Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Something Rotten in Wisconsin

Well, it’s been bugging me for a month now, but as the host of the world’s longest-running viral show, I didn’t have the strength to do it. But then Sunshine came through with the papaya leaves, and it turns out—dammit—that Montalvo was right. I am still have swelling and stiffness, but the energy is returning and the depression dissipating. So it’s time to look up north in Wisconsin to the Bad River, or the Penokees, which feeds into Lake Superior. For generations, the Ojibwa have fished for walleye there, as well as harvested wild rice.

The area, however, is blessed or cursed with more than that. There’s iron up there in Iron County—who would have thought?—and the area was settled later by, among others, the Cornish. So they were digging mines while the Ojibwa were hunting and fishing, and everybody—presumably—was happy. (Ooops, from watching the video below, I later discovered I was wrong….)

Eventually, all the iron that could be extracted by underground mining had been exhausted, and the industry collapsed decades ago. But there’s still iron there—in fact, two billions tons of it—if you’re willing to do an…

…open pit mine.

In the Wisconsin I knew, the citizenry would have been involved, the issue discussed, the “pro” of job creation balanced against the “con” of risk to the environment. And we all—most of us—would have trusted that the whole affair was being regulated and then monitored by whatever state agency was responsible. But consider this quote, from The New York Times article titled—tellingly—How to Buy a Mine in Wisconsin:

Newly released documents show that the (proposed) mine operator, Gogebic Taconite, secretly gave $700,000 to a political group that was helping the governor win a 2012 recall election.

So Walker survived the recall—though there were allegations of voter fraud on the part of the Republican Party—and then in 2013, the whole question of whether to allow open pit mining in Iron County began anew. And in case you’ve forgotten, we’re not talking about any little mine, but what could be the world’s biggest mine: up to 21 miles long and 1000 feet deep. Here’s what I said about that in my previous post:

21 miles? The average adult walks about three to four miles per hour. So leave your home tomorrow, Dear Reader of Unknown Location, at 8 AM. Walk in as much of a straight line as you can until 4 PM (I’m giving you an hour for lunch). That’s what 21 miles is.

Oh, and 1,000 feet deep? OK, get a night’s sleep, and then run out and find a high-rise apartment building. Step into the elevator and punch the 100th floor. That—inversely—is how deep this pit will be.

We’re talking, in short, about a monster of a mine; nonetheless in 2013 the Wisconsin State Legislature approved it. Back to The Times, again, about that legislation:

The mine legislation was bad enough from an environmental point of view: It allows the operator to fill streams with mine waste, eliminates public hearings and reduces the taxes the operator would have to pay.

And the reason for why the Legislature approved a bill so substantially in favor of the mining industry? Well, as you can see in the video below, the Senate Majority Leader, Scott Fitzgerald, being greatly pestered by a guy with a camera, got frustrated and admitted the truth. And that is?

The mining company wrote the legislation.

This video has had less than 500 views—how can that be? And since when did a legislator become nothing more than a rubber stamp for whatever corporation is able to write him or her the biggest check?

Does the story get any prettier?

Well, who’s Bill Williams, the president of Gogebic? What’s his history?

Ready for some Spanish?

La cúpula directiva de Cobre Las Cruces irá a juicio por contaminar en 2008, con arsénico el acuífero reservado para consumo humano.

La Audiencia Provincial de Sevilla confirma la imputación de François Fleury, Bill Williams y Paz Cosmen, a solicitud de la Fiscalía y de Ecologistas en Acción.

(“The board of directors of Las Cruces Copper Mine will be tried for pollution in 2008 with arsenic in the reservoir reserved for human consumption.

The Audencia Provincial of Seville confirmed the charges against François Fleury, Bill Williams and Paz Cosmen, at the request of the District Attorney and Ecologistas en Acción.”)

Was that all? No, because according to the article, the same company was charged with construcción ilegal de balsas con aguas contaminadas, detracción ilegal de aguas subterráneas.  Balsas, by the way, are holding ponds.

And in case you’re in any doubt? The article concludes with:

El norteamericano Bill Williams dejó la dirección de la mina en enero de 2011 y actualmente es presidente de Gogebic Taconite, proyecto minero en Wisconsin (EE.UU), que amenaza gravemente el Lago Superior, los abastecimientos de agua y los cultivos tradicionales de arroz de la reserva de indios Chippewa.

Dejo / left
Actualmente / currently
Amenaza / threatens
Lago / lake
Abasticimientos / waste
Arroz / rice

Well, Williams and Gogebic Taconite certainly learned something in Spain: let’s head back to The Times again, referring to the Wisconsin legislation:

It allows the operator to fill streams with mine waste…

In short, they weren’t making that mistake, again, so what did they do? Bought off the legislature, and wrote legislation that allowed them to pollute.

Well, all roads lead to YouTube, where I discovered that Al Jazeera English had commissioned a Milwaukee company, 371 Productions, to make a documentary for Faultlines. But when I was writing my first post, all that was available was a trailer.

‘How could that be, I thought,’ and went to 371 Productions website. There, I discovered that the film was being shown to groups for public / community discussion. Oddly, at that time, Madison—the state capital and home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison—was not on the list of towns where the film was going to be shown.

As a former Madisonian, I found that weird. The city—the second largest in the state—has a long tradition of liberalism and activism: nobody in Madison was hosting the film?

Good news—someone now is. Here’s the screen shot from the website:



Perhaps it was a good thing, then, that the virus descended, because in my search for papaya leaves, and in the general misery caused by their lack, I put Wisconsin and the Bad River mine on the back burner.  And today, strength having returned, I found that Al Jazeera has put the whole film on YouTube, and here, Dear Reader, I have to confess: I despair of ever seeing the whole thing. Why?

…because for the last ten minutes, I have been stuck at 17.47 out of 24.27, while that stupid little wheel rolls and rolls. Know what I think? The café where I write just got crowded, and everybody is using up my Internet!

A month ago, when I first came on the issue, it occurred to me: we’re dealing with a new beast. Crooked politicians? We’ve always had them, and we’ve dealt with them, to varying degrees of success. But the crooked politician was motivated by greed, nothing more. What do we have now?

The crooked ideologue.

Yes, women and men who loathe big government, mistrust regulation, have a hatred for the poor, and merrily accept the big bucks that corporations—oooops, those are people now—are willing to contribute to their reelection funds. Secretly.

Crooked politicians were bad, but the crooked ideologue?

Way worse!




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