Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern MichiganGuest Post: Save the Wild U.P.’s Open Letter to Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton Concerning His Recent Tour of Eagle Mine
Wednesday , 18, November 2015 Environment, Upper Peninsula Leave a commentBack in August when Communications Director for Eagle Mine, Dan Blondeau, sent love letters to Up North Progressive, he also offered the opportunity to go out on a date and tour the facility. Since then, mysterious emails arrive periodically with the offer to tour Lundin Minings’ operations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Up North Progressive has yet to accept the offer.
Mark Dayton, Governor of Minnesota, however did accept and recently toured Eagle Mine. Save the Wild U.P., a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving as much of Northern Michigan’s pristine environment as possible invited Governor Dayton to meet with them when he visited Michigan. He did not, so the group published this open letter in the Minnesota Star Tribune. They granted Up North Progressive permission to also publish the letter.
Dear Gov. Mark Dayton,
When we learned you’d be touring Eagle Mine in Michigan’s wild Upper Peninsula, we — Board and Advisory Board members of grassroots environmental group Save the Wild U.P. — asked to meet with you, to share key concerns about the Eagle Mine. We’d like you to make an informed decision on the PolyMet project. Since you were unable to meet with us during your visit, we’re sharing our concerns publicly.
You toured Eagle Mine’s facility, which the sulfide mining industry deems an environmentally responsible sulfide mine. Did you happen to notice the newly constructed, heavy-duty paved haul road you traveled on from Big Bay, pavement which ends at the gates of Eagle Mine? Under Michigan’s Part 632 Legislation governing sulfide mining, that road should have been regulated as a mining haul road, subject to an environmental impact assessment and permit revisions. Through a series of political-corporate sleights of hand, however, the haul road was paid for by Eagle Mine, but constructed as a County Road.
Did Eagle show you their air pollution? For example, did Eagle proudly show you the Main Vent Air Raise on the bank of the Salmon Trout River, a wild blue-ribbon trout stream flowing swiftly down to Lake Superior? During the mine’s permitting phase, Eagle pledged to use environmentally responsible baghouse filters to remove heavy metals, sulfide rock particles, exhaust from underground equipment, and cancer-causing particulates ejected from the mine following blasting. Did they mention that they changed the design, revised the permit, and removed all filters? Now, twice daily, the underground sulfide orebody is blasted, and a plume of heavy metals is blown from the stack at high velocity. The pollutants are carried on the winds, falling out over the surrounding environment. Only one stack test was ever done, more than a year ago, prior to the mine becoming fully-operational. Twice daily, we are told, someone stands at the vent site and views the plume to rate how dark it is, a sort of visual opacity test — although one blast takes place at night. The actual contents of Eagle’s air pollution plume remain entirely unassessed and unregulated.
Did Eagle Mine show you the Salmon Trout River, a pristine, groundwater-fed river? At their treated wastewater infiltration system, the mine’s deionized wastewater is returned to the shallow groundwater aquifer, where it bonds with metals in the ground as it percolates. Almost immediately, it is outside of Eagle’s fenceline. Did Eagle Mine explain they are utilizing groundwater as if it were a sewer pipe, conveying wastewater directly to springs which feed the East Branch of the Salmon Trout River? We’d like you to understand that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA have allowed Eagle Mine to use the wrong permit — a Groundwater Discharge Permit, meeting only human drinking water values, rather than an NPDES Clean Water Act permit, with the more sensitive pollution limits for copper and other contaminants needed to protect macroinvertebrates and other stream life, including trout. We hope you learned there are no monitoring wells tracking the movement of Eagle’s wastewater toward these critical springs. The Salmon Trout River will be harmed — it’s simply a question of when.
Eagle Mine LLC’s milling facility, the Humboldt Mill, also poses multiple threats to clean water, with discharges from its tailings degrading the Escanaba River watershed, and the Lake Michigan basin. Note that Lundin Mining has provided a mere $23.2 million in total financial assurances for both the mine ($18m) and the mill ($5.2m) — a tiny sum, inadequate to fund even an EPA cleanup investigation.
The sulfide mining industry would like you to ignore these serious issues — impacts to the air, water, and land, as well as grossly inadequate bonding assurances — while falsely portraying the Eagle Mine as environmentally protective. The Eagle Mine should be viewed as a dire warning, rather than a good example. We urge you to deny the PolyMet permit, and protect Minnesota’s most valuable natural resource: clean water.
Kathleen Heideman
President of Save the Wild U.P.
It’s a shame the Governor didn’t meet with Save the Wild U.P. He would have been shown a vastly different side of Eagle Mine, the “county” road they insist they had nothing to do with but completely funded, and the real threat the mine poses to the environment. Perhaps next time an elected official takes the tour, they will find the time and learn the truth about Eagle Mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The Continuing Story of Dr. Steve Ingersoll: Now What About the Rest of Them?
Friday , 13, November 2015 Section 16 3 Comments
Things have certainly changed for Dr. Steve Ingersoll in just five short years. It was in January of 2010 when MAPSA posted this bit of news about Lake Superior State for-profit charter schools Grand Traverse Academy and Detroit Service Learning Academy getting together so DSLA could see Integrated Visual Learning at work.
“Cutting-edge philosophy in instruction” and “future in the broader scope of education,” Indeed!
In truth, Ingersoll from the very beginning saw for-profit charter schools for the tax dollar-leeching potential they held even back in the days when he convinced former charter school partner, Chuck Stockwell, IVL could cure his daughter of her inoperable brain tumor. A former teacher who worked at Livingston Developmental Academy described the shady handling of money moving from various sub-companies to others over twenty years ago.
Over the past two years, Ingersoll was indicted, tried, convicted and on December 8 will be sentenced by Judge Ludington in federal district court in Bay City. The intrepid Miss Fortune of course is the only news source in the state currently spending time pouring over letters and documents proving Grand Traverse Academy’s non-elected school board made up of Ingersoll’s family, friends and optometry buddies were all very aware of what Ingersoll was up to, yet did nothing to stop him.
GTA’s authorizer, Lake Superior State University, also did nothing to stop Ingersoll from stealing the taxpayers’ money. There’s a two page letter of hand-wringing from former Superintendent Mike Flanagan to then president of LSSU, Tony McLain with a list of suggestions to remedy the problem, including replace the board with people not related to Steve Ingersoll and ensure the board prohibits contract prepayments. LSSU as GTA’s authorizer receives 3% of the money GTA gets from the state to operate the school, and while it is the job of LSSU to make sure the school board isn’t made up of the management company’s friends, family, or business associates, they have no say in how the school board oversees payments made to the management company. Even after Flanagan asked pretty please, LSSU did nothing. Most of the people who were on the school board for GTA when Ingersoll and Bradley were indicted are still on the board right this minute. Not one thing on the list in Flanagan’s two-page letter to Dr. McLain has ever been implemented.
It’s hard to place the blame even at the state superintendent’s level, and that’s not by accident. It’s the law passed by the state legislature and signed by former Governor John Engler that created the disaster we know as Michigan’s for-profit charter school law. Who wrote that law? A name we all know and loathe when it comes to corporate school reform in Michigan – Richard McLellan.
McLellan has been a burr under the saddle in Michigan politics since 1967 when he and his University of Michigan law school buddies started Cornerstone Foundation. This organization gave birth to Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which anyone struggling to stay in the middle class in this state can tell you relentlessly works to destroy the middle class since its inception. More recently, McLellan was involved with the formation of the Education Achievement Authority and the infamous Project Skunkworks.
It was in 1990 when McLellan was on the transition team for soon to be Governor and Mackinac Center member John Engler. He went to work at that time constructing a law to fundamentally change public education in Michigan. With the help of religious extremists and deep pockets in the state, McLellan provided the leg work for what would become Michigan’s for-profit charter school malaise. John Engler signed the legislation into law, and the corporate reformers have gorged at the taxpayer trough ever since. In 20 years 232 charter schools opened in Michigan. Over 80% of them are for-profit with unelected school boards and no accountability to anyone. The law was written that way, and many of the people responsible for that happening still hold high positions in Michigan government.
Sentencing Steve Ingersoll to prison won’t begin to cure the for-profit charter school cancer killing public education in Michigan. But that was the point of charter schools in Michigan all along.
Sarah B of Ypsilanti Insists Castlebond Never Managed Gateway To Success Academy: Who Cares?
Saturday , 7, November 2015 Dr. Ingersoll, Gateway To Success Academy, Section 16, Tea Party Charter School 2 Comments
Apparently, the commenter from Ypsilanti does. Almost a month after leaving a comment on this story, she returned to leave another comment.
Despite the Michigan Department of Education listing Castlebond Enterprises as the for-profit manager of Gateway To Success, it was never ever true. West Shore Education Service District has no clue what they’re doing and listed the wrong company – according to Sarah B. All Castlebond did was some teeny tiny minuscule compliance consulting. West Shore ESD was wrong – Castlebond Enterprises never managed G2S.
This seems like a huge mistake for an intermediate school district to make. How did they not know which management firm they had contracted with? Don’t charter school authorizers need to know that? At some point they figured it out, because on October 12, 2015, the Michigan Department of Education changed the name of the management company from Castlebond Enterprises to “self-managed”.
Something Up North Progressive noted in this story the same day MDE changed the status.
Whether it was a mistake made by MDE, West Shore ESD, or maybe even stories published on this blog, someone realized there was a problem and decided self-managing Gateway To Success Academy would be a better option rather than a for-profit charter school manager with no fixed address relying on LegalZoom for legal advice. Sarah B’s insistence that Castlebond Enterprises never was the management company smacks of damage control more than a simple clerical error.
For-profit charter schools in Michigan have been nothing but a two decades-long error full of scandals, criminal activity and grift. The near invisible coverage of the biggest case of federal bank fraud and embezzlement by former charter school manager, Dr. Steve Ingersoll, reached its third week of sentencing proceedings with no end in sight. This is only one crooked charter school manager. The state of Michigan currently allows 232 for-profit charter schools to operate in the state with management companies just like Dr. Steve Ingersoll once operated. The case is in federal district court in Bay City, so the local paper covers it. The Traverse City Record-Eagle however stands mute when it comes to local charter schools raiding the safety deposit box of taxpayer funds. When a TCAPS employee does it of course, it’s front page news.
If one for-profit charter school stealing $3.5 million of the taxpayers money isn’t enough, then consider the $1.7 million the state of Michigan’s handed out to for-profit charter schools that never opened. Tea Party Charter School aka Warren Classical Academy is listed on page 15 of a report released last month. Warren Classical Academy, one of two for-profit charter schools backed by Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter Initiative is the fever dream of social media tea party diva Pasquale Battaglia. His openly racist comments on twitter are the reason why both of those for-profit charter schools failed to be authorized by anyone.
West Shore ESD making such a glaring error of not knowing who their management company is before G2S even has enough money to open in the autumn of 2016 doesn’t bode well for the charter school. Other errors people involved with G2S have made include one of the members of the Pennies From Heaven charity saying in front of witnesses while vacationing in Arizona that “G2S will never be for alternative education.” There was also the error made by Jamie Bandstra wasting professional development time at Journey Junior Senior High School pulling out G2S blueprints and asking the soon to be unemployed school staff for their input. The worst error of all was leaving 125 at-risk high school students out in the cold. These kids are scared they lost their chance to graduate from high school because their former principal and the local oil baron have to build a legacy in the community to boost their egos.
If Gateway To Success somehow manages to beat the odds and actually opens next fall, time will tell if they succeed where every other for-profit charter school opened in the same region has failed. Parents of students attending West Shore ESD schools need to pay very close attention to what is going on in Michigan and the growing scandal of for-profit charter schools operating in the state. Sarah B is right about West Shore ESD, but for the wrong reason. Authorizing Gateway To Success Academy is decidedly a huge error.
Good Riddance to a Horrible Scam Artist: Larry Lessig Drops Out of Presidential Race
Monday , 2, November 2015 Candidates, Presidential Primary 2016 1 Comment
I can’t imagine why. Anyway, the Gods smiled upon us and he’s out of the race. Not that he was ever really in the race.
May you and your brony boy Brian Boyko never be heard from to steal another dollar with your poorly executed money scams again.
The Department of Natural Resources Needs Your Help Finding Sleeping Bears This Winter
Monday , 2, November 2015 DNR, Environment Leave a comment
The Michigan DNR wants people to help them find denned bears for an ongoing research project. They are asking any Michigan resident hunting, trapping or just spending time outdoors in the northern Lower Peninsula to report any bear dens they find to the DNR.
Bears located in dens will be inspected as possible research subjects. If selected, they will be tagged and fitted with radio collars so they can be tracked by conservation officers.
Bear populations are rising in Northern Michigan. The DNR wants to research how many bears are living in the state. They also want to find out where bears are making dens for the winter and what food they’re eating.
A man from downstate shot a collared bear with three cubs in Oceana County during bear season on September 23, 2015. He turned himself in and faces jail time and fines if convicted. It is legal for hunters to harvest a collared bear during bear season, but sows with cubs are not to be hunted.
If you’re outdoors in northern lower Michigan this winter and find a bear den, you can contact the DNR by calling Mark Boersen at 989- 275-5151, or by email at boersenm@michigan.gov . A GPS location of the bear den if possible would be a great help.
The Media Are As Liberal As The Republicans Who Own Them: GOP Primary Candidates Gonna Take Their Ball and Go Home
Saturday , 31, October 2015 Elections, Presidential Primary 2016 Leave a comment
The Up North Progressive has been really busy these past couple of weeks getting adjusted to the new full time job and frankly more interested in the giant (or as Trump would say, “yooge”) Coprinopsis atramentaria coming up in the front yard than the current state of chaos within the GOP, but the recent blow up over the LIEberal media and the last GOP primary debate proves anyone who votes Republican in 2016 is a dangerous, deranged lunatic.
The best part about last Wednesday’s debate happened during the kiddie table session. Lindsey Graham won by being the most inebriated and ranting about where he wanted to shove his fist in every dictator in the world as warmonger in chief.
Because CNBC covers financial news, the candidates were expected to answer questions about their financial plans for the country. None of these guys have financial plans, which is why all of the candidates either played “I don’t like your question, so I’m going to answer the question I wish you’d asked instead” or blew up at the moderators using the Sarah Palin complaint to deflect away their incompetence. The fantasy football question was legit – that’s the level of intelligence the moderators knew they were dealing with.
Rubio thinks it will help the economy to keep hard-to-fill jobs vacant for half a year. Ben Carson has no clue what his tax cut plan would do, except make God happy because his tax plan comes from the bible. Jeb Bush talks about how much he likes Charles Murray’s take on poverty. Donald Trump thinks toughing it out financially includes dad giving you a million bucks. Rand Paul wants government so small he can barely see it. Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and the rest, send them all to Gilligan’s Island, they can do less harm there.
And it seems that’s the plan, because yesterday the news was full of how the campaigns were revolting against Reince Priebus and the RNC. Seems the GOP candidates really are taking their ball and going home. Priebus begged to be included, but he’s shut out of the meeting.
NBC received a letter from the GOP stating their February GOP debate was suspended, but it’s not enough. The candidates want debates where they can drone on about their religiousyness, their ideology about what they think America should be, and how they should be in charge of a government they want to shut down.
The GOP candidates hate the debates because they have nothing to debate about but ideology. The GOP is out of real solutions for anything, backed themselves into a corner failing to stop everything the White House accomplished despite their best efforts, and now they’re fighting each other to win a presidency that slips further and further away with every election cycle. Out of touch and running out of time. Just like their animal mascot: Very possibly extinct within 50 years.
@Todd_Courser Knows All About Fabricating Evidence: Attempted Translation of Most Recent Convoluted Word Salad
Sunday , 25, October 2015 Candidates, Elections, Tea Party 2 Comments
Someone should really tell tea party poster child Todd “5head” Courser that his best strategy at this point to win the primary election in his district is stop typing random words into the computer and sharing them with the Internet as part of his “on slot” to convince the voters in his district it’s a good idea reelecting him to a government seat he already resigned. His response probably would be to “pray about it” first, or something. He posted another stream of unconsciousness this morning, so let’s open up our big book of thinking errors and see if we can’t decipher this into something coherent, shall we?
Why do I continue to fight about the processes and share all of the intricacies of what goes on in the state house with you?
Too bad you didn’t do your job when you were in the state house. Lying to your constituents is why you’re not in the state house now.
Well, isn’t that what being a State Representative does…protects the voice and vote of the people of his District? If that isn’t what you want in a rep then choose someone else.
Those voices in your head are not your people, Todd. Hate to break it to you. If you listened to actual voting members in your district, you would notice they use things like grammar every day. Don’t worry, they will choose someone other than you in a couple of weeks.
I am asked why I agreed to the house report. I didn’t! I admitted to having personal conversations on state property and I stated that I didn’t have time to read the entire report, so I couldn’t agree to it. I NEVER agreed to the house report. I NEVER agreed to the misuse of state resources, other than having personal conversations on state property.
See what he did there? By not reading the report he can deny his own personal responsibility. “If I didn’t read it, I can’t agree to it!” And the ‘personal conversations’ are the afternoons he spent giving Cindy Gamrat foot rubs in his SUV before heading to the hotel for more ‘personal conversations’.
In the report you can read how the official and political work were separated. Many of the emails were from outside of state time. These men worked for me politically, after hours, not just with me at the state house. The committee wanted me to agree and then later made up that I agreed to the house report. The media then said I agreed, but I never agreed to the house report. Not all of what you read and hear in the media is true – in the case of the media surrounding all of this, most of what you have read is not true, just partial truths.
Confusing? It’s supposed to be. By rambling along that “they” wanted him to agree, and how they said he agreed and the media reported he agreed, but he really didn’t agree … you’re supposed to get the impression that no one can possibly know what really happened.
And who are ‘these men who worked for me’?
What we do know is that these men, who were placed as staffers in my office, were secretly working with my political enemies in the Speaker’s Office from the beginning of my term and they made these baseless, never proven, allegations.
Conspiracy! Let’s just maximize this victim stance as far as we can possibly stretch it. EVERYONE WAS OUT TO GET ME!
We also know these men didn’t testify as to the voracity of their claims – never put under oath, never forced to testify and I was never allowed to cross examine them. I gave hours of testimony on the House Business Report’s ridiculous findings which were put together by the House Business Office, who work for, you guessed it, the Speaker along with these former staffers.
This is the same report he didn’t read so he couldn’t agree to it. Amazing, isn’t it, how he just knows the report is a big pile of lies because he didn’t read it?
Their report was based on testimony from former staffers – who were never called to testify under oath. Claims were made and then those claims were used by the machine to claim all sorts of things that I was not allowed to explain or to cross examine those who made the claims.
They were always out to get him from the moment he was assigned his seat!
There was plenty of unsubstantiated junk in the House Business Report, but little evidence of wrong doing. That is probably why they didn’t do a full investigation, didn’t call witnesses and didn’t force the former staffers to testify under oath.
Once again, stuff he knows for sure because he didn’t read the report.
This was a political hit by my enemies
Of course it was.
who are the actual employers of the former staffers who made these allegations and who were assigned to my office. I didn’t agree to the House Business Report of half-truths and things taken out of context. The summary itself had many mistakes, which could have easily been explained had they questioned me. To say I lie, because the former staffers said so, is okay. However, if I say and prove that the former staffers lie, I can’t be believed…even with concrete proof.
And his proof is the pile of assumptions he’s making about a report he didn’t read and the paranoid delusions about what his former staffers were up to in his office. Very concrete proof. That Cooley Law School education is doing you proud.
To have a system where you can be accused of something you never did and never be allowed to explain or ask questions of those accusing you, is abominable. To be accused and condemned with no evidence to substantiate any claims, is wrong.
Blame blame blame blame blame. It’s everyone else’s fault but mine. Don’t these people understand what a special snowflake I am, therefore their rules don’t apply to me?
Why do I continue to fight about the processes and share all of the intricacies of what goes on in the state house with you? Well, isn’t that what being a State Representative does…protects the voice and vote of the people of his District?
You lose points for using your opening paragraph as your ending paragraph.
This is not the pleading of a poor, misunderstood man fighting against a Goliath of a political machine with conspiracy and intrigue around every corner of the capital. This is criminal behavior. Todd Courser didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone else is out to get him. He’s maligned by the real wrongdoers. The sad part is even after he loses the primary election next month, it won’t be the last time he tosses another word salad on the world wide web.
The Liberal Party won the federal election in a landslide victory, ensuring a majority in the Canadian parliament and a new Prime Minister – Justin Trudeau.
The son of the late Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 42 year old politician lead his party to victory. They will have the majority in parliament, while Stephen Harper’s Conservative party will be the opposition. Justin Trudeau is the youngest Prime Minister in Canada’s history.
Mulcaire’s NDP did very poorly tonight, and some speculate this could (or should) make Mulcaire resign.
So far, the Greens have one seat.
Stephen Harper is out after nine long years. He will be remembered for gutting environmental standards in Canada, proroguing parliament, which is a fancy way of saying canceling the entire session until the next term starts, and most recently and expertly illustrated by John Oliver, signed into law the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, which essentially banned Muslim women from wearing Niqab. No one will miss Stephen Harper, and Canadians everywhere can ask the really important questions, such as, “is it safe to smoke weed again?” and, “can we tell the Americans where they can shove the F-35 now?”
Congratulations, Canada, on a new Liberal government and Prime Minister.
Todd Courser The Perpetual Poster Child of Conservative Values
Monday , 19, October 2015 Candidates, Tea Party, Tealiban Leave a comment
Todd Courser really wants his old job back. He also enjoys writing long streams of questionable consciousness and posting them on the internet intentionally, as if that in any way will persuade people he’s the right guy for the job he quit and wants back. Last night he posted once again another diatribe full of large chunks of text that was bolded, underlined, and italicized all at the same time. Someone needs to tell him that it doesn’t add emphasis if you use the bold, italics and underline options for the whole text. Or better yet, don’t.
He’s since changed it, but the original title text stated he was the right choice to fight against the “Liberal on slot.” First, when Todd talks about liberals, he doesn’t mean Democratic Party members, he’s talking about the less rabidly conservative members of his own party. They’re not “conservative” enough, meaning not all Republicans have the same high level of moral values that Todd does. If establishment Republicans are the new progressives and liberals, what does that make actual liberals and progressives? It’s fascinating to watch the tea party so narrowly define true conservatism to a level that the majority of Republicans can’t come close.
What Todd doesn’t get, and it seems most “true” conservatives don’t get, is that it doesn’t matter the level of your moral high ground if you’re shtupping your tea party cohort on the side. Dennis Hastert just plead guilty to paying one of his former students millions of dollars to keep quiet about the former high school wrestling coach sexually assaulting him. He sat on the committee that investigated President Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Conservative icon Margaret Thatcher preached Ayn Rand levels of conservative values while at the same time used her office to shield members of the Paedophile Information Exchange from prosecution. The Duggar name will always be associated with child sexual assault and having sex with prostitutes, not the crazy shepherding quiverfull religious cult the family belongs to. The list is long of “conservative” values politicians and religious leaders behaving like degenerate scum when they think no one is looking.
To Todd Courser, Kevin McCarthy, Josh Duggar, Cindy Gamrat, Dennis Hastert, and all of the other holier than thou conservatives trying to force their morality down America’s throat. Your moral high ground doesn’t mean squat without ethics. Try being a decent human being before telling everyone else what’s right or wrong.
Heading Up North on US 127? Refuel in Houghton Lake
Saturday , 17, October 2015 Community Leave a comment
For the past month, three gas stations next to the US 127 exit in Houghton Lake have waged a price war with each other for the cheapest gas. Unleaded on October 16, 2015 at one gas station was $1.81 a gallon. In September the low price was $1.36. Most other gas stations in area are between $2.33 to $2.38.
The three gas stations involved – Marathon, Citgo, and B & B along M 55 are involved with the gas war. None of them have said why the price war is going on or how long it will last.
With firearm deer season coming up and archery deer season underway, many people who travel in the autumn will find the cheapest gas around in Houghton Lake. No one knows how long it will last, so fill up while you still can.