{"id":30298,"date":"2020-04-25T15:56:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T20:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=30298"},"modified":"2020-04-25T16:01:20","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T21:01:20","slug":"a-patient-handsome-harry-replies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=30298","title":{"rendered":"A Patient Handsome Harry replies"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I stopped attempting to hide the identity of my old ally turned bitter critic &#8220;Gentleman Jim&#8221;. If you want to take an hour you can find his name in the blog some place. I used to post his complimentary posts during my fight with the old School Board and Johnson Controls over the Red Plan. Then Gentleman Jim got the idea I was opposed to the issue closest to his heart. The attempt by evil liberals to kick industry out of Northeastern Minnesota. This grievance goes back a very long way to when Hubert Humphrey was Minnesota&#8217;s United State&#8217;s Senator. That&#8217;s enough preface. I will only put my reply to today&#8217;s email above the jump. Feel free to read Jim&#8217;s olive branch email below but beware it doesn&#8217;t meet my standards of correspondence. I like Duluth&#8217;s Mayor and Country Board member Frank Jewel. Gentleman Jim does not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Jim, both the gentlemanly and ungentlemanly,<\/p>\n<p>I have never changed my mind on mining. I haven&#8217;t studied it deeply enough to know who is blowing smoke at me. I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if it was a cross breeze. Copper mining does have a terrible record and fresh water is growing increasingly scarce. I don&#8217;t blame anyone who hasn&#8217;t studied the science for acting on instinct. I would like to think we set up a system to make rational decisions. Maybe we haven&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>As my new French pen pal told me copper is the key to all of these new clean energy systems. If we don&#8217;t get it somewhere half of 7 billion people will have to count on more coal and oil energy generation. The Chinese are already planning to build 150 such plants in the 3rd world. Heck, I&#8217;ve thought nuclear plants were safer in the long run than more greenhouse gasses.If we assume all new coal mines are going to be Chernobyl we aren&#8217;t thinking clearly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I am pleased if I&#8217;m no longer on your shit list. You have never been on mine but you sure came close.<\/p>\n<p>Handsome Harry<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>And one more thing, if I ever got to be the 8th District Congressman (as unlikely as that is) and was persuaded copper mines were safe I&#8217;d be one hell of a lot better advocate for the industry than almost anyone else.I am not intimidated by much of anything in a democracy like ours.<\/p>\n<p>Handsome Harry:\u00a0 We have finally reached common ground (translated&#8230;you agree with me).\u00a0 Your comments on Stauber not having balls is spot on.\u00a0 I have been trying to have a conversation with Stauber for almost two years now.\u00a0 I have called, sent emails and cards, no answer back.\u00a0 What the fuck is he afraid of?\u00a0 Inside sources tell me the problem is Marilyn Haglund (the bulldozer, as she is regarded by some), other sources suggest it may be Commissioner Keith Nelson, still others think it\u2019s that used goods peddler Jerry Kortesmaki.\u00a0 Whoever it is, Stauber should know enough to disregard people with personal agendas or vendettas.\u00a0 He isn\u2019t smart enough.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I\u2019m not the only one he blacklists.\u00a0 The region\u2019s newspapers abound with letters about Stauber ignoring them and their questions.\u00a0 So there.<\/p>\n<p>Good to see you come around on copper-nickel mining on the Range.\u00a0 Both PolyMet and Twin Metals are proposed on lands that are legally open to mining.\u00a0 INCO, AMAX and Kennecott were doing exploratory drilling back in the 60\u2019s, 70\u2019s &#038; 80\u2019s and no bitching was occurring back then.\u00a0 In the late 70\u2019s, when the environmental wackos refused to live up to their word and agreement of the 1965 Freeman Directives, they engaged the services of Minneapolis Congressman Donald Fraser to introduce legislation to ban outboard motors, snowmobiles and limited logging from the BWCA and increase the size of the BWCA.\u00a0 A lot of lying went on and the Minneapolis RedStar became the mouthpiece and newsletter for the environmental wacko movement.\u00a0 As part of an \u201cagreement\u201d to increase the acreage of the BWCA, language was included that allowed for mining outside the BWCA.\u00a0 The environmental wackos \u201cagreed\u201d to that.\u00a0 But as a clear mind can see, they never lived up to past agreements and they are not living up to the 1978 agreement either.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not the water.\u00a0 In 1977, as a Director of the Boundary Waters Conservation Alliance, I viewed maps of the area in the U.S. Forest Service offices in Washington D.C. that showed plans by the wacko movement to increase the acreage of the BWCA that would close the Echo Trail, the Fernberg Trail and (surprise, surprise) the very lands on which these copper-nickel are proposed.\u00a0 So given that the mine developers have every legal right to proceed with mine plans, the wackos had to put their minds together and decide what to do now.\u00a0 Their decision was to scare the people by saying their water is going to be polluted.\u00a0 Fully knowing people\u2019s attention spans were short (and even more so since many brains were altered by drug abuse) they embarked upon a one sentence line \u201ccopper-nickel mining will pollute your water\u201d.\u00a0 It put the mine advocates on the defensive.\u00a0 They have to explain their process using scientific terms using multiple postulates to defend the safety of the mineral processing.\u00a0 That takes time, and a clear head, to assimilate the data.\u00a0 Most of today\u2019s public don\u2019t want to take the time to learn (eg. Duluth\u2019s Downstream Business Coalition, Duluth Mayor Emily \u201cOld Maid\u201d Larson, Frankie \u201cLeavenworth\u201d Jewell and Duluth Grill\u2019s Tom Hanson) and they can\u2019t comprehend the data due to years of drug abuse.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s not the water.\u00a0 The wackos want the land and the only way they can get it as part of their Master Plan is to prevent mining.\u00a0 Period!<\/p>\n<p>You can print this on your blog and in the Reader.\u00a0 I stand behind my words.<\/p>\n<p>Gentleman Jim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I stopped attempting to hide the identity of my old ally turned bitter critic &#8220;Gentleman Jim&#8221;. If you want to take an hour you&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,29,133],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30298"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30303,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30298\/revisions\/30303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}