Saturday, January 14, 2012

Iron Mine's Connections Run Far And Wide To The Right

Great work by The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign revealing more about Chris Cline, the well-connected West Virginia magnate who wants to dig an open-pit iron ore mine in Northern Wisconsin, and for whom certain Assembly reps, in secret, wrote a blatantly bad bill.

How bad?

I put together a scorecard of the opponents, and here's my favorite taken from
a full-throated screed from the pro-mining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board:

"...a travesty of legislation...significantly weaken environmental protections...as if children had replaced Republican legislators...dump toxic waste into wetlands and flood plains...allow mining corporations to contaminate the groundwater of neighboring properties...allow mining operations to inflict significant damage to the environment...an act of political cowardice...an insult to the people of northern Wisconsin...

Final word: here's a posting with links to sources of information from mine opponents.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. As an Illinoisan, I'm motivated to support the recall effort against Walker because I'm horrified at how intent he is to get Wisconsin to repeat all of Illinois's worst mistakes in environmental policy. Do you Badgers really want your lakes and rivers to be as algae clogged and fouled as ours?

But this goes beyond that. Walker is actually trying to turn a corner of Wisconsin into West Virginia.

Anonymous said...

This is not just a bad bill it is a BAD PROJECT.

James Rowen said...

Certainly, as the bill is aimed at helping a bad project get started, but can apply to others around the state, as it it not specific to the Penokee project.