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Sunday, May 04, 2008

Why has the TINKLENBERG Campaign scrubbed its "Marlboro Man" rhetoric?



Apparently, the tinklenberg08.com website, on or about April 25, 2008, did some fairly quiet website scrubbing.

The obfuscating text that was scrubbed said:

Recently, the Star Tribune published an article that has led to some confusion regarding El's position on the use of taconite tailings in road construction. He believes that if scientific research conducted by the University of Minnesota shows that taconite tailings from the western side of the Iron Range are safe, we should find innovative, sustainable ways to recycle the by-product. Conversely, if the University finds taconite tailings to be unsafe, their use should be suspended immediately.

El has attempted to clear up these rumors in the past and will continue to do so until the voters know the facts about his position. Here is what El had to say earlier this year:

"The project I have worked on is sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) and is funded by a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Agency. The goal of the project is to conduct additional testing of by-products of taconite mining in the western portion of the iron range for suitability as transportation aggregate. The work is being led by the University.

"A secondary goal is to identify potential markets for the use of this material as a transportation aggregate, should the testing support it. That's the work in which I have been involved. The use of these western range materials in this way has consistently been approved by MnDOT, NRRI, the PCA and the EPA. Additional testing and monitoring is ongoing and should any concerns surface, I'm certain the University would suspend the project; an action I would support.

"For additional information you can contact Larry Zanko at the National Resources Research Institute."

If you hear any rumors about El's position on taconite tailings or his role in their use as transportation aggregate, make sure you help set the record straight. Your grassroots support and involvement will ensure that voters will make decisions informed by the facts, not gossip.


[italics added] This is standard cigarette company disingenuous obfuscation over carcinogenicity, repackaged. It is Elwny Tinklenberg as Marlboro Man.

The scrubbed text is largely what Elwyn Tinklenberg said to defend his actions-for-cash at the Anoka debate, and what he repeated in response to a taconite-related softball question he fielded at the DFL Sixth District Endorsement Convention - that if you prove the stuff unsafe, he will quit touting it and that Larry Zanko is a good man and Elwyn is confident that NRRI-Larry would behave accordingly. It stands a sane world upside down in an Alice in Wonderland fashion about which Elwyn Tinklenberg is too glib and dismissive.

Great. I have to prove a definitive hazard before a most questionable thing is forestalled. That's how you want it El? The Marlboro Man rides again. That litany was repeated by the cigarette cancer merchants time after time after time after time.

And it never sounded sensible from them either.

I have posted about the "precautionary principal" - that if you don't know if an activity is hazardous you show policy restraint until you prove it to be largely risk free. A quick feeling for the precautionary principle and its relation to burden of proof in a regulatory context is here, although only the abstract is available for free online. The article is about risks of industrial chemicals, and a European Union policy of having the regulatory burden of proof resting strongly, as a policy matter and not a matter of science, with the merchants of risk - the merchants wanting to market the material under review.

The burden is not merely one of coming forward with some evidence no matter how questionable, but rather a burden of substantial persuaveness, one that sets a quite high threshold before commodity commerce in questionable domains is permitted.

The burden of proof should not be merely one of coming forward with "something from NRRI-Larry" as Elwyn would obfuscate it to be - and then from that the rest of us are placed by that "Larry's stuff" under a burden to have to definitively prove Larry wrong. Alice found Wonderland inhospitable when she saw it ran that way.

In short, the sensible policy burden is that given the Reserve Mining litigation history, Larry has to be very, very, very, very convincing in his science, especially since Larry has an advocatorial bias built into his position from the get-go, in favor of a policy outcome that he's paid to want instituted.

Ditto for Elwyn. Same built-in bias. Perhaps more so. The Tinklenberg Group cashflow flows only if the material is moved along or periodic reporting shows activity clearly in that direction. Larry has a steady day job, Tinklenberg Group runs on fees.

The burden of proof for tailings-as-paving should be: You want to do THAT? My God, then YOU MUST BEFORE YOU START DOING ANY MISCHIEF CONVINCINGLY AND DEFINITIVELY PROVE there's absolutely no health risk to all the rest of us. Any lesser burden is unfair and a threat to the rest of us.

This deserves detailed thought. The NRRI-Tinklenberg position is, we did our crappy little study, with many questions left hanging including sampling adequacy, sampling bias, testing lab bias, best methodology, and a fundamental and inescapable policy bias of the study participants [NRRI is an advocacy operation, not a "pure science" lab]. The argument is to say we went through a ton of cash doing our flawed and doubtful study - efficient use of funds arguably not being as great an issue as our reaching a favorable result in terms of what we want to be doing from page one of our existence, onward.

Indeed a large part if not the lion's share of overall project funding went to Tinklenberg Group and to clear NRRI-internal marketing effort, not to NRRI doing good science. Nonetheless, the argument goes, despite all that, we have our crappy little study on the table, so if you want to stop us then YOU HAVE TO DEFINITIVELY PROVE US WRONG.

The world should not be cast into that false perspective when cancer risk is the worry - and there is only some industry-favorable advocacy body lodged in a branch campus saying, we've one flawed study so now you have to spend a ton of cash to prove its inadequacy.

There should be some more compelling threshold imposed on NRRI-Tinklenberg than that.

For example - If there's evidence and extensive 1970's litigation that taconite tailings are a risk and it was a clearly enjoinable health threat to put "Mesabi Hard Rock" into Lake Superior because it contaminates drinking water, then if you want to spread the stuff outside of its mining waste-pile locale you must definitively prove that using it all over creation is NOT a comparable threat to the Lake Superior contamination scenario, and you must do so before you go and get into promoting it with vigor for paving purposes and trying to arrange massive bulk shipping ways-and-means to facilitate questionable commerce on a massive and scary scale.

Elwyn Tinklenberg did the opposite. He is now using the "Marlboro Man's" rhetoric as a fig leaf to hide behind for his questionable conduct. Plain and simple. The Marlboro Man is now out of the saddle even while that debate continues.

Big Cigarette's cancer threat has been largely lessened, and Elwyn's Big Steel cancer threat should be next in line.



That branding and sloganing, it is as fit for Mesabi Hard Rock as Marlboro. The "Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country." That could be used, except the flavor of mill waste probably is dry and gritty. "Come to where the Cancer is. Come to Mesabi Country," that's usable but probably counterproductive to the Tinklenberg goal of moving it out of Oberstar's district by the trainload - shipload. In a way it's funny, the smaller slogan, "You get a lot to like with a Marlboro - filter, flavor, pack or box," in designing that Mesabi Hard Rock brochure, the NRRI-Tinklenberg consortium missed the opportunity for a killer slogan - "You get a lot to like with a Hard Rock, train load, boat load, trucked or boxed."

You tell me -- Is the man running for election in Minnesota's Sixth District, or to be the Hard Rock Rep. from Marlboro Country?