Archive for July, 2018

Karin Housley’s optimism is infectious. Reading through this article, it’s obvious that she sees her campaign as the right elixir at the right time. It’s equally obvious that she thinks that Tina Smith is Sen. Schumer’s shill. She’s right about that, BTW. Sen. Smith has opposed everything that President Trump is for. New York already has 2 senators. They don’t need another one.

In an interview with the Brainerd Dispatch Editorial Board, Sen. Housley said “I had been in the Minnesota Senate for the last six years and seen the failures of the Dayton-Smith administration and I thought, ‘There’s no way that woman represents everyone in Minnesota or what we really stand for in Minnesota.’ I decided to jump into the race and fight for Minnesotans.”

Sen. Housley is right. Sen. Smith doesn’t represent Minnesota’s priorities. Contrary to Smith’s beliefs, there’s much more to Minnesota than the Twin Cities. In her brief time in the US Senate, Tina Smith has traveled often outside the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, she’s brought her Twin Cities beliefs with her. Rather than listening to Minnesotans’ worries, Smith has tried selling the Twin Cities’ priorities. That’s disrespectful.

By comparison, Sen. Housley has met with (and listened to) lots of groups from Owatonna to Bemidji to Walker. As she says in this interview, she and her husband have had a cabin in the Walker area for several decades:

That means they understand rural Minnesota. That isn’t all. They know that Washington’s policies have made life difficult for rural residents. Then there’s this:

By replacing Smith, Housley said she hopes to help break the deadlock in the nation’s upper house—750 bills left on the debate floor, undebated and not voted upon because of rigid partisan lines. Sen. John McCain’s absence leaves the Senate in a state of limbo, a razor-thin 50-49 Republican majority.

In doing so, Housley said, she’ll look to restore a kind of representation that actually represents the interests of everyday Minnesotans—not blind dogmatism, not run-of-the-mill Capitol Hill and not an out-of-touch Democrat who favors big government and the big problems that brings.

Smith is a not-so-bright radical. Don’t forget, she’s a Berniecrat:

People can’t seriously think that Tina Smith isn’t a Twin Cities-centric socialist. Further, let’s ask this simple question: Are you better off today than the day before President Obama left office? Honest people would emphatically say they’re better off today. Business investment is improving quickly. Consumer confidence is sky-high. Unemployment for blacks and Hispanics are at all-time lows. Unemployment for women is at a 65-year low. The energy sector, which President Obama tried to intentionally kill, has turned around so dramatically that we’ve gone from importing oil to being a net exporter of energy. We’re so strong with energy that President Trump struck a deal with the EU to export Liquefied Natural Gas to them.

Tina Smith is a closet environmentalist who hates fossil fuels. She’s also (quietly) anti-mining. She has to pretend that she’s pro-mining because she needs lots of Iron Range votes but she isn’t a big fan of mining. By comparison, Karin Housley is enthusiastically pro-mining. This is the type of straight talk that Minnesotans insist on:

Since 2003, Housley has been a small business owner and is also a real estate agent by trade—though, she admitted, she almost closed up shop in 2010 because of restrictive policies by the state at that time. “It got to a point where you’re working so hard and everything you’ve earned is going to the government, but the government is spending your hard-earned money not on things you want it spent on,” Housley said. “That’s the reason I ran. We’re just starting to reverse that. People are keeping more money in their pockets, and so are our business owners, so we just have to continue that trend.”

Tina better buckle up for a tough campaign. Thanks to her mistake-riddled campaign, she’s earned a tough campaign.

In his open letter to the NFL, it’s pretty apparent that NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar forgot to read the Constitution. In his letter, Jabbar said “In May, you implemented a childish policy about how grown men must respond to the national anthem: a player can stay in the locker room during the anthem, but if he takes the field and then protests, the team and the player can be fined. Oh, Dear Owners. You stood at the precipice of history tasked with deciding whether to choose the principles of the US Constitution over profits of commerce, patriotism over pandering, morality over mob mentality, promoting social justice over pushing beers. Sadly, you blinked. Courage, it seems, is expected only of players.”

Actually, the Constitution gives employers the right to squash free speech if that speech hurts their business. Each individual NFL franchise is worth lots of money. For instance, the Dallas Cowboys’ franchise is worth $4,800,000,000. The NFL’s TV contract is literally worth billions of dollars each year.

For that reason, these owners have the right to protect their financial interests. Abdul-Jabbar’s whining about owners choosing “the principles of the US Constitution over profits of commerce, patriotism over pandering, morality over mob mentality, promoting social justice over pushing beers” sounds like socialist blather.

The Constitution is just fine. Just because it doesn’t give you the outcome you prefer doesn’t mean it isn’t intact. The truth is that the Constitution is built on the premise that there’s constantly competing principles that have to be balanced against each other. That’s why the First Amendment doesn’t prohibit business owners from limiting their employees’ speech.

Further, this didn’t help the players’ cause:

The entire Hands Up, Don’t Shoot thing was a myth. That isn’t opinion. It’s a finding of fact. If players want to be activists, let them do it on their own time. NFL fans tune in, at least partially, to escape politics. Then, too, if the players want to use the opportunity to be activists, I’m certain that lots of fans will be willing to eliminate the NFL from their TV schedule. I’m certain because lots of them already have eliminated it from their TV priorities.

For all of Abdul-Jabbar’s high-minded talk, he apparently hasn’t figured out that free market capitalism still drives this nation.

Rep. Steve Drazkowski is one of my favorite state legislators in Minnesota because he’s a straight shooter and an honest man. In contrast, Ilhan Omar is my least favorite state legislator because she’s dishonest and she apparently thinks that the rules don’t apply to her. I’m basing my opinion on information contained in this article.

According to the article, “After learning that State Representative Ilhan Omar accepted payments from MNSCU campuses last year – a violation of Minnesota House rules – State Representative Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) is calling on Omar to return the thousands of dollars she received. ‘It’s clear to me that Representative Omar abused the power of her office and her committee assignment for personal financial gain, which is truly disappointing,’ Drazkowski said. ‘Despite being fully aware that accepting these payments violated the rules of the Minnesota House, she not only kept the money but failed to disclose it for as long as she could to avoid an ethics hearing and an endorsement headache.'”

The article also says “Minnesota House Rule 9.20, Acceptance of an Honorarium by a Member: A member must not accept an honorarium for a service performed for an individual or organization that has a direct interest in the business of the House, including, but not limited to, a registered lobbyist or an organization a lobbyist represents.” There’s no excuse for Ms. Omar’s behavior because “every newly-elected member attends an orientation where non-partisan House research staff explains potential conflicts of interest to incoming lawmakers, including gifts, travel and lodging, and honoraria.” Plus “Rep. Omar voted to adopt the Permanent Rules of the Minnesota House – which includes Rule 9.20 - on February 16, 2017, 12 days before her first paid MNSCU speaking engagement.”

Rep. Omar is a violations machine. Check out this video:

Scott Johnson has done the digging into Ms. Omar’s marital difficulties. He explains what he found in this article:

I originally checked out the SomaliSpot story online through the Minnesota Official Marriage System. Inputting Omar’s name, I found that the two marriages cited in the discussion board post checked out as indicated. The site reflected Omar’s 2002 marriage to her advertised husband, Ahmed Aden (later Ahmed Hirsi), and her 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi (identified in the SomaliSpot post as Omar’s brother). A few days after the primary, I submitted written questions to representatives of the Omar campaign, citing the SomaliSpot post, and asking whether Omar’s second marriage had been entered into with her brother for dishonest purposes.

Predictably, Omar deflected the questions Scott Johnson had to an attorney:

Dear Mr. Johnson:

I have been contacted by the Ilhan Omar campaign. Their response to your email from this morning is as follows:

“There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trump’s playbook to prevent it. Ilhan Omar’s campaign sees your superfluous contentions as one more in a series of attempts to discredit her candidacy. Ilhan Omar’s campaign will not be distracted by negative forces and will continue to focus its energy on creating positive engagement with community members to make the district and state more prosperous and equitable for everyone.”

If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please direct them to me in writing so we have a record of any further communications.

Sincerely,

Jean Brandl

Apparently, Rep. Omar is a complaint factory:

• On May 17, 2017, Rep. Omar was fined $1,000 due to the late filing of her 24-hour notice reports.
• On November 30, 2017, Rep. Omar was fined $150 due to the late filing of her campaign finance report. That 2016 report listed a non-campaign disbursement in the amount of $2,250 in legal fees to the Kjellberg Law Office, which specializes in divorce law, and is listed as her representative during her 2017 divorce case. It also noted that she paid her now current husband $3,100 for unspecified campaign services.
• On June 20, 2018, Rep. Omar was fined the maximum $1,100 due to the late filing of her Statement of Economic Interest.

There’s more:

“Representative Omar’s willingness to accept money from institutions that are dependent on her committee and her vote for their funding is the textbook definition of unethical,” Drazkowski said. “Because of her decision to withhold disclosing this information until after the Legislature adjourned sine die, we are unable to formally file ethics charges against her.”

Drazkowski said Omar must return the MNSCU payments, and he said that she may not use campaign funds to make the repayment. “If the ethics committee were to find Representative Omar in violation of House Rule 9.20, and I have no doubt that it would, the end result would be a demand for her to return the payments,” Drazkowski said. “With that in mind, Representative Omar needs to return these payments to the MNSCU campuses immediately.”

For all of Omar’s complaints about being the victim of Islamophobia, etc., the truth is that she’s just a typical unethical politician who thinks that the rules don’t apply to her. There’s nothing Islamophobic about that. That’s just a long-held belief that people in positions of authority shouldn’t extort money from the people they regulate.

After President Trump tweeted that he’s willing to shut down the government over funding for his border wall, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he’s optimistic they “can avoid a government shutdown.” A senior Republican aide said “We’ve got the whole month of August dedicated to appropriations. This notion that we’re going to shut down the government — everyone needs to dial down the panic button a couple notches.”

That leads me to this question: will Republicans finish the major funding bills on time, then force Democrats to either vote for funding the wall or shutting the government down? The truth is that Republicans might paint the Democrats into a corner by passing the vast majority of appropriations bills on time. The NDAA is heading to President Trump’s desk, which funds the military. Since Congress is passing individual appropriations bills rather than a CR that funds the entire government, the MSM and the Democrats (pardon the repetition) will find it virtually impossible to succeed in accusing Republicans of shutting down government.

Further, the part of the government that is actually shut down is the Department of Homeland Security. Do Democrats really want to tell swing-district voters that they don’t want to build the wall? That might work in some of the most liberal districts but it can’t help them in the Rust Belt, the Midwest or Great Lakes states where they’re fighting to recapture governorships and/or hold onto precarious Senate seats. Further, if Democrats vote against funding the wall, won’t that essentially kill their opportunity to flip the Arizona and Nevada Senate seats?

“We’ll finish up the set of appropriations measures we’ve been considering for several days and take four more big steps toward our goal of completing a regular appropriations process and funding the government in a timely and orderly manner,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

President Obama loved getting Republicans into an all-or-nothing position because he had the biggest megaphone. Republicans now have that super-sized megaphone. It’s worth noting that President Trump is on the right side of the border wall issue. Whether Republicans realize it or not, most Rust Belt/Corn Belt states prefer keeping the gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers out of their states.

If Democrats want to bet that they’re on the right side of that issue, let ’em try. Ultimately, I’m betting that there’s more people who want to stop MS-13 and keep the economy running strong than there are people who prefer open borders, rampant crime and a return to the Obama economy.

If Republicans can campaign on getting their appropriations done on time, that will tell voters that, despite a bumpy start, Republicans are getting the nation’s work done on time. That’s a net positive for both the House and Senate. Couple that with the Senate confirming another Supreme Court justice and the House getting started on Tax Cuts 2.0 and you’ve got a pretty nice list of accomplishments to run on.

If funding the wall is the only thing left on the agenda, that’d put Democrats in a sticky position. That’s a position red state Democrat senators don’t want to find themselves in.

This article highlights the depths of depravity that Democrats have sunk to. Remember Michelle Obama saying “When they go low, we go high”? What BS. The truth is that Democrats frequently go as low as it gets. This article is proof of it.

It opens by saying “Republican Rep. Jason Lewis told Fox News he has contacted the police over threats to him and even his daughters in the wake of reports about controversial statements he made as a radio show host. ‘It was serious enough for my office to alert the Capitol Police,’ Lewis told Fox News. The Minnesota congressman said his daughters were threatened in sick messages received by his office. It marks the latest in a wave of threats against not just Republican lawmakers themselves but their families.”

Last August, I wrote this post to highlight the fact that TakeAction Minnesota, a far left/anarchist organization, sent protesters to Lewis’ house last August. While they were there, TakeAction Minnesota took the time to intimidate some of Lewis’ neighbors.

In other words, I wouldn’t rule out TakeAction Minnesota as being involved in threatening Lewis’ daughters. I won’t say positively that TakeAction Minnesota is behind these threats. I just won’t rule it out. They’re that depraved. Just watch this video of TAM at Lewis’ home:

I’ll just be straightforward on this. This is proof that TAM is totally depraved. They should be investigated to within an inch of their existence. There’s no question that TAM isn’t afraid to use intimidation/anarchist tactics. They simply aren’t.

This isn’t the Party of Wellstone and Humphrey. The DFL has become the home for lunatics, mean-spirited anarchists and socialists.

This Politico article contains some of the best news I’ve seen all day. When I read “the party’s base is demanding Schumer and his colleagues wage a knock-down, drag-out fight”, I couldn’t help but smile from ear-to-ear.

Let’s be upfront about this. I don’t expect this to happen. Still, if the Democrats want to imperil their most vulnerable senators, I’ll be happy to see that happen. I’d love to see Republicans pick up 6-7 seats instead of 2-3 seats in the Senate.

Still, if the Democrats’ base insists on a knock-down-drag-out fight, Republicans should smile, then hit these red-state Democrats hard until they’re too toxic to win. In some cases, that shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s important that we remember that this vote isn’t the only thing that senators like Manchin, Donnelly, Tester, Heitkamp and Nelson will be judged on. Tester and Nelson voted against Gorsuch. All of them voted against the Trump/GOP tax cuts. Don’t think that those votes won’t be included in the GOP’s closing arguments in late October and early November.

Still, how long at-risk Democrats can or should hold out is a complicated political equation that could affect their survival in November. As long as they remain undecided, deep-pocketed conservative groups like the Judicial Crisis Network and Americans for Prosperity will continue pounding them with pro-Kavanaugh ads and activism in their states.

A spokeswoman for JCN said it would pull ads when and if Democratic senators come out in support of Kavanaugh and shift to thanking the nominee’s supporters. Meanwhile, GOP opponents, who expect some of these Democrats to ultimately support Kavanaugh, are hitting them for their supposed indecision.

Organizations like the Judicial Crisis Network are already running ads like this against Democrats:

This is another hard-hitting ad from JCN:

Good luck dealing with that pressure.
UPDATE: Rand Paul has announced that he’s supporting Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The pressure just got a lot more intense for Manchin, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Tester, etc.

As we look back at Gov. Dayton’s time in office, it’s difficult to identify his signature legislative accomplishment. His first year in office, he shut down state government. It was the longest shutdown of state government in US history. When it ended, Gov. Dayton signed the budget deal he could’ve signed without the shutdown.

In 2013, with DFL majorities in the House and Senate, Gov. Dayton finally passed his massive tax increases. In addition to those tax increases, Gov. Dayton promised that he’d stop property tax increases as a result of the increased LGA payments and “historic investments in education.” I wrote this post in December, 2014 to highlight the major property tax increase that Princeton levied on taxpayers. They originally sought a 33.87% tax increase but ‘settled’ for a 25.16% increase.

In this post, I quoted then-Speaker Paul Thissen. Here’s what he said in a statement:

The House DFL Education Budget invests in what works: fully funding all-day, every day kindergarten and investing $50 million in early learning childhood scholarships. All-day K and early childhood education are proven tools to improve test scores, close the achievement gap, and prepare students for future academic success. The House DFL Education Budget also increases the basic funding formula for K-12 schools by four percent over the biennium, an increase of over $315 million, or $209 per pupil. The school shift payback will be included in the House Taxes bill.

In other words, the Dayton tax increase to buy down property taxes failed terribly.

What’s worse is that, in 2014, the DFL legislature repealed several of the tax increases it passed the final weekend of the session the year before. That led to the Republicans retaking the House majority in the 2014 election. Apparently, Minnesotans didn’t think much of Gov. Dayton’s tax increases.

In 2015, Gov. Dayton met with Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL- Cook, and Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt every day of the final week of session to negotiate a budget. On the Friday of the session, they were no closer to an agreement than they were when they started. Sen. Bakk and Speaker Daudt sat down and promptly negotiated a bipartisan budget deal in less than an hour. When they made the announcement, Gov. Dayton criticized the budget and vetoed the bill.

That led to another cave-in by Gov. Dayton during yet another special session. BTW, special sessions might be Gov. Dayton’s legacy, though I can’t call them an accomplishment.

Aside from these negative legislative ‘accomplishments’, Gov. Dayton ignored the Somali day care fraud scandal and the elder care abuse scandal. That’s the one where people actually died and nobody from the Dayton administration bothered to investigate.

The other thing that Gov. Dayton was famous for was temper tantrums:

Finally, there’s the MNLARS fiasco, which Gov. Dayton created but didn’t fix and the child care unionization legislation. The unionization legislation went nowhere because child care providers defeated the measure 1,014-392. That’s what happens when you’re stubborn and you don’t listen to people. Gov. Dayton earned those epic slap downs.

One thing that’s apparent from this past week is that the Democrats’ plan to counter the good economic news is to insist that President Obama deserves great credit for the strong economy. During the first roundtable discussion on Fox News Sunday, Democrat spinmeister Mo Elleithee went right to work on that storyline.

First, Chris Wallace asked “Mo, there has been a lot of talk about a blue wave this November, a big Democratic pickup, may be control of the House, maybe even control of the Senate. But I think you would agree in the absence of where the economy is always the top issue and when you got strong economic growth, when you got historically low unemployment number, isn’t that a pretty strong record for Republicans to run on?” Elleithee replied by saying “Look, first of all, we should all be celebrating 4.1 economic growth. That’s a good number, a strong number. It also would have been the fifth strongest number of the Obama administration, right? The Obama administration — this is the continuation of economic recovery that began in 2009 and 2010. That strong economy wasn’t enough to save Democrats last time. It’s not enough to say it will be enough to say it would save Republicans this time.”

Republicans on the panel should’ve jumped on that immediately. Unfortunately, notorious Trump-hater Jonah Goldberg sat silent. Ditto with Jillian Turner. Since they sat silent, I’ll say what I would’ve said had I been on that panel. First, I would’ve highlighted the fact that President Trump and the GOP Congress scrapped the Obama-era tax system. They essentially threw it out and started from scratch. Thanks to the Trump/GOP tax cuts, business investment is accelerating, capital from overseas investments are flooding into the United States where manufacturing plants are being built or re-opened.

Remember when the Obama administration told us that those jobs were gone forever? I certainly remember. Apparently, all that was required were the right policies. Manufacturing is back in a big way. President Obama doesn’t get credit for the manufacturing rebound.

President Trump unleashed the energy sector by eliminating President Obama’s regulations that were intended to strangle the fossil fuel industry. Now we’re a net exporter of fossil fuels. Another thing is that the manufacturing sector is getting stronger quickly. That’s what I’d expect. President Obama worked tirelessly to put the fossil fuel industry out of business. He can’t take credit for that resurgent industry, the jobs it’s creating or the communities it’s rebuilding. Remember this statement from the campaign trail?

This month’s job report showed that people are returning to the workforce because they know there’s finally good-paying jobs available. In fact, for the first time in history, there are more job openings than there are workers to fill those positions. A frequent highlight of the Obama-era jobs reports was the part where they’d say how many people dropped out of the workforce or how the workforce participation rate had dropped. President Obama can’t take credit for that.

President Obama can’t take credit for surging consumer confidence or business confidence, either. Neither sector was particularly confident during the Obama administration. In truth, there’s nothing from the Obama administration’s policies that are contributing to the strengthening Trump economy. Period.

Frequently, Democrats have tried giving President Obama credit for the Trump economic growth. I won’t mince words — they’re lying through their teeth. The policies that President Obama put in place at the start of his administration produced pathetic economic growth. Stephen Moore highlights that economic growth during President Obama’s final year was 1.6%. During the campaign, economists ridiculed then-Candidate Trump when he said that his goal was 3-4% economic growth. They’ve already been proven wrong.

Let’s review President Obama’s policies, starting with high regulations that stifled economic growth. Big businesses weren’t bothered. Small businesses were hit hard. Incentives to invest in their businesses were essentially eliminated.

The Obama administration’s policies that were hostile against fossil fuels, pipelines and small businesses have been eliminated, which has led to improved economic growth and a huge increase in energy exports to other nations. The framework for a new trade deal with the EU includes a massive increase in sales of liquefied natural gas and other fossil fuels. The Obama administration was opposed to fossil fuels. The increase in fossil fuel production during the Obama administration happened because they fossil fuels on lands where federal permits weren’t required.

Obama shouldn’t get credit for opposing those policies. President Trump and the Republican Congress get the credit those policies because they’re the ones who implemented them.

The Obama administration raised taxes on small businesses and corporations. That resulted in companies hiding their money in other countries to the tune of $4,000,000,000,000. Now that that tax has been cut, the money is flooding back in and creating jobs here in the US. The Obama administration certainly shouldn’t get credit for opposing policies that increased economic growth.

Very few of President Obama’s economic policies are still intact. The turnaround in economic activity has been dramatic. In short, the Trump economy is growing fast. The Obama economy barely grew.

President Obama shouldn’t get credit for anything except that he showed us what not to do.

This pdf article should cause the DFL tons of heartburn. It isn’t a secret that a high percentage of DFL activists are anti-mining. That’s been documented repeatedly on LFR throughout the years. This article, though, is different in that it highlights what’s getting lost in the discussion.

Early in the article, it’s reported that “the state’s mineral resources are largely untouched: the Duluth Complex, a massive rock formation in northeast Minnesota stretching from Duluth to Pigeon Point, holds some of the
world’s largest undeveloped deposits of copper, nickel, platinum group elements (PGE), and ilmenite (the most important ore for titanium). It also contains elements such as cobalt, gold, and silver. If Minnesota had been able to mine these resources in 2017, it would have regained its position as America’s third largest producer of minerals by dollar amount—a position it has not held since 2012. On top of that, these numbers could increase significantly if gold and silver are discovered in mineable quantities in the areas currently being explored in northern Minnesota.”

That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, though. The important information is found a few paragraphs later:

The chart below shows the average annual wage for jobs in Hennepin, Itasca, and St. Louis counties, along with the average of all Minnesota counties. The average annual wage in Hennepin County is approximately $66,600, far larger than the average income for non-mining jobs in northern Minnesota, where wages are $12,000 lower than the state average. Residents of the Twin Cities metropolitan area often take their relatively high wages for granted, but jobs paying more than $66,000 per year are difficult to come by in northern counties. The average income in St. Louis County, for example, is approximately $42,000—and average mining jobs pay $83,235, nearly twice that amount.

Here’s the graph:

The anti-mining wing of the DFL is standing in the way of mining families making a more-than-middle class wage of $80,000+. That’s immoral. That’s before taking into consideration how much these communities need those incomes to rebuild those communities, those neighborhoods, those families, those lives.

Instead of living in poverty, these communities could live in prosperity. Think of the economic growth that’d happen if PolyMet and Twin Metals opened. Then think of how much better off we’d be if we built pipelines and other types of energy infrastructure. Instead of balancing budgets by raising taxes, Minnesota could do something that’s entirely foreign to the DFL. Minnesota could balance budgets through robust economic growth. That’s what it did during the Perpich years. Now, the DFL, the party that gave us Gov. Perpich, hates the people that Gov. Perpich loved.

Richard Painter’s views on copper-nickel mining are pretty typical of the anti-mining wing of the DFL:

The Flambeau Mine, a 35-acre surface mine located just south of Ladysmith in northern Wisconsin, illustrates how the environment and groundwater quality can be protected at an acid-generating mine. Over four years (1993-1997), the Flambeau Mine produced 181,000 tons of copper, 334 ounces of gold, and 3.3 million ounces of silver. At its peak, the mine provided nearly 100 family supporting jobs and paid more than $27.7 million in taxes into a state fund that was returned to the community to promote long-term business development.

Today the closed and restored mine site is an interpretive nature center, a recreation area, and a business park. Reclamation took about two years to complete and cost $20 million, and produced a 150-acre site that includes four miles of nature trails and five miles of equestrian paths that wind their way through a beautifully restored open space.

The anti-mining wing of the DFL says this mining can’t be done safely. Mr. Painter said that in the video. They’re either both wrong or they’re both intentionally lying. Both things seem possible.