And for important St. Louis county business, we get this: http://bit.ly/1hZRrfx. Of course, as the story says, many local city councils and now the county have passed resolutions against any Polymet review. What bearing this has on the final process is questionable, of course.

But there are other important questions:

1: Why are local government, county and state officials acting as publicly funded lobbyists for  private, multinational backed mining firms?
2: How many of these officials have stock, or potential personal and business benefits. How about their friends and acquaintances?
3: How much other important business  and how many other alternatives  for economic development are ignored?

The Range is not alone in these problems; in fact, they are global in nature, and resource extraction based communities all have similar problems. But, the Range's problems are also historically specific to both mining and logging. The artificial boom of the 60's and 70's was a Potemkin village; built and operated at cost-plus, with feather-bedded workforces and rampant theft, the building and expansion construction booms were due to end. Following Herbert Stein's famous quote: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,". The seniority system gave most of the jobs remaining to first wave baby-boomers, thus an entire generation left starting in the 1980's and we now see the results.

Desperate for the days of easy money, local officials now push for their and their friend's personal profit at the expense of everyone else and the natural environment. Using their publicly funded positions, they now spend our tax dollars and time forcing this and other projects down the public throat, all while feasting at the public trough, whether in pay or subsidies.