Oberstar's Big Brother Bill Sounds Scary To Me

“My father told me when I graduated from high school, ‘You have two choices. You can work in the mines, or go to college to create for yourself a better life… And it better be one that helps other people.” ~Congressman Jim Oberstar

One of my favorite writing assignments back when I did a lot of freelancing was in 1988 when I got tapped to interview Congressman James Oberstar and his Republican opponent Jerry Shuster for People & Politics, a 1988 Minnesota publication designed to spotlight the Minnesota candidates in that year’s congressional election. The son of an iron ore miner, Oberstar was raised in Chisholm just a few miles from the largest strip mine in the world. At the end of the article I accurately predicted that he would be our 8th District Congressman for as long as he wanted, as the two decades following have confirmed.

A lot of people don’t remember that these Northern Minnesota mines produced ninety percent of the ore that became steel for weapons, battleships, planes, jeeps, shells, in World War II. You might say that Minnesota’s mines were the unsung heroes in stopping the Germans and the Japanese.

This region was also a hotbed of Communist activity, the headquarters and heartbeat of the Communist Party U.S.A. back in time. The region attracted Europe’s disenfranchised, immigrants from all over coming to America were ushered to this remote icebox for the purpose of settling these untamed, barren spaces 130 years ago. Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians… they felt quite comfortable here with the bone chilling winters making them feel right at home. Minnesota's presidential hopeful Hubert H. Humphrey's claim to fame here was in weeding out or exorcising the Reds from the DFL, to make Minnesota's Dems more palatable to the wider masses.

It was against this backdrop, or out of this soup, that Jim Oberstar emerged. His father was a strong union man, a leader in his own right, and Jim early on was involved with the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party here, handing out pamphlets, doing the volunteer legwork needed to keep his father’s party in power.

For the P&P piece I met Jim at the City Hall in Chisholm and after conducting the interview he invited me home to meet his mom and teen-aged daughters. His wife was in D.C., so at the house I talked with the ladies while he called his wife on the phone. His mom told stories about Jim’s dad. They’d just finished Sunday dinner, so she was cleaning up as we talked.

For me, there was much to like about Mr. Oberstar. He did not walk lockstep with the party, was in fact out of step with the more Left wing who held greater clout in St. Paul, Minnesota’s capitol. He began his life as an idealist and intended to become a missionary, possibly to Haiti. C.S. Lewis and Henri Nouwen were his favorite writers. But fate turned his path to Washington, and it was there he became a quiet force for the past three decades where today he chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, a logical role because of Duluth is one of the largest inland ports in the world, and also has an international airport along with its air national guard base.

So it is not surprising that Congressman Oberstar would have his hand in a bill designed to raise funds for the upkeep of our roads. He’s been involved in transportation for decades. And we have some pretty bad roads up here where the climate does more than its share of ravaging highways and byways.

What is surprising is the nature of the solution. According to an Associated Press story which appeared in the Duluth News-Tribune and here at the Minnesota Public Radio site, the bill apparently recommends that all vehicles be equipped with a GPS device that identifies where you are at all times. The purpose of the GPS is to help government know whether you are driving on highways or back roads which would each be taxed at a different rate.

Since it is only an estimated half trillion to implement, what are we waiting for? To say there are kinks to be worked out here is an understatement. What mystifies me is that it hasn’t already been nicknamed “The Big Brother Bill.”

At root, I would be interested in what the intent of the bill is. Is the intent to raise money for roads? If so, why not increase taxes on fuel? Is the intent to force people to live in overcrowded cities dependent on public transportation? Is the intent to enable police to locate stolen cars more quickly or monitor who is doing what and going where? Are we building an Eagle Eye grid for overseeing society by means of technology?

Fortunately there are some in congress who recognize the PR problems such a bill could create. According to the MPR piece, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, noted that “public acceptance, not technology, is the main obstacle to a mileage-based tax.”

No kidding. Any bill that even remotely reminds us of Orwell’s 1984 is going to get a chilly reception, even if you’re from Arizona, Texas or Virginia.

What do you think? You can probably tell that I don't really like it.