Nothing New

Rep. James Oberstar felt compelled to attack NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker to keep up the Democratic attack on the GOP for the bridge collapse. In a courtesy of hand-holding the Representative, Rosenker met with Oberstar to explain a few things that he seemingly could not understand by hearing and reading the NTSB report.

No new information comes from this meeting. The gussets were still undersized and the undersized gussets were not compromised by corrosion. See our previous post. According to MPR, "Rosenker said he meant only that the under-designed gusset plates didn't show signs of corrosion." We knew that from the NTSB report. See also the Strib report on the meeting.

Oberstar’s letter to Rosenker is in contrast to his official web site which has a press release that shows he had an accurate understanding of the NTSB report as of January 15 and a measured response to it. Oberstar knew all along there was nothing to be clarified by Rosenker. On his web site, he even praised the benefit of the NTSB’s report on the undersized gussets so all governmental agencies can review their bridges.

This duplicity is disgusting for it is pure pandering to show Big Daddy is looking out for us. Don’t expect an apology from Oberstar for trying to make something out of nothing. With the web available to all of us, it is easy to find this hypocrisy. Thank you Al Gore for inventing the Internet!

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Update

Read the New York Times article on the topic.