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Cliffs announces record profits as steel market fades
After announcing “work adjustments” and the idling of three pellet furnaces yesterday, Cliffs Natural Resources is now announcing record profits. It’d be easy to say this is just another example of corporate greed, but to be fair this is just evidence that we’re coming off of a classic “high” in the global steel market and…
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Deer troubles
Car vs. deer. The car is not well, but the deer is worse. We couldn’t find part of the deer along the highway, but the mechanics found it later … in the guts of the car. My station wagon looked like it was used to run down zombies. Happy Halloween. I’ll blog more when I…
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Confirmed: layoffs to come with Cliffs production cutbacks
Several news organizations are reporting on Cliffs Natural Resources’ decision to slow production at two of its northern Minnesota taconite plants. Today, we have confirmation that this will involve immediate layoffs at United Taconite and Northshore. Though these kinds of layoffs are common and usually temporary at Iron Range mines, this will make the Iron…
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Red and Blue history
You’ve probably got an image of the map of red and blue states (ie: Republican and Democratic electoral vote results) in your head from the last three U.S. Presidential elections. But this site, which I found through my favorite electoral vote tracking site Electoral-Vote.com, shows the history of the electoral vote map going back to…
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Listening, the Book
Some of you might remember me talking about StoryCorps when it was outside the KAXE studios in Grand Rapids last month. It’s a collaborative project collecting interviews between loved ones and friends for archiving in the Library of Congress and occasional broadcast on NPR. It’s really cool and they got some good stuff out of…
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Cliffs to idle three pellet furnaces on the Iron Range
From today’s Hibbing Daily Tribune online. Cliffs idling three ore furnaces in MinnesotaLay-offs loom Tuesday, October 28, 2008HDT Staff ReportCLEVELAND — Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., said in a written statement that it will temporarily idle three iron ore pellet furnaces in Minnesota, cutting 300,000 tons of monthly production capacity as demand for steel softens. The…
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Beer me: We will live forever!
In news that should rock the Iron Range to its core (and probably also the Minnesota blogosphere), researchers are close to developing a healthy beer that could prolong the life of people who drink it. We will live forever! Related posts: No related posts.
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Range’s biggest paper uses bloated boondoggle to endorse Coleman
First, the least surprising news in the history of the Iron Range: the Mesabi Daily News endorsed Norm Coleman for re-election on Sunday. This could have been predicted from the very beginning of this election from the paper’s heavy spin of Coleman as the “jobs” candidate and the constant pushing of anti-Franken stories and editorials.…
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Iron Range division on Legacy Amendment (and my thoughts)
Minnesotans are starting to see a fairly intense effort to pass the Minnesota Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, which would create a set fund from state revenue for environmental and arts initiatives. In this story, the Mesabi Daily News profiles former State Sen. Bob Lessard, who first pioneered the idea, while explaining what the…
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Range readies for belated impact of economic downturn
Peter Passi at the Duluth News-Tribune has this Sunday story about the economic downturn’s inevitable impact on the steel industry and the Iron Range. Right now, the economic slide has not yet hit the Range. In fact, for a lifelong Ranger, this has been a strange couple of months as the local economy has been…
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The scary season
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. The scary seasonBy Aaron J. Brown Halloween is coming. This is one of those holidays that grew from bizarre, pagan origins to cultural mainstay and then descended back into debauchery. What am I saying? “One of?” It’s pretty…
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Subscribe to MinnesotaBrown.com
Are you a super cool hipster too busy to be troubled by “typing the name of a blog in your Internet browser.” Do you use a feed reader or prefer to read posts in your e-mail? Prefer social media? Subscribe to MinnesotaBrown.com and get all the posts hot off the press. Like the blog on…
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Changes to MinnesotaBrown
You might have seen a couple months or so ago that I changed the design here at MinnesotaBrown. Well, it was nice, but we decided to call in some professional help to fix up the parts I couldn’t figure out how to improve. Starting now and through the weekend you might see some glitches as…
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Steelly Down
A poll published in Steel Business Briefing shows that 50 percent of the publication’s readers, mostly steel industry insiders, believe steel prices will drop 25-50 percent in 2009-2010. Almost 90 percent expect a drop of more than 10 percent. Meantime, other metals are also plummeting in price right now, especially copper and nickel. (Good thing…
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Comment insanity at the MDN
The Mesabi Daily News is the Range’s largest newspaper. Its online comments section is like Lord of the Flies. Look. Do not get involved; these are stray dogs not to be petted. OMG. (And, no, I am not one of the commenters). Related posts: No related posts.