RAMS appointment a symptom of a corrupt system

Sen. David Tommasoni’s new position as lobbyist, although the organization represents public entities, is simply symptomatic of a corrupt system, especially so on the Iron Range.

For decades, politicians here have been the co-opted servants of the mining industry, providing subsidies, acting as frontmen and either arguing for or providing reduced environmental regulation. Despite this and the repeated promises of prosperity, the Iron Range has the look of a post-Soviet abandoned waste dump. Those lucky, corrupt or subservient enough can still make a decent living but the despair remains, the diaspora continues, and the empty generations are truly here now. Despite the feel-good proclamations of the Chambers of Commerce, sounding like a mix of huckster Anthony Robbins, Up with People and Snake Oil salesmen, the children are few and the majority are poor.

Senator Tommasoni’s position is merely a public acknowledgment of what has been true but very rarely stated for a very long time. The same names, the good ol’ boy system, now mostly early wave baby boomers, have been recycled through different positions for over a generation. A few outsiders have been let in, but the system of interlocking boards, public consortiums and appointed positions have been a way to distribute power, public funds and favors for decades.

While it existed before, the taconite tax increased the system of control and patronage servile to mining regardless of cost. For the first decade and a half, the money flowed free and so did the theft. No one complained as there was plenty to go around. Since the eighties, however, the piece of meat hanging from the chain has elevated and become smaller. The dogs leaping for it are merely fewer and more vicious now. So is the social context, now resembling a farce out of the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, when everyone knew the lie but could not say it out loud and any dissident was deemed mentally ill. The code words are different here, but “environmentalist” or “doesn’t support mining enough” have the same meaning. The barren streets, empty houses and abandoned shops are just all too real, unfortunately.

Politician as lobbyist is nothing new, but the Range example is best described by the ten dollar word “avaricious”. Greed does not fully describe the system as it is so openly practiced here. Bribery is not needed, as the rewards are voted on in public meetings.

This system has long since passed padding pockets. It has, for a very long time, been out and out theft of public resources and funds. It is the Range’s great open secret, and it has as much to do with the empty houses and schools as did relying on a shrinking industry prone to leaving toxic waste, industrial brown-fields and giant holes.

The Range is not alone in this, of course— witness stadiums for profitable NFL teams and subsidies for such important public structures as privately owned malls. More money has been wasted on useless projects benefiting a few or employing the privileged than would have been by handing the money out by random lottery. The hucksterism has reached absurdity, as local officials now openly campaign for a private industry that has polluted, sucked pension funds dry, abandoned sites and communities with no reclamation and declared bankruptcy in every single case. Now, we find they are investing or truly subsidizing its startup and thus tying the public, a large number of whom do not want it, to the enterprise without any public input or knowledge. After years of subsidies and giveaways, it would be better if they simply wore the corporate logos as uniforms.

While this is a travesty, it is not anything new. The state developed and subsidized the industry and still does. Unfortunately, the public has had to pick up the costs, whether in public resources such as water, the emptied pensions absorbed by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, or the countless social costs from the mangled, half empty communities. None of this is ever mentioned, however; it is part of the great “disappeared” from official memory.

Paul Ojanen

Virginia, Minn.