What about Polymet?

I generally agree with Tom Rukavina... 99.999% of the time. On this issue of sulfide-mining I, too, am in complete disagreement.

These so-called "hearings" are a fiasco--- window dressing for allowing the mining companies to do as they please in the name of "jobs, jobs, jobs" when the real issue is "profits, profits, profits."

I don't understand why anyone with labor's interest in mind would support permitting any other mining projects--- especially when nothing has been done to halt the decades of these mining companies swindling Iron Rangers out of their pensions while leaving behind polluted pits and massive poverty after they abscond with the profits.

United States Steel's huge MinnTac operation, the largest of its kind in the world has provided us with the "jewel" they call the "Clearwater Reservoir"--- what they call their gigantic tailing pond stretching for three miles and two miles wide--- leeching billions of gallons of the most dangerous contaminants and pollution into the Dark River and St. Louis River watersheds reaching into the depths of Lake Superior and even as far north as Hudson's Bay!

"Jobs, jobs, jobs"--- from 80,000 jobs in mining on the Iron Range to 12,000 jobs today.

Machines and technology have been allowed to replace workers.

While workers in the mining industry have been laid off; many of the remaining workers are forced to work ten and twelve hour days--- five, six and even seven days a week.

Want job creation in the mining industry?

Try a shorter work week with forty hours pay. Longer vacations. Earlier retirements with pension funds protected. Polymet will maybe create a few hundred jobs--- in the existing taconite industry, these kinds of reforms combined would create thousands of new union jobs.

Will Polymet be a union operation? Since the USW maintains a sweatheart agreement with Cleveland Cliffs to enable a gigantic non-union taconite operation at Silver Bay, judging from its current relationship of the way they are supporting this hideous Polymet project, it is doubtful the USW will ever try to organize Polymet. Jobs where workers unprotected without union contract have no rights; just what we need more of in Minnesota; like 44,000 casino workers employed in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without any protections under state or federal labor laws isn't bad enough. 

I was glad to see and hear where rank-and-file union members of the United Steelworkers Union have organized a rank-and-file caucus, the Hard Rock Miners--- demanding that their pension funds be honored.

I would expect the entire Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party's Iron Range contingent to stand up in opposing any further mining permits--- at least until all of the pension funds of present and former miners have been honored. This is the very least these DFL politicians and party hacks can do.

These "public hearings" are meant to foment anger and sow confusion and discord  among the very people who should be united in making sure more mining companies are not allowed to shit on working people, the communities workers have to live in and the healthy ecosystems required for survival.

If not for the out of control Military-Industrial Complex requiring these non-ferrous minerals and metals, this mining would not even be under consideration. Why else would Congressman Rick Nolan have co-sponsored this legislation with Republicans protecting this mining Polymet as a "national security" project?

There are hundreds of projects that the government could undertake to provide Iron Rangers with jobs--- good jobs paying decent wages. Anyone can come up with a list of what needs to be done to improve the lives and livelihoods of people living in Appalachia North.

There are tens of thousands of existing jobs on the Iron Range that could be turned into good, decent, living wage jobs if only the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party with its super-majority would wield its power and pass Minimum Wage legislation making the Minimum Wage a real living wage based on cost-of-living, indexed to real inflation with regularly scheduled raises to improve the standard-of-living of working people--- of course, one has to ask why the unions affiliated with Change To Win and the Minnesota AFL-CIO have made nothing but half-hearted attempts to organize all of these workers? Isn't a good union contract better than any government anti-poverty program?

We should be telling the Minnesota DNR to take these hearings and shove them straight up their ass; what we need is a series of roundtable discussions bringing workers together to talk about all of this in a civil way; do we have a democracy that will tolerate this?

Many years ago, both socialist Farmer-Labor governors, Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson proposed that if mining was going to continue with our communities and jobs protected and the profits from mining going to make life better for people, mining was going to have to be brought under public ownership.

Were their concerns legitimate?

Apparently so given what the situation is today on the Iron Range--- yet, why isn't this idea of public ownership of the mining industry being brought forward and discussed here and now?

Wouldn't it make more sense to put all proposed mining projects on hold until public ownership has been discussed rather than allowing these mining companies to come in--- exploit workers, swindle them out of their pensions as they rape the land leaving nothing behind but massive poverty and a dirty mess for tax-payers to clean up?