Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
TUCSON, Arizona – A local headline last week meant little to winter visitors here to see blazing wildflower color: “Corps Gives Rosemont Mine Final Permit for Construction.” Against a national backdrop, it was a calamitous sign of the times.
America’s watchdog reporters bark louder than ever when public trust is betrayed. Yet unless citizens react, ignoring partisan poodles and pit bulls who mislead them, newshounds might as well be coyotes howling futilely at the moon.
We all know the big picture. Too many people tune out “the media,” confused and overwhelmed. Donald Trump creates an alternate reality by default, burrowing into a White House from which he will be exceedingly hard to evict.
But a close look at the projected Rosemont copper mine shows how we are losing forever natural wealth and cultural heritage as a polarized nation fixates in closed loops on moronic Twitter babble and extraneous political circus.
Over the past decade, federal and county agencies did what government regulators do: Specialists weighed facts and made decisions. They denied permits over water supply, air quality, impact on wildlife and wetlands, among others.
Trump’s approach is closer to Louis XIV’s: L’Etat, c’est moi. His minions had denials changed to approvals despite years of reporting in Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star, at the national level, and in an investigative website – Rosemont Mine Truth – that provides data and documents for anyone who troubles to notice.
The “Corps” in that Star headline is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has repeatedly refused a Clean Water Act permit. But the decision was moved up the chain of command until it was approved.
As a result, Hudbay Minerals of Toronto is to dig a vast open-pit mine. Environmental scientists say the $1.9 billion project would cripple Tucson’s water supply and destroy priceless splendor on national forest land sacred to Indians.
TUCSON, Arizona – Donald Trump’s Wall is illusory, but the writing on it seems clear enough. He is plotting a coup d’etat, gambling that divided Democrats, media sycophants, big money and people who don’t vote will enable his cult to make him a modern-day Mussolini.
Trump might watch next year’s elections play out as a disgraced has-been on the sidelines, perhaps behind bars, as Elizabeth Warren predicts. But that is a wishful long shot. If he is re-elected, America will find itself tested to a degree that is hard to imagine.
I’ve covered countless putsches since the 1960s. Military takeovers are swift, often bloody. Subverting democracy takes a lot longer. Either way, they require three essentials: fear of external threat; a rewarded ruling class that undercuts institutions; bullshit that buries truth.
Trump himself sketched out his scenario in singsong mockery when he elbowed aside Congress to confront his bogus border emergency. Legal challenges will work their way up past uncompromised judges to a Supreme Court that Mitch McConnell has allowed him to pack.
Robert Mueller has already nailed six Americans close to Trump, along with 26 Russians. Andrew McCabe says Rod Rosenstein worried enough that the president might be Vladimir Putin’s stooge to suggest on two occasions that he wear a wire into the Oval Office.
That alone would oblige a real president to clear himself of suspicion and determine whether America’s fiercest foe was perverting its elections. Trump condemns “a ridiculous partisan investigation” and repeatedly tweets “NO COLLUSION!” as if it were only about him.
