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After today’s developments, Ritchie to speak on fair elections up north
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie headlines a civil liberty conference Wednesday, April 8, at Itasca Community College in Grand Rapids. Ritchie’s nonpartisan address about the importance of free and fair elections will come 24 hours after today’s court ordered counting of just under 400 more U.S. Senate ballots now deemed admissible. As of this…
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Dylan on Obama, Grant, Sam Houston and the accordion
The must read interview of the week features prominent northern Minnesota native Bob Dylan, who was born in Duluth and raised in Hibbing on the Iron Range before leaving for New York and international fame. Bill Flannigan interviewed Dylan for the Monday London Times. Normally I’m not one for the heavy-handed personal interviews of famous…
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Business North poses tough questions on Range ‘clean coal’ project
Business North revisits the ongoing saga of the Mesaba Energy Project in this month’s edition. This is the “clean coal” power plant proposed on the Iron Range by the start-up company Excelsior Energy. Reporter Beth Bily boils criticism of the project down to three major questions. And yes, I’m quoted in the story as a…
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This is 100 percent factual
Got an unpopular or atypical worldview you’d like to advance without actual evidence? Try this. Say something crazy. Then say: “This is 100 percent factual.” Watch how it works. “Our drinking water is full of nanobots that make men impotent. This is 100 percent factual.” OR “American women have been subjected to mind control by…
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Don’t be demagogin’
Wanna see an editorial about the ongoing debate over booster seats in Minnesota that contains this phrase: Come on, this issue is open for debate. Don’t demagogue it. AND this phrase? While we do not doubt the sincerity of the sponsors of the bill to provide another layer of safety for children, we find it…
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To be for it, or not to be for it
The Iron Range is a hard place to be an intellectual “Hamlet” type. This is partly because some of our most powerful officials and opinion makers have no idea what that means. It’s also because it’s a place that operates best when you pick a side and stick with it. Loyalty, old relationships, stubbornness, and…
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Outdoors Council ‘green lights’ vast northern Minnesota forest project
On Monday, the Lessard Council officially offered its blessing for the the first $20 million allocation of the Upper Mississippi Forest Project, an initiative to buy a permanent easement on vast tracts of forest lands and wetlands mostly in Itasca County. I wrote a post about the topic a couple weeks ago. The idea is…
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Biden to St. Cloud? What, the Eveleth Hippodrome was booked?
Vice President Joe Biden is coming to St. Cloud this Thursday. The agenda: a town hall meeting about how to strengthen the middle class. What better place to explore middle class issues than a town known for its all-you-can-eat buffets! St. Cloud is called the Granite City. I know this because one time I was…
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More commotion in Range economic development
I’m still catching up from my trip to the Twin Cities. Here are some of the headlines from the last two days. Essar Steel is delayed eight months because of financing issues. This is the combined mine and steel mill in Nashwauk that’s been talked about in some form for approaching two decades but that…
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When the metal ones come for you
Confirmed: The Duluth News Tribune is staking its editorial future on angry, misguided rants written by conservative older folks. This one blames every conceivable problem in Duluth on socialism. I can’t wait until my 70th birthday when I can write my op/ed blaming the 2032 robot uprising on those damn kids trampling my yard as…
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Grover’s Corners Revisited
I must give a strong recommendation of Frank Rich’s column (“Some Things Don’t Change in Grover’s Corners”) in the Sunday New York Times. He compares the conditions today to the conditions under which Thornton Wilder wrote his famous play “Our Town.” He cites Wilder’s nephew and literary executor as saying that the play is being…
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No one’s going to push around mining companies on these guys’ watch
It’s a good thing that Sens. Tom Bakk, David Tomassoni and the Mesabi Daily News editorial page are standing up for those poor, defenseless mining companies at this time of great peril. Because with the world crumbling all around us, lord knows the the biggest problem we’ve got is that mining companies might have to…
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Budget Fight: Always buckle your seatbelts
Jon Collins offer this story in today’s Mesabi Daily News (he writes for several Range papers including the Hibbing Daily Tribune that runs my column). The piece is a great roundup of Iron Range legislator perspective in anticipation of a big fight with the governor over this session’s historically tight budget. And though State Rep.…
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Sharp response to DNT editorial
When I suggested that the Duluth News Tribune‘s pro-copper mining editorial from last Sunday deserved some further inspection, I further suggested that retired Range miner and participant on this blog Bob Tammen should provide an environmental perspective from an Iron Range resident’s perspective. As it turns out, in Thursday’s Duluth News Tribune, he’s done just…
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Klobuchar secures funding for International Falls plasma energy project
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)secured $1 million in funding to explore turning municipal waste into energy in International Falls. The border town’s State Rep. Tom Anzelc (DFL-Balsam Township) had secured early funding last year that allowed the city to do preliminary studies for the concept. Municipal waste burners are not without their controversy, but at…