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Cliffs boasts big earnings, state support in Essar battle
Last week, Cliffs Natural Resources CEO Lourenco Goncalves announced that his company posted a $199 million profit in 2016. That reflects a positive swing of almost $1 billion from the dismal 2015 downturn of the American steel industry. It’s also basic math, as Cliffs finally has all its Minnesota mines up and running, filling orders…
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The union for now: Labor at the crossroads
Regardless of your opinion about organized labor, or whether you’re in a union yourself, the labor movement now faces its most tenuous challenge in more than a century. Politically, there is this. According to a Feb. 1 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal story, Vice President Mike Pence conferred with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin in late January. They…
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Great Northern Radio Show back March 4 in Bemidji
Barring some big news, the blog will go dark the rest of this week. I’ll be finishing the script for my next Great Northern Radio Show, live from the Chief Theater in Bemidji, Minnesota, on Saturday, March 4. This will be a good one. We’ll be celebrating the vibrant music scene in Bemidji with a…
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Mesabi Metallics to try building upon Essar bones
Mesabi Metallics issued a plan last week to bring the former Essar Steel Minnesota iron ore project in Nashwauk, Minnesota, out of bankruptcy and back into construction. A judge must now consider whether the newly reorganized company has sufficiently proven its case to keep the state mineral leases along the western Mesabi Iron Range. “Creditors will receive vastly…
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The universal solution to poverty?
It comes down to whether you think we can solve problems at all. Will we succumb to the psychological ease of hoping our political “side” gains permanent power, an outcome that assures corruption and stagnation? Or are we willing to lend our support to new ideas? Will we patiently experiment, replacing ideas that don’t work…
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80th Laskiainen Finnish sliding festival this weekend
This weekend the Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival celebrates its 80th year in Palo, Minnesota. Laskiainen is an old Finnish tradition that made the leap to Northern Minnesota during the immigration of the early 20th Century. It’s a celebration of the fact that the days are getting longer, allowing people in northern climates to have more fun.…
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Animation depicts Hibbing’s new Beltline roundabout
This summer, the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Iron Range city of Hibbing will install a two-lane roundabout at the intersection of Highways 169 and 37. News of this change has already caused many Range residents to go, “blurggle, blurggle, a-fuff-fuff-fuff!” This is one of Hibbing’s busiest intersections. I spend a portion of most mornings…
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GOP backs off federal land sale for now
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) withdrew his bill that would have allowed the government to sell federal lands for mining and other commercial use. Some had feared that the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness might find its way on the list of lands that could be mined in the future. The U.S. edition of the Guardian reported…
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Minnesota fifth largest source of U.S. minerals
Minnesota is the fifth largest producer of American mineral resources according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey. The state remains the largest producer of iron ore in the country, but also produces many millions of dollars worth of industrial sand and stone. From the Myers story: The USGS report reiterated what…
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ERP Iron Ore finalizes purchase of Magnetation
Bankrupt Magnetation is officially under new ownership. State of Virginia-based ERP Iron Ore finalized a purchase agreement of Magnetation according to ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. WDIO reported the story earlier today. Magnetation, based in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, is a scram mining and iron ore processing company. The company recycles iron ore from waste piles in Northern Minnesota and…
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MINOS lab departs Soudan mine cavern
This week crews remove components from the MINOS laboratory on the 27th level of the Soudan Underground Mine on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. The picture above shows massive steel “neutrino tracking” panels” being removed from the facility. Since 2003, the lab hosted notable experiments testing the nature of subatomic particles in a beam fired underground…
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Former Range senator Tony Perpich dies
Last Saturday, former Iron Range State Sen. Tony Perpich (DFL-Eveleth) died in his Shoreview, Minn., home at the age of 84. He had battled heart disease. Perpich grew up part of a politically charged first generation Croatian immigrant family raised in the mining location of Carson Lake. With his brothers, he helped reshape Iron Range politics in the 1960s,…
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Why we need work, not just ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’
Last November, President Trump polled well in the once-venerated Democratic stronghold of the Mesabi Iron Range. I pin this to the issue of “jobs.” Specifically, I credit the fundamental belief baked into our culture that those who work for pay are superior to those who don’t or can’t. People here have lost jobs, or fear…
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From pipelines to mines, Trumpism on the march
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order clearing the way for the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects. Both projects were stalled under President Obama out of environmental concerns. Citing the jobs the projects would create and promising American-made steel in the construction process, Trump waved his order in front of…
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School gun range shot down by lead complaint
Last October, I shared news of a suddenly controversial gun range in the basement of the Lincoln Elementary School in Hibbing. After efforts to keep the range compliant with safety concerns, it now appears that lead contamination may doom the facility. For sixty years the Lincoln, originally a middle school, featured an underground gun range that…