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Dylan Days opens Thursday, May 22
Dylan Days opens tomorrow and runs through Sunday in Bob Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota. For those who don’t remember, I am one of the organizers of Dylan Days. I use this blog, perhaps inappropriately, to promote the event to the strange collection of political operatives, computer-owning Iron Rangers and Google searchers looking for articles…
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Rangers declare session successful
Better late than never; here’s Brady Silver’s roundup of the legislative session from an Iron Range perspective that ran in today’s Hibbing Daily Tribune. First hand accounts from my friend and colleague Rep. Tom Anzelc echo the sentiment that, while long and arduous, the session just plain went better than last time. Related posts: No…
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Legal troubles for Minnesota Steel owner
The company that aims to buy and run the proposed Minnesota Steel plant near Nashwauk is running into legal problems related to its recent attempt to gain a larger share of the North American steel market. A MinnesotaBrown reader gave me this tip. From Business Standard: Domestic conglomerate Essar’s latest US possession, Esmark, is caught…
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Today’s vote has Range school district on the ropes
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Session wrap in waiting
I didn’t get to the Minnesota legislative session analysis I had hoped to write today. Here’s the short version: despite the challenges, this was a good session for the Iron Range in general. Not perfect but pretty good considering. Check out round-ups from the DNT. The Range papers have stuff, too, but it’s not posted…
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I’ve got the Power! (for now)
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Dylan changed the world; so can we
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Today in Coal
What do you think? Is “Today in Coal” a show you would watch? Anyway, two items came across my desk this morning and both are about coal. 1) The Range’s biggest power plant, Minnesota Power’s Clay Boswell facility in Cohassett, is entering its second summer of construction on a $200 million environmental upgrade. Like U.S.…
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Midnight in the halls of Iron Range power
I didn’t think Excelsior Energy could go a whole legislative session without deploying its vast lobbying force for something. Recently, in the tax bill conference committee, State. Sen. Tom Bakk inserted language that extends the property tax exemptions from 2010 to 2012 for everyone’s favorite black hole of government giveaways and special favors. Excelsior is…
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Five questions about the Iron Range economic boom
Tony Barrett, an economics professor at St. Scholastica in Duluth, poses five excellent questions about the Iron Range’s prospective economic boom in today’s Duluth News-Tribune. I sense on the streets and back roads of the Iron Range that people are sitting back, perhaps a bit too comfortable in the belief that good times are about…
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True knowledge in the north woods
This is my weekly Hibbing Daily Tribune column for Sunday, May 11, 2008. I archive my columns at my writing site. True knowledge in the north woodsBy Aaron J. Brown The other day, my almost-three-year-old son Henry and I walked down to the lake to throw sticks, a favorite pastime of Henry’s and a ritual…
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More steel and speculation in this week’s Biz North
Wayne Nelson and the writers at Business North do a fine job of covering the economic news of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. This week’s edition has a couple of interesting Iron Range stories. First, this story reviews Essar Global’s North American steel ambitions, something I talked about earlier in the week. This is the company…
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Great news! The Range is getting shafted by lobbyists!
Maybe you heard on the TV the great, fantastic super duper news that lobbyist-run Excelsior Energy got a gabildyzillion dollars in tax credits for their boondoggle Mesaba Energy Project. Wow! That’s great! Except that the tax credits apply only if they build the plant, a prospect that requires private investment and a customer willing to…
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City Pages reports on Iron Range past, present
I’m not sure what drew them to us, but City Pages — the Twin Cities’ alt weekly — profiles a snippet of Iron Range history and provides a surprisingly detailed look at new nonferrous mineral mining technology on the East Range in this week’s web edition. The history portion in particular puts a bit of…
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Excelsior petitions for delay in PUC ruling on Mesaba project
Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Energy Project will not be on the docket for Thursday’s Public Utilities Commission meeting. The PUC had been expected to rule on two key aspects of the proposed coal gas plant, but Excelsior asked for and received a delay. Why? Some mumbo jumbo about an appeal to a previous administrative decision. The…