OINK!

Here is a brief list of some big local subsidies:

http://www.hoytlakestobabbitt.com/

Excelsior Energy "The Gas Plant":http://www.irrrb.org/_site_components/lists/newboard-meetings/October%2027%20Board%20Minutes.doc

http://www.sehinc.com/online/tower/index.htm (The Harbor at Tower)

And our old favorite Giants Ridge: http://www.cagw.org/site/DocServer/2006_Minnesota_Piglet_Book.pdf?docID=1701


The first is a planned road from Hoyt Lakes to Babbitt, essentially a road between two nursing homes. This is, of course, to serve the burgeoning growth of these two outposts. St. Louis County is taking the lead on this while cutting budgets in other areas. It's symbol should actually be a pig on its back...

The second, if you have not been buried under a rock, is a loan to someone with no capital, no collateral, no engineering expertise, and whose only qualification is that he was hockey player at Hibbing and the University who was then funneled into gravy executive jobs via his connections from boosters. 9.5 million. To Lobby. To lobby to force others to give money to you for a non-existent technology known for pollution, coal gasification.

The third is the "Tower at Harbor", in which current public money is being used to pay an Engineering consultant for preliminary studies on re-routing HWY 135 in Tower, then dredging out wetlands and a river, placing jetties into Lake Vermillion, constructing what is essentially a multi-story strip mall with condos at the top surrounding a Harbor with 80 slips. No private money...developer "must be found" ....this will supposedly turn Tower into a virtual economic powerhouse, as teenagers sell espressos, bagels and trinkets to wheezing boomers piloting their pontoons up the taxpayer dug channel. There is, of course, no mention of locally connected business people benefitting at taxpayer expense. SEH's lobbyist is the thankfully retired State Senator Douglas "Porkbarrel" Johnson.

The last is 2006's subsidy to Giant's Ridge, which should tell us just how well such plans work. 20 years of subsidies later, and all they have managed to do is sell off a bunch of public land and make some contractors some cash.

We do not have heath care. Many of our current roads rival old Karelian cart paths. These are their only ideas?

Oink