Author: Hans Eisenbeis

It’s nice to see former Senator Rudy Boschwitz still flying the flannel after all these years. Like any self-respecting legislator on the receiving end of a populist pink slip, he’s gone quietly into the private sector. There, the glad-handing, expense accounts, and corporate logrolling aren’t scrutinized by every craven reporter and party activist (as if there is a difference) with an axe to grind. For a price, a former senator will throw his considerable weight behind just about any cause, even a specious one. Today, Boschwitz is taking up the cause against alternative farming techniques.

What on Earth could possibly be wrong with organic food? You’d be surprised. We recently learned that among Mr. Boschwitz’s many roles in public service, he is the chairman of something called the Center for Global Food Issues. We must admit that under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t have noticed. But he stepped out from behind the curtain few weeks ago, in a letter to the Star Tribune complaining about that paper’s intolerable position on food that contains genetically modified organisms—hybrid corn and other produce usually identified through the cautionary acronym “GMO.” According to the letter, Boschwitz and a CGFI colleague named Dennis Avery believe that GMOs can have a positive impact on Third-World economies and farming by increasing yields of pest-resistant crops. This sounds perfectly reasonable. Why, then, is it so creepy to realize that Boschwitz and Avery are shilling for the companies that stand to profit the most from the idea? Perhaps it is because the truth is not even salient, because they have forfeited their authority; they are essentially writing advertisements for their corporate benefactors.

The Center for Global Food Issues is run by the Hudson Institute, a conservative “think tank” that is funded by Cargill, Monsanto, Novartis, and McDonald’s—among many other corporations. A full list of Hudson’s underwriters reads like an all-star roster of petro-chemical agribusiness.

If mercenary lobbyists like Boschwitz and Avery actually believed what they say about the benefits of big-business farming, we think they would be less disingenuous in their rhetoric. In promoting their brand of high-volume, low-quality, non-sustainable agriculture, they are shameless about arguing all sides. All is fair in love and war; agribusiness has been taking it in the gut for a decade now. Why wouldn’t they marshal their forces to fight back against the insidious tide of hippy-dippy paranoia about proven modern farming techniques? (The only thing petro-chemical farming ever killed was the family farm, duh!)

Boschwitz and Avery say that genetically modified crops are preferable because they reduce the need for pesticides and herbicides; suddenly and inexplicably, they are worried about Third-World farmers trudging through their fields with backpack sprayers. This is surely a recent and isolated case of dementia, rather than a prick in their conscience, since their supporters continue to claim that glyphosate herbicides and pesticides are perfectly safe for man and beast alike. This old saw is still a good one, it turns out. Many experts agree that GMOs—excused as a technology that would make pesticides and herbicides obsolete, after that nasty business with DDT a few years back—actually increase farmers’ reliance on chemicals. As GMOs have spread around the world, pesticide use has increased. How odd.

There’s more of this brand of double-talking dishonesty. Organics are wasteful and inefficient, says the Center for Global Food Issues, because they allegedly require a lot more acreage to produce the same yield as “conventionally grown” produce. This is the first we’ve heard that Cargill, Monsanto, ADM and the rest are worried about land-use issues and the preservation of wilderness and wetlands. (They might ponder the considerable evidence that monoculturing—planting millions of acres of the exact same hybrid of, say, “Roundup Ready” corn—is destroying the basic building block of biology: diversity.)

Worst of all, the Cargills of the world have cynically peddled at least one Dennis Avery prevarication. Avery invented and spread the falsehood that organic foods are less safe than non-organic foods (because, he said, they use manure as a fertilizer—which conventional agribusiness does too, but never mind). In a widely syndicated article, he cited an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that organic foods are eight times more dangerous with regard to bacteria like E. coli. The problem was, that source is a CDC scientist named Paul Mead. Mead never said anything of the kind. He merely hung up on Avery when he called to beg someone at the CDC to confirm his views on the matter. In fact, the CDC subsequently clarified the issue, and retractions were published all around: Avery’s claim was as bogus as it was self-serving. No less an authority than the New York Times gave Avery the public scolding he deserved.

So what is the honorable former senator doing in the same byline as this industry flack who is prone to stretch the truth, or simply invent his own? Funny how these sorts of people never seem to espouse beliefs that are independent of their corporate benefactors—or undertake any “public service” that isn’t somehow connected to commercial interests.

There certainly has been a lot of fuss lately about the health insurance crisis. A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times Magazine, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—a person who is guaranteed to get a rise out of excitable Americans on both ends of the political spectrum—set forth her case for reform. Again. She noted that the situation has only gotten worse since she was laughed off the rostrum the first time she proposed radical change to a broken system that will not heal itself.

Within the week, the puissant Newt Gingrich wrote to acknowledge that he agreed wholeheartedly with at least one of Hillary’s principles: that reform must focus on the individual. Although he didn’t say precisely what he means (undoubtedly that innovation and change must come from individuals exercising their profit motives, not the fed acting like a nanny state), we were gratified to learn that the issue means enough to him that he actually founded something called the Center for Health Transformation.

When Hillary and Newt agree on something, the end is surely nigh; only the willfully stupid don’t see the mess we’re in. Business leaders are noticing that employee health benefits are the single biggest debit on the company spreadsheets. When the captains of capitalism begin to complain, powerful people begin to listen. But what can the powers and principalities offer, other than flagrant lip service?

It is an interesting impasse. The only way to effect genuine change is to muster sympathy from influential folks who worry about health insurance only in connection with their stock portfolios. We live in times when enlightenment comes in only one flavor—enlightened self-interest—and no politician will take up the cause of real reform until it is clear that such a position will get him power, money, or both.

We wonder why William McGuire, the CEO of United Health Group, is so eager to raise money for George W. Bush. The president is grateful for the hundred thousand dollars McGuire has raised on behalf of his re-election. Does Minnesota’s highest-paid executive know something we don’t about what is required to overhaul health care? We hope so, considering he was paid ninety-three million last year to run the nation’s largest and most profitable health care company.

We like to pick on McGuire, but we know the problem is systemic. Of sixteen corporate officers at United Health, twelve have given a total of twenty-three thousand dollars to the Bush reelection campaign (just one thousand dollars short of the maximum allowed by law), while none have given a red cent to that bleeding heart John Kerry. (Lois Quam, the head of one division who is also married to DFL point man Matt Entenza, played it safe with a harmless donation to Dick Gephardt.) It may also be worth noting that four United Health executives reporting to McGuire bring home a total of $66.7 million in annual salary.

Which begs the question: Just how committed to change can a person be, who is compensated so handsomely by the status quo? And why does United Health make its home in a state where the company cannot legally operate its core business because it is a for-profit health management organization? Perhaps it is to insulate its executives from the public opprobrium their greed so richly deserves.

What is the Republican agenda for treating the health care crisis? It is to blame bogeymen, to distract from real issues with straw men and red herrings. The people presently in control like to claim that what is really driving health care costs are frivolous lawsuits and filing inefficiencies, and an absence of competition in the marketplace.

McGuire, in his euphonious annual letter from the chairman to stockholders, makes grandiose claims about the need for broad societal initiatives, while gloating about the performance of his company. He makes no specific recommendations for change—at least not anything that might ruffle stockholders. What’s really needed, in the argot of the day, is more “science-based decision making” (in other words, more insurance-company bean-counters making even more decisions—it is called actuarial science, you know) and the computer-compatibility of patient files. This is a little like blaming the oceans on the rain.

“Our health care can—must—work better, be more efficient, and truly provide for all people,” he wrote last year. “As a nation, we can and must cover everyone.” And yet he also points out that “the magnitude of the challenges in health care, combined with ideology, lead some to propose preemptive or unilateral decisions.” The clear message is that drastic times require timid gestures.

Let us translate McGuire’s game plan for you: We can squeeze even more money out of the system for our “stakeholders” by continuing to turn up the heat of our rhetoric, while cashing in our stock options, and being careful to do nothing of substance. When the issue is complicated, it’s best to blame the trial lawyers (malpractice chicanery!) and the nurses (lousy filers!), and raise as much money as is legal for political candidates who care about the basic human dignity of massive profits.

On Tax Day, United Health reported record first-quarter earnings and increased margins. Profits are way up. Oddly, the health care situation for most non-millionaires has not noticeably improved.

Notwithstanding our love of the single-occupant automobile, we were very excited about the arrival of the light-rail train this spring. We love strolling down Fifth Street past the bright new Warehouse District station. It gaily announces the time and date on its prim marquees and generally looks as if it expects our train to shoosh in momentarily. But then things went a little fubar with the MTC bus strike. Because MTC won the contract to operate the Hiawatha Line, it cannot do so until the final Ts are crossed on the present agreement between management and operators. Each delay is amplified tenfold for the nascent light-rail system, since the preparations for its launch are legion and complex.

These sorts of capital improvements are always controversial, for the simple fact that they cost big bucks. They feel almost hydraulic, in the way that powerful amounts of money have to be diverted from some other major program. It is a legacy of certain conservatives (who, we can’t help pointing out, have managed to outspend liberals in “reducing the size of government” for the past twenty years, and hold the present and previous records for largest federal deficits in the history of the world) that there is no gain without pain. Incidentally, the best way to minimize the pain seems to be to punish those who are already in pain, in the hope that they won’t notice or can’t complain.

We are noticing and complaining. The closure of public schools in the wake of maximum increases in property taxes, along with an unwise conversation about three new stadiums and a silly plan to test a monorail, have opened up old wounds. It is galling to have state leaders bragging about balancing the state budget and being “fiscally responsible” when they have merely passed the bill along to the counties and cities.

Invariably, taxpayers feel compelled to do the math and weigh the options. When Minneapolis chose to indulge its vanity with the Hennepin Avenue suspension bridge—or more recently, the heinous “Frank Lloyd Wright” bridge on Third Avenue—we were among the complainers who wondered whether the money might be spent on something more important. It was only the mean-spirited who pointed out that a new bridge actually meant more accommodations for the homeless.

Still, what would life be like if every decision were based merely on utility? Would an artless world be preferable to a starving one? We would not like to live in a city that lacked the imagination to do both; the choice between want and need is artificial. We’ll mull this conundrum while we wait for our train.

Mark Twain was being a contrarian when he said “great writing flatters all writers” because he knew that most writers are constitutionally incapable of this kind of largeness of spirit. Lesser writers—and we are all lesser writers—agree: That was easy for him to say.

Those of us who write for a living are often guilty of harboring vast reserves of schadenfreude. Almost to a person, we are a jealous, spiteful group who cannot abide the success of rivals. And we are all rivals.

Well, not all of us. There is a special class of artist who is so engaged in his own earnest philosophical and spiritual questions, that even the most jealous among us are powerless to feel anything but profound admiration. Paul Gruchow was one those selfless artists. He lived and worked and loved and wrote and despaired and died in Minnesota.

Despite modern restlessness, history works slowly. Gruchow’s influence and significance will not be fully known for decades, but we have long been convinced that he will, in due time, be shelved with John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey. In other words, he was among the English language’s finest essayists on nature and the environment and the value of place, and one could certainly make the argument that we need him more today than the world needed his predecessors.

Gruchow had agreed to write for The Rake a few months ago, but he took his own life on February 22. We’d been especially excited to have one of Minnesota’s finest (and least appreciated) essayists in these pages, but somewhere along the line we realized something was terribly wrong. When we last spoke to him about his assignment, Gruchow had just emerged from the hospital, and he was having trouble even remembering where he had been or what he had been doing before that. Much to our impoverishment, we were never close enough to the man to know that he’d suffered with depression for more than twenty years, and that this latest suicide attempt followed four previously unsuccessful ones.

It may be especially fitting that Gruchow’s final gift to the world is a book about his long journey into night. He had recently finished a collection of essays that considered the interior landscape of clinical depression. It is not clear whether this will be published at all; his agent realizes now that it is essentially a 300-page suicide note. But excerpts published in the Star Tribune suggest that this book, like all his previous books, gives a generous and transforming view of a subject as rife with stereotype and misunderstanding as mental illness.

Self-obsession is the fuel of writing. But there is too much writing that reflects the writer’s love of the writer. Gruchow loved the world, the thing-in-itself. His eloquent argument was that the natural world had a dignity and a reality sufficient unto itself; that it does not depend on humans for its innate value, that nature is in man as much as man is in nature. It is heartbreaking that this particularly bright and self-aware spark of nature has fallen on wet ground.

We have a television in the office, a twelve-inch black and white job with rabbit-ears. This TV, recovered more than once from the garbage, is switched on precisely once a year: in March, during the state boys high school hockey tournament. We just can’t help it. If you were born and raised anywhere in this good state, from Luverne on up to Pigeon Falls, it’s in your genes. And even though management here is, in part, Iowan in both origin and practice, we rustics are indulged in a thousand different ways.

But we are worried. One of our origin myths is taking a beating in the corners. We’re less concerned with Republicans throwing their elbows at our proud Scandinavian progressivism, and more concerned that Darby Hendrickson—the sole Minnesotan on the Wild’s roster, and the first goal-scorer at the Xcel Energy Center—has been exiled to the minor-league locker-room in Houston. Is the decline of real Minnesotans in the NHL evidence of globalism, a resurgent Canadian dynasty, or just the degrading local effect of Olive Garden?

There have been other causes for concern. When the high school league agreed in 1991 to split the state into two divisions, we were gratified that twice as many kids would realize their dream of playing hockey live on Channel 9. On the other hand, we have to be honest and say it felt like a dissipation. How much longer would we get to see Warroad, pop. 1,722, come to town to thrash Edina, pop. 47,425? How much longer would we sustain the dream that all Minnesotans owned hockey on a spiritual level—that the talent pool of the suburbs would never dominate the frozen pond of the tundra town?

Hollywood may come to our rescue with that most questionable proposition—the hockey movie (Slap Shot; Youngblood; Mighty Ducks; Mystery, Alaska…). There is no greater mythmaker today than the movies. Miracle has opened to widespread mirth, at least around these parts, and it’s no wonder. It is a throat-catching tribute to Herb Brooks and his 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. That “Miracle On Ice” team won the gold medal with twelve certified Minnesotans on the roster, and a quorum on the bench, too. And while we tend to view provincialism and nationalism with suspicion, we figured, what the hell? This is our time, this is our place. If tiny Eveleth can take on the evil empire of Hill-Murray, why shouldn’t a bunch of amateurs from the Range stand up to a red army of Soviet pros? Our private war against the cold was writ large as a definitive moment in the Cold War.

Have basketball, baseball, or football ever done that for us? Root all you like for the Wolves, the Twins, even the godforsaken Vikings. But give us hockey—the Wild, the Gophers, the International Falls Broncos. These teams are among the most admired in the country, in any sport, in any season. If a place can own something as ephemeral as a sport, Minnesota’s claim on hockey is surely stronger than Indiana’s on basketball, or Texas’s on football. We are the state of hockey, indeed.

February is high season for cross-country skiing around these parts. Minnesota and Wisconsin are the Mecca and Medina of this arcane sport. The American Birkebeiner in Hayward, Wisconsin (February 19; never mind Atkins, you better start carbo-loading today), is all the evidence we need that the nation—and much of the world, actually—comes here to celebrate winter’s most athletic event. Also noted: This week, the second annual City of Lakes Loppet proves that the Twin Cities are the urban center of all this woolly flapdoodle.

There are other subtle signs. A few weeks ago, we shuffled into the local ski shop. We’d been blessed not only by early snow, but by the serendipitous visit of Thomas Aalsgaard. If you were Norwegian, you’d know that Aalsgaard is the Roger Maris of the cross-country skiing world. (He always stood slightly in the shadow of Bjorn Daehlie, the sport’s undisputed Babe Ruth, even though he had better form and was a faster sprinter. You may recall Daehlie as the single most decorated Olympian, any season, any sport.) A handful of locals turned out to meet a guy who’s the equivalent of a rock star back home.

Still, it’s the nature of cross-country skiers even in Norway to stand back, to seek solitude and simplicity. We know for sure that the knickers-and-knee-socks folks are notorious pinch-pennies, and we have our own private rage to prove it. If you’ve been on the trail lately, you’ll know that Three Rivers Park District quietly installed a new “fee structure” for Nordic skiing. What used to cost seven dollars per year now costs around seventy dollars per year, and instead of the honor system, you’ll officially be tagged with a misdemeanor if you ski without a whole array of tickets, passes, permissions, and receipts.

What’s worse than the overall price tag is the strong sense one gets that one is being fleeced by a spanking machine of government agencies, each desperate to get their last measure of pocket lint. The state requires a DNR ski pass to tread on any trail in Minnesota,
including city and regional parks. Three Rivers wants a patron pass and a skiing pass. All passes are daily or annual, but only certain combinations are available at the park itself, trail passes are needed even if you’re skiing at the downhill areas, but they are not needed for sledding or dog-walking, and…and… If this sounds like far too much mental investment for what was intended to be a soul-salving skate through the woods, then we’re on the same page. We don’t generally go to the park for more paperwork, expense, and irritation.

Now, there is some payoff for all this fee-taking. The greater Metropolitan area continues to invest in its reputation, the best west of Oslo, for promoting cross-country skiing. The green shirts are hip to the value of trail groomers, quality ski rentals, and warm chalets. They’re even making snow up in Elm Creek Park, a terrific and long overdue idea that lends cross-country the same institutional value as downhill skiing.

Still, no amount of sugar makes us happy about the medicine. The parks were one of the few places left where regular citizens could enjoy the feeling that the taxes we pay actually underwrite privileges we exercise. Now we’re shelling out both the taxes and the price of admission. Call it government at the point of purchase, and hate it with all your being. If there is a God in heaven, He will send more Republicans to the park to see what they have wrought. Allegedly, we are no longer getting fleeced on April 15. Instead, it’s happening in our leisure time, year-round.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the procedure. What they don’t tell you is that it’s basically having a kid, even though the kid is you. They all make it out to be a “perfect genetic copy,” they get all lathered about “genomic imprinting.” Yeah, but it’s a DNA snapshot of me in a sagging diaper. Me with a relentless stream of snot coagulating around my nostrils. Me at two years old. The terrible twos. With all due respect, I’m cute, but not that useful at this age. So far, the only “bioethics” issue has been whether I should spank me or not.

If I’d stopped to think about it, it would have made sense. Did I expect a mid-level manager in an oxford to jump out of the test tube? Now, of course, I realize I can’t even use the little guy as an organ donor. His tiny liver couldn’t handle a single four-day weekend in my body. God knows, his kidneys and bladder work beautifully—too beautifully for my worn-out valves and distended sphincters and whatnot.

There are many aspects of childhood that I am not keen to relive. It is irritating to have people mistake me for a girl again. I will not put one of those pink bows on my bald head just to appease the gender-obsessed. Strained beets have, in the mists of time, lost whatever appeal they once held for me. I am thankful that I will not have to re-endure Barry Goldwater; but that’s cold comfort with chicken pox and mumps to look forward to again.

The other day, I stretched the rules of “bring your son to work day” a little bit. It was a mistake. Jennifer in accounting said I did not look like me. “He must take after his mother,” she said. “That must be where he got those pretty blue eyes. Or maybe it was the milkman!” she tittered. I did not point out that my toddler’s corneas would be a perfect match for mine, if it came down to that.

My friend Ted says I indulge the boy. Well, duh. He’s not my son, he’s not my brother. He’s me! Imagine my delight at getting to stay up as late as I want the second time around. Imagine the unvarnished joy I get riding in my own lap, getting to steer the Camry on designated residential streets. True, I have caved and bought myself a car seat and a bike helmet, but this is just to keep the neighbors off my back. “This is not actually my child,” is an argument I’ve found to be problematic.

There are many advantages and efficiencies. When my younger self starts school, for example, there will be no need for school pictures. They would just be redundant. I’m sure I have most grades tucked away in a shoe box somewhere. While I didn’t have the foresight to hold on to all my baby clothes, I have started to stockpile my old double-vented suits and wingtips.

One might think not having a unique identity would be a problem, but look at it this way: The little guy will never need to apply for a social security number or a driver’s license. On the other hand, I don’t suppose I can claim myself as a dependent.

As a single working father of a clone, I find that people are sympathetic. The ladies at my daycare think it’s cute the way I speak to myself. “Time to change my diaper!” always brings a smile. “Boy, I’m smelling a little ripe!” And they think it’s charming that we have the same name—though of course he’s “the second.”

If I had it to do over again, well, I guess I’d do it again and again and again. In a sense, no matter how many times I replicate my DNA, I’ll still be an only child, and that’s pretty cool. I’d hate to be a burden to my family. As I get older, I intend to take care of myself. An army of one.

There is a subtle way to measure progress. Every time we head north to God’s country, we’re forced to bring along the cell phone. Normally, we refuse the electronic leash. But when we’re on the road in a secondhand mini-van full of kids, or when we’re trying to rendezvous with people who have already gone over to the dark side, who conduct their many important affairs, and also their petty ones, by cell phone—well, sometimes you just have to join them.

We notice the cellular networks have gradually and dependably migrated north to the Canadian border. It’s a mild entertainment to watch the rising column of connectivity in the LED window in our palms, where we used to watch the dip and rise of the passing phone lines out the car window. It is our particular cross to bear that our cell service is superior in the city where we never need it, and lousy where we do. North of Duluth, we would need another phone—one that would roam promiscuously in search of other, larger networks.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that would have necessitated a new phone number. We’re not sure what the impediment was, exactly, but federal regulators have removed it—the one preventing consumers from keeping their old numbers when they migrated across service providers or bought a new phone. One would have thought the marketplace sorted this out a long time ago. Now that 130 million Americans—nearly 70 percent of all adults—are sold on the idea of cell phones, they’ll undoubtedly be tempted to change phone companies and handsets, while committing for the long haul to one number.

In the past, most cell phones were used for an average of eighteen months, practically a lifetime. There are already 500 million decommissioned cell phones in the U.S. Another 100 million are thrown on the pile or in the sock drawer each year.
Increased coverage in rural areas, along with stepped-up competition among phone companies, suggests that soon there may be more cell phones than televisions, which cannot be a good thing. We don’t have much patience for the casual Luddite who grumbles every time he sees someone using a cell phone out in the bass boat, but there are good reasons to be worried about this growth.

In the north, it’s a special example of the hen coming home to roost where the eggs are being hatched. Anyone who has paged through the literature that accompanies a Minnesota fishing license will tell you that it’s not exactly smart to eat Minnesota fish—even if you’ve caught them in the most isolated BWCA backwater. The lake at the foot of Will Steger’s middle-of-nowhere homestead, for example, contains walleye and northern pike that a wise person would not eat more often than once a week.

The culprit, long known and understood but still ubiquitous, is mercury. It is brought on the wind and in the rain, even to virgin lakes that have never been churned by an outboard. Mercury is a common component in batteries, and because wireless technologies are becoming more common, not less, we can expect this problem to increase. We’ve slipped dead batteries into the trash often enough to realize that general public awareness of the problem is no guarantee that it will go away.

We are accustomed to thinking of this “information age” as being environmentally benign at worst—virtual worlds, paperless offices, telecommuting, and all that. But this ignores the serious environmental impact of numerous toxins and heavy metals that go into a PC, a Palm Pilot, or a cell phone. If we learn one thing from our newly networked world, it should be this: What you can’t see can hurt you.—Hans Eisenbeis

The other day, we strolled down Hennepin Avenue and ducked into the city’s oldest bar. In a paneled backroom where we might have expected a billiard table, a small group of mystery writers had assembled to tipple and talk shop. Writers are normally solo artists, not given to fraternizing with the enemy. But mystery writers are different. They root for each other, they swap ideas, they reveal their tricks. It reminded us of Penn Jillette’s recent article in the Los Angeles Times. After prompting from political friends, Jillette genially tried to explain how magicians tell a little lie to hide a bigger lie—that’s what misdirection and sleight-of-hand are all about, though he said the ability to apply the lesson to certain current political realities was beyond him.

We only wish there were more magic abroad. Our present impasse lacks deftness in handling. Our public servants have stopped trying to create the illusion of compromise and cooperation. We’re not sure why the National Hubris Reserve has skyrocketed in the years since the Republicans had their revenge on Bill Clinton. But we have noticed that the problem with go-it-alone conservatism is that it’s inherently anti-social. And it seems to be catching. From Washington to Austin, Texas, from Bill O’Reilly to Al Franken, we’re witnessing a breakdown in civility. It’s as if road rage had escaped from the outer-ring suburbs and infiltrated the office, the school, the neighborhood park. Those who excuse these rude times by saying politics is a contact sport can be counted on to despise sympathy, and to debase the proprieties. It’s a shame, because even when our representatives are fighting for just causes in complex times, we’re inclined to pick sides and plug our ears, as if it were a wrestling match or a bodybuilding contest.

The other day, Sen. Norman Coleman indicated that he will vote to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if it means more jobs in Northern Minnesota. A coal gasification plant is on the verge of being legislated into existence up on the Range. This is not really a feint to distract us from cronyism, nor from Senator Coleman’s previous opposition to same, though it may be an unpleasant brand of gladhanding. (It does two things that irritate us: It panders to outstate voters, among whom the DFL has long been in decline. And it polishes to a high shine the illusion that Washington is allied with the suburbs and the exurbs against the wicked inner city. )

Senator Coleman is hopeful that ANWR will never come up for a vote, and it probably won’t. It’s much too contentious. But then Alaskans have wanted access to ANWR for decades, to further pad their own wallets. And if padding theirs means padding ours, then why not reconsider?

We remain opposed, on the sneaking suspicion that plundering our national legacy for immediate local gain is not entirely responsible. But we’re even more adamant that what’s needed is a thorough airing of priorities. If this is pocketbook politics, let it be known by its correct name. We’re most opposed to simplemindedness. Republicans have so turned off Democrats that lefties may fight tooth and nail against even the best kinds of legislation, and look for the meanest reason by which to impugn them. Congress might limit the damage the executive branch is doing by maximizing corporate profits under bright-sounding prevarications like the “Clean Energy Act.” If we must be tricked into such mischief, then at least bring back the illusion of consensus. In the meantime, they should permanently concede ANWR to the treehuggers (why, after all, is it called a “refuge”?), and find some other way to send money where it’s needed.