthy, and keeping power. Liberals and progressives would forget about their reason for pursuing politics: the good of the people. Instead, both liberals and conservatives would become addicted to power and patronage, and start to vote against the public good, and for the good of moneyed interests.

The scientists jokingly started to call the Minnesota that awaited them twenty-five years in the future "Minnesotastan." For the Minnesotans of the future, however, it was no joke. Thirteen people would die on August 1, 2007, as one of the busiest bridges in the state collapsed.