Iron Range Delegation and Clown College; Official Court Jesters for Mining companies

The Iron Range delegation has introduced bills limiting Minnesoa Pollution Control Agency authority on Wild Rice WATERS. Rep. Jason Metsa is introducing a bill, HF 853 he claims orders the MPCA to “designate Wild Rice waters across the state” to allow “ industry and local governments to plan their treatment facilities“. Along with Carly Melin, Tom Anzelc and the Republican Representative of the Aitkin area which contains mining leases. Senators Bakk and Tommasoni have introduced Senate bill SF868.

Both bills actually prevent the MPCA from “applying the standard for wild rice waters” or list wild rice waters for "impairment by sulfates under the Federal Clean Water Act. The public complaint is the MPCA sulfate standard has been “unevenly enforced”. In reality, they are preventing the agency from regulating at all and specifically from enforcement on Minntac.  

For over a decade, Minntac has been forced by Federal regulators to treat its tailings pond leakage into the Sand River at the east side of the tailings basin, an area formerly known before as 'Twin Lakes”. Little Sandy Lake was known in the past for up to 89 acres of wild rice (Location here: 47.616658, -92.609201). MPCA staff recommended that the Sulfate standard be applied to Little Sandy Lake in a draft statement of July 25, 2013.

So, our legislators are now publicly paid lobbyists for the mining industry and specifically United States Steel and Minntac. They are collaborating with a large Mining corporation in polluting our water and destroying wild rice, a resource used  by natives and white's and is a violation of treaty rights.  

For these officials to claim the DFL mantle while acting as frontmen for polluters and the extraction industry is as duplicitous as can be. This is not the first time they have collaborated with Republicans to reduce protections or sold out the public.  They do have a party membership: "The me, mine and my corporate sponsors party".

MPCA Draft recommendation link: http://bit.ly/1CFiYvV

Minntac tailings basin original EIS: http://bit.ly/1MuzMxL

Minntac Final Wild Rice EIS: http://bit.ly/1ySKwvB

Vox Populi....Vox illiberaliter...Tom Bakk, defender of the public purse.

The conflict between Governor Dayton and Senator Tom Bakk supposedly started with commissioner's salaries. The Governor has proposed an increase in commissioner's salaries. Governor Dayton stated he no longer trusts Bakk as this was something previously agreed upon. Bakk has posed as a populist budget watcher protecting the public purse from the supposed profligate Governor. One item, Bakk as defender of the public purse, is provably false. The other, the conflict starting over this, most likely isn't, considering what the Governor has dealt with for years.

The local party organ newspaper, the Mesabi Daily News, better named the “ Pravda of the Iron Range” both for its commitment to truth and the local elite's shared opinion, ran an editorial supporting Bakk and a “vote your opinion” public poll designed to target ranting rangers against the Governor and supporting Bakk. Fortunately,  for the public, and unfortunately for the family members, it's readership shrinks with every obituary announcement.

Bakk is no populist. Calling him DFL is an even greater stretch, akin to calling the Clintonite Democrats “progressive”. His protection of the public purse has included 90 million dollars for the Senate office building ( One wonders if there will be Soviet realist style statues, with naked muscular senators holding picks and shovels to the sky), funding the water supply for the poverty stricken owners of Lutsen Mountains, and ensuring individuals and businesses getting funds from the IRRRB do so in secret lest the public know some get millions for doing nothing, While various social stances and other policies deserve approval, the fact is the district votes strongly for these and politician is likely to support them out of necessity.

Most likely, this argument has been festering for a long time, as Bakk and other Range politicos have extracted personal programs and funding for decades. One example is their collaboration with Republicans over the sell off of state trust lands in the Government shutdown compromise of 2011, designed to hand over public resources to extraction industries.

Perhaps the Governor's tolerance of the lies finally ended. His, and the public's, should have ended long ago.

The Great Tommasoni and the Iron Range Magic show

Sen. David Tommasoni’s new position as lobbyist, although the organization represents public entities, is simply symptomatic of a corrupt system, especially so on the Iron Range.
For decades, politicians here have been the co-opted servants of the mining industry, providing subsidies, acting as frontmen and either arguing for or providing reduced environmental regulation. Despite this and the repeated promises of prosperity, the Iron Range has the look of a post-Soviet abandoned waste dump. Those lucky, corrupt or subservient enough can still make a decent living but the despair remains, the diaspora continues, and the empty generations are truly here now. Despite the feel-good proclamations of the Chambers of Commerce, sounding like a mix of huckster Anthony Robbins, Up with People and Snake Oil salesmen, the children are few and the majority are poor.
Senator Tommasoni’s position is merely a public acknowledgment of what has been true but very rarely stated for a very long time. The same names, the good ol’ boy system, now mostly early wave baby boomers, have been recycled through different positions for over a generation. A few outsiders have been let in, but the system of interlocking boards, public consortiums and appointed positions have been a way to distribute power, public funds and favors for decades.
While it existed before, the taconite tax increased the system of control and patronage servile to mining regardless of cost. For the first decade and a half, the money flowed free and so did the theft. No one complained as there was plenty to go around. Since the eighties, however, the piece of meat hanging from the chain has elevated and become smaller. The dogs leaping for it are merely fewer and more vicious now. So is the social context, now resembling a farce out of the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, when everyone knew the lie but could not say it out loud and any dissident was deemed mentally ill. The code words are different here, but “environmentalist” or “doesn’t support mining enough” have the same meaning. The barren streets, empty houses and abandoned shops are just all too real, unfortunately.
Politician as lobbyist is nothing new, but the Range example is best described by the ten dollar word “avaricious”. Greed does not fully describe the system as it is so openly practiced here. Bribery is not needed, as the rewards are voted on in public meetings.
This system has long since passed padding pockets. It has, for a very long time, been out and out theft of public resources and funds. It is the Range’s great open secret, and it has as much to do with the empty houses and schools as did relying on a shrinking industry prone to leaving toxic waste, industrial brown-fields and giant holes.
The Range is not alone in this, of course— witness stadiums for profitable NFL teams and subsidies for such important public structures as privately owned malls. More money has been wasted on useless projects benefiting a few or employing the privileged than would have been by handing the money out by random lottery. The hucksterism has reached absurdity, as local officials now openly campaign for a private industry that has polluted, sucked pension funds dry, abandoned sites and communities with no reclamation and declared bankruptcy in every single case. Now, we find they are investing or truly subsidizing its startup and thus tying the public, a large number of whom do not want it, to the enterprise without any public input or knowledge. After years of subsidies and giveaways, it would be better if they simply wore the corporate logos as uniforms.
While this is a travesty, it is not anything new. The state developed and subsidized the industry and still does. Unfortunately, the public has had to pick up the costs, whether in public resources such as water, the emptied pensions absorbed by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, or the countless social costs from the mangled, half empty communities. None of this is ever mentioned, however; it is part of the great “disappeared” from official memory.