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Life is for people, not industries or ideologies
Northland’s NewsCenter recently completed a four-part series “Boom, Bust, and Beyond” about the causes and effects of the coming mining downturn on the Iron Range and ways to deal with it. The last piece focused on economic diversification, a frequent topic here at MinnesotaBrown, and featured an interview with yours truly, along with other Range officials…
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Audit shows lack of clarity, transparency in mining taxes
UPDATE: Post amended to reflect corrections from conflating IRRRB with genteral practice of mining taxation. Yesterday, Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor released a highly anticipated review of the financial practices of the state’s mining taxation system, which funds loval governments and the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, the unique state agency that distributes funds from the Taconite Production Tax,…
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Cliffs optimistic even as other Iron Range mines struggle
UPDATE: Post amended to add Cliffs plant shutodown in Michigan. We’ve spend an exhausting amount of digital ink and radio blathering on the struggles facing Iron Range mines amid a global contraction in steelmaking and iron ore. U.S. Steel properties in Northern Minnesota are preparing for shutdown that could last the rest of the year, while…
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Another Russian incursion in Nordic waters?
Today, media sources reported that the Finnish Navy fired depth charges at a mysterious object in its territorial waters below the Gulf of Finland. Though an investigation will be needed to determine the exact nature of the object, it was suspected to be a Russian submarine. If so, that would be the second suspected Russian…
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Ride a painted pony let the spinning wheel turn
I’ve been wresting with something. If you were a regional blogger with yet-unrealized ambitions for greatness living in the woods deep outside a decaying industrial frontier where whatever doesn’t fit in your mailbox has to be picked up at the post office in Bovey (which is one of the closest towns but still 17 miles…
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Larson cruising in Duluth mayor race
Duluth City Councilor Emily Larson continues to clear the field in the race to succeed Duluth Mayor Don Ness in this fall’s election. On Tuesday, former Lt. Gov. and State Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon announced she would not run for Mayor, and endorsed Larson in the process. Earlier in April, St. Louis County Commissioner Chris…
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Dire challenges ahead for Magnetation
The scram mining company Magnetation appears headed for a make or break moment in coming months after partner AK Steel said Tuesday it would not put any more money into the company. Right now Magnetation processes waste rock at old Mesabi Iron Range mine sites into iron pellets that feed AK Steel’s operations in Indiana.…
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City mulls animal layoffs at Duluth zoo
The Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, Minnesota, is a place of special memories for those of us who grew up in Northern Minnesota. On one hand, it was “our zoo,” the first place where we laid eyes on exotic animals like you see in the storybooks and subject of our youthful curiosity. On the other,…
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Duluth Mayor opens Homegrown with pothole rock anthem
That’s right, the Duluth Homegrown Music Festival opened last night and runs all week in the Zenith City of Lake Superior, home to so many people who are in bands that the 2020 census might create the first Member of Congress elected by multi-band bass players and shiftless drummers experiencing creative differences. By all means,…
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Better living through sawhorses
In the hurly-burly churn of Iron Range news and controversies, it can be hard to find the steady constant of a noble cause. How about sawhorses? Everyone needs a sawhorse, eventually. Those sawhorses should be better. Lighter. More easy to store. And if an entrepreneurial couple from St. Paul with a tie to the Iron Range so happens…
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Smokey, smooth and sweet: Actual Wolf’s ‘Itasca’
Eric Pollard is a Grand Rapids, Minnesota, boy better known by the name he shares with his stage persona, band and ethos: Actual Wolf. A few years back, he emerged from behind the drum kit to become a front man and accomplished songwriter. Listening to him was to hear to a wolf trying on sound;…
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An interview with Canada’s Governor General
Thanks to a strange set of circumstances involving Twitter and a longstanding history of witty repartee with the Canadian Consulate’s digital team, I was granted the chance to interview His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, on Thursday, April 23. The Governor General, constitutional head of the Canadian government as representative of…
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The Iron Range is dead; long live the Range
“The king is dead; long live the king.” This saying from the height of European monarchies meant when the person at a nation’s helm physically died, the title lived on with the next person in the royal line. Massive change could be seen as mere progression. This simple continuity kept order even at a time…
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Reeling U.S. Steel asks for relief on state mining leases
Socked by a global iron and steel price collapse, U.S. Steel is asking the state for a reduction in the cost of its state-owned mining leases, which currently fund trusts benefiting Minnesota universities and schools. The company needs to reduce costs by about $25 million to reopen its Iron Range properties. The 114-year-old Pittsburgh-based company announced earlier this…
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Dismal legislative effort on broadband continues
Waiting for the Minnesota legislature to act on broadband infrastructure for rural Minnesota is a lot like trying to update your operating system on a rural computer. It takes forever and halfway through you have to start over because of some stupid error message. One thing seems readily apparent from the last few days of…