Good news? It’s mostly bad

A busy weekend in Range news:

A stretch of Highway 169 by Chisholm might be threatened by collapsing underground mine shafts beneath (from Saturday’s Duluth News Tribune). These are the same patchwork collection of tunnels that caused structural damage at nearby Ironworld a couple years ago. All I’ve got to say is that if you can’t get funding to fix the highway outside CHISHOLM, you can’t get funding period.

Mesabi Nugget at Hoyt Lakes is on track, say developers (Sunday’s Star Tribune). They, like Essar Steel Minnesota, are banking on steel prices recovering relatively soon. If they are right, they’ll do fine. If they are wrong and if the recession lasts through 2010, this could be rocky. But this is the closest thing to good news I’ve seen in a while.

The state budget deficit crisis is threatening Northern Minnesota schools, colleges and the arts. I particularly enjoyed Dominic Papatola’s assessment of Pawlenty’s seeming aversion to the arts.

Are you like me? Are you tired of everything being lousy? Well, good news! Uh…

Just kidding. There is none.

Comments

  1. Assuming the investors in Mesabi Nugget are financially solvent and aren’t in desperate need of capital, they’re smart just to get the plant built and ready for production right now. Even if they have to delay actual operations for a while, they need to be ready whenever the price of commodities starts to rise again. I personally don’t think we’ll see prices as high as last summer for at least a decade, but they don’t need to be that high. If there’s one good thing about the current bust cycle, it’s a good reminder to both the company and its employees that they need to put a “rainy day” fund aside when times are good.

    On another note Aaron, do you use a PC or a Mac? The template for your website looks similar to one of the Mac templates. I just bought my first Mac (one of the new Macbooks) and absolutely love it. The tools for building websites and videos are incredibly user friendly.

  2. Yeah, and construction costs now are bound to be lower than construction costs in two years. Great observations.

    I use a PC. The template you see was set up by a designer and formatted for the Google/Blogger interface I use. So far, with a few exceptions, I’m really happy with it.

    Thanks for the thoughts,
    AB

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