Re-Reading Mike McCabe's Blog Post On Mining Interests

McCabe did a good job nearly a year ago, and his research is certainly is a good introduction to the mining bill up for a hearing of sorts Wednesday at the Capitol. An excerpt:

The Democracy Campaign first started noticing large campaign contributions from mining interests to Wisconsin politicians just over a year ago, long before the mining bill was introduced. All of the money came from out of state. Roughly a quarter of the donations came from West Virginia mining magnate Chris Cline. The rest came from associates of Cline's. Some of those associates are at Cline Resource and Development. Others are with a company called Foresight, which is majority-owned and led by Cline. Still others are with a law firm Cline does business with. The remainder are other mining executives who've done business with Cline.

Environmentalists claim the mining bill being pushed in Wisconsin was written by the mining industry and would gut existing safeguards. The legislation certainly is Chris Cline's dream. And its approach to permit streamlining and environmental deregulation does bear a striking resemblance to the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council's model legislation known as the "Performance Based Permitting Act" and "Groundwater Protection Act."