We heard the same bullshit when it came to peat mining with a foreign multi-national conglomerate now destroying our largest freshwater aquifer in the Big Bog.
Mining has brought a great deal of agony, poverty, pits, pollution and ruined lives to Minnesota, too, which is NEVER discussed.
Never mentioned are the deaths from mining accidents and the number of disabled workers in this industry.
How could anyone in their right mind be for allowing any further mining to take place in Minnesota until all the pension fund swindles by the mining companies have been resolved? The politicians look on doing nothing.
All this talk about how these mining companies have been scrutinized makes me sick.
Who has scrutinized the pension fund swindles?
Mineral mining under capitalism ruins lives, the environment.
Mineral mining under capitalism results in huge profits for the mining companies.
To expect the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the State and Federal Pollution Control Agencies to monitor and make these mining companies abide by the laws is one sick joke.
The politicians claim the jobs will become "good paying union jobs" even though through a sweat-heart agreement with Cleveland Cliffs one of the largest taconite operations in the world continues non-union after decades in Silver Bay at Northshore Mining.
And, of, course, we are stuck with U.S. Steel providing us with one of the largest man-made "lakes" which they call the "Clearwater Reservoir"--- the name U.S. Steel gave to its MinnTac tailing's "pond."
But, this ongoing pension-fund swindle has been never ending--- going back over 100 years giving hard rock miners and their families a screwing.