Coal Hacks Are Making Propaganda (CHAMP!)

There’s an ad in this week’s Scenic Range News (a weekly newspaper on the western Mesabi Range) promoting a new group, CHAMP, or Citizens Happy About the Mesaba Project.

This is an obvious turn on CAMP, Citizens Against the Mesaba Project, a large well-organized citizen group that has held the line against Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Energy Project, a boondoggle coal gas plant proposed by well-connected lobbyist lawyers. I’m not a member of CAMP but I share the group’s desire to relegate this project to the dust bin of bad economic development decisions on the Iron Range.

It will be interesting to see who is forming CHAMP, who joins and who ultimately funds its activities. That is, presuming CHAMP ever ends up being anything more than an ad in a weekly newspaper to create the appearance of public support for the project. Excelsior Energy spent more than $450,000 on lobbying expenses in 2007. Their entire existence depends upon public opinion, so I remain skeptical of something like CHAMP. (I mean, come on … using a same sounding acronym? A little obvious, me thinks).

We’re going to build a steel plant near Nashwauk, something that didn’t require a group called CHISEL (Citizens Happy In Seeing Essar Locate).
UPDATE: Corrected spelling in headline. That’s what I get for trying to post in the few minutes I get before morning classes.

Comments

  1. Nice article, you might want to check spelling in the title.

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