It’s absolutely amazing how Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans can pretend Gogebic Taconite’s sudden announcement it was abandoning plans for a humongous open-pit iron mine is no big deal.
Yes, I’m talking about the $1.5 billion project that threatened to haul away enormous chunks of two scenic northern Wisconsin counties and contaminate waterways with toxic mine waste.
The mine’s abrupt demise is certainly an event to celebrate for anyone who cares about Wisconsin’s natural environment.
But from 2010 until just the other day, Walker and Republicans were still holding up the Gogebic mine as pretty much their only successful jobs program in a state that trails most of the rest of the country in job creation.
In his 2013 State of the State speech, Walker even used as stage props real, live, out-of-work union members dressed up as miners in hard hats pretending they were ready to start jobs in Walker’s imaginary mine.
Of course, most of the promised jobs and economic benefits for the state were always fantasy. Republicans started out talking about 700 jobs. The more they talked, the more those numbers grew into the thousands.
Most people stopped listening after they claimed mining jobs would pay an average of $82,000 a year. Miners all over Appalachia have been risking and losing their lives for miserable wages for decades.
With Wisconsin mining salaries headed toward six figures, our miners would be working in three-piece suits.
Mine Supporters Spent $15 Million on GOP
Even worse than all the false promises to workers desperate for employment in Wisconsin was mining’s out-and-out corruption of Republicans and Walker himself.
Mining in this country has a long, ugly history of environmental devastation and indifference toward the lives and safety of workers. That’s why Wisconsin governors and legislators from both parties built strong environmental protections and safety regulations over decades.
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Republicans under Walker had no qualms about wiping out those protections. They actually allowed Gogebic to write its own regulations behind closed doors. Republicans then passed the company’s own watered-down law eliminating regulations and oversight.
In Wisconsin these days you get what you pay for. Throughout the political rewrite of state mining laws, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign reported Gogebic executives and other mine supporters donated a total of $15 million to Walker and legislative Republicans.
And that doesn’t include the secret political contributions.
That’s right. Last summer Wisconsin learned Walker actually engineered a way for Gogebic and other special interests to contribute secretly to his campaign.
That was when documents released in the stalled John Doe investigation into Walker’s campaign fundraising revealed Gogebic had secretly contributed $700,000 to Walker and Republican legislators facing recall elections in 2011.
Such an enormous campaign contribution could be kept secret in a democracy because it was money laundered through the Wisconsin Club for Growth. As a supposedly independent group, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, unlike Walker himself, was permitted to accept unlimited funds without disclosing the identity of donors.
But guess who advised Gogebic and other corporate donors how to use the sleazy loophole in campaign finance laws?
From an email also released in the investigation from Kate Doner, Walker’s campaign fundraising consultant: “The governor is encouraging all to invest in the Wisconsin Club for Growth. Wisconsin Club for Growth can accept corporate and personal donations without limitations and no donors disclosure.”
Wisconsin can only wonder how many others took advantage of Walker’s advice on how to buy political favors from him and his fellow Republicans without anyone knowing about it.
That’s why Wisconsin Club for Growth and other right-wing Walker supporters keep trying to sabotage the John Doe criminal investigation with nuisance lawsuits.
Now, poof! Gogebic’s proposed mine is gone. Walker and Gogebic made a half-hearted attempt to blame fear of a tyrannical federal Environmental Protection Agency. But, in fact, the price of iron ore has dropped, well, like a rock in recent years from $180 to less than $60 a metric ton.
Gogebic also said there were a lot more wetlands in the area than it had realized.
Golly, maybe the company should have listened to all the environmentalists who kept telling them about those threatened wetlands instead of branding those groups “eco-terrorists” and hiring paramilitary storm troopers with assault rifles to chase them off.
What’s become obvious is Walker and state Republicans in total control of the governor’s office and both legislative branches, with the freedom to do anything they want to create jobs, don’t have a clue how to do it.
Now instead of pretending they’re creating mining jobs in Wisconsin, they’re pretending to create jobs by passing a right-to-work law lowering wages in the state, claiming employers looking for cheap labor will flock to Wisconsin instead of Mississippi or Alabama.
At least all the jobs Walker and Republicans don’t create with a right-to-work law will be a lot safer, cleaner and less environmentally destructive than all the jobs they didn’t create with their enormous, evaporating mine.
