Snake Oil

I’ve talked to too many people to remember all the neat little anecdotes I could report about my petitioning.

A couple people asked me to run for Mayor. I told them “no thanks.” I added that Duluth needed someone with the courage to make people mad at him. I’ve already done enough of that on Duluth’s School Board.

Don (formerly Donny) Ness, a Duluth City Councilor who works for Oberstar, gave me a big smile when he saw me downtown yesterday. “What are you doing to me?” he yelled with feigned anguish. Of course, Don doesn’t take my threat against the Congressman seriously. That’s one of the big advantages that I have. (The day that the Declaration of Independence was signed King George wrote in his diary: “Nothing of significance happened today.”) I handed Don a bookmark and told him I might be needing someone to manage my Congressional affairs after the election.

Today I spent a long while (that probably cost me 10 signatures) talking to someone who rushed over when he realized I was the spouse of a Minnesota Power Exec. This fellow has been writing perceptive letters-to-the-editor complaining about Minnesota Power’s unwillingness to fight the snake oil, coal gassification, electric power generator that Tom Michelletti has been selling. Tom has sold Senator Norm Coleman, Governor Tim Pawlenty and the entire Iron Range DFL delegation on this boondoggle. they have paved the way with assinine legislation that the tax payers will likely have to pick up when the project imploads. 

Colman engineered a whopping $800,000 million federal “loan” to build this supposedly, enviornmentally, sensitive electric generation plant.  Too bad the enviornmental community distrusts the technology.

Governor Pawlenty who is sharing Coleman’s invisible robe has been telling everyone what a great deal it is. Of course, these guys all thought George Bush’s Iraq war was a great idea too. I guess the Bush administration was so grateful for their support and so indifferent to our ten trillion dollars national deficit that throwing away another near billion on this snake oil was no big deal.