Though I am skeptical of anything ever said in campaigns, I support Rick Nolan over the other two candidates. The major reason right now is about mining. Though all, as is typical with anything about the industry and its destructive koolaid, "support" it, there is a difference for me that goes directly against Jeff Anderson. He always speaks of his "Range" connection, his support of mining and endorses Rep. Cravaack's bill to gut mining regulations. The pronouncements are always the same and always mention jobs. They never mention profits, who is getting them, how long the jobs will be for and what we will have left afterward. To repeat what is already known: No sulfide mine has ever been successfully reclaimed. Ever. All violate standards, no matter how weak. All have required public cleanup costs greater than estimated. According to Mr. Anderson and its other supporters, if we just let it happen all will be well and the streets will be paved with gold. I remind him of the gold we have now; a legacy of environmental problems. drug and alcohol addled, emptying communities and a third world like wealth divide, combined with an uneducated redneck culture that spends its union fought for wealth on alcohol and Harleys. Now, according to the supporters, if we just turn our resources over to such friendly corporate cannibals such as Glencore, all will be well. Anderson represents something I know very well, and that is what I call Rangeritis; it is the inability to think outside of anything but destroying the place to make living. The miners long ago became co-opted when wages went up, especially during the 1970's sleep on the job boom. Now, most of them speak like Corporate P.R. hacks, operating more like ventriloquist dummies than thinking human beings. Anderson is of the same strain; somehow, we have to keep the communities going (no matter how far out on the edge they are), and if we have to destroy thousands of acres for forever to do it, then so be it. It shows his limitations as a candidate, especially for a congressional office; he simply does not have the broad vision needed to look beyond the next horizon. He either doesn't know or chooses to ignore what is already well known; in either case it isn't good enough.
http://nolanforcongress.org/
Essentially, here is what's happening; we are being told to give up public resources for foreign investor profit, to corporations with horrifying records, including human rights violations, to sell precious metals on the world market, for an industry which has always left a disaster, so a small local elite can benefit greatly and some more hapless suckers can work for nearly 20 years, not retire and be stuck with bills after purchasing too many 4-wheelers. At the end of this, the communities' will again be emptying and destitute just as they are now. We will of course be on the hook for the clean up as always.
I would simply say no to all of it. But, at the very least, Nolan has a vision beyond handing the world over to this insanity.
http://nolanforcongress.org/
Essentially, here is what's happening; we are being told to give up public resources for foreign investor profit, to corporations with horrifying records, including human rights violations, to sell precious metals on the world market, for an industry which has always left a disaster, so a small local elite can benefit greatly and some more hapless suckers can work for nearly 20 years, not retire and be stuck with bills after purchasing too many 4-wheelers. At the end of this, the communities' will again be emptying and destitute just as they are now. We will of course be on the hook for the clean up as always.
I would simply say no to all of it. But, at the very least, Nolan has a vision beyond handing the world over to this insanity.
