TROPOLIS AS A WORD!

TROPOLIS AS A WORD! (Frazer Chronicle)

The Frazer Chronicles, "All the news that nobody else will print". Is sometimes a motto that really can take on a whole different meaning. While reading through stories this morning, as I do each and every day of the week, I came across an article in the MARQUETTE MINING JOURNAL titled "Fair Mining Tax Debate" which sparked my interest.

The jest of the article was that a severance tax maybe.....possibly, er, ah, could be reviewed, and should be the result of a "broad based discussion" before it would happen. Now let me make one thing perfectly clear, I am not, repeat, not an expert on taxes, although I am quite sure that I could spend the money as quickly as the next guy. But whenever a politician starts talking about taxation, dollar amounts and where it might get spent, yes.....a broad based discussion is needed.

You see, other than the huge holes that have been left by open pit mining activity, the subsiding ground and the certain un-inhabitable acreages that can be found around mining communities, not many people think about the tunnels and chambers underground that are the direct result of earlier mining activity. Today these chambers are being held up by water, or are filled with waste rock, rest easy, the surface won't cave in, unless earth quake activity moves north.

The very essence of the word, mining, means that something is being taken from the ground, and won't be replaced, at least with the same material. And those who are taking whatever from the ground needs to be taxed for a whole bunch of reasons, but first and foremost because they are making money from their efforts.

Marquette, Michigan and the Marquette Iron Range, by far the grand-daddy of the states ore deposits has produced in excess of a billion ton of iron ore and during that time, roughly 1847 to the present has employed thousands of men, been the income to hundreds of thousands of people and been the home of the regions source of pride.

The people of the area, rough, tumble and hard working deserve something a little better than some gray haired politician talking about "micro-tropolis stuff" going on in their region. You know, I looked the term up, basically because I never heard the term before. Well guess what, neither had anybody else, at least those that count when you need to know what words mean, like a dictionary, or Google or Bing.

The minerals that are taken from the Marquette Range or any of the other deposits in Michigan need to stay in that general vicinity. Other taxes go from Marquette to Detroit, keep any severance tax right where it originated from, and while you’re at it, quite making up new words and phrases.