This week, the Michigan Senate unanimously passed a resolution brought to the floor by Senator Tom Casperson, who represents the 38th district. Senate Resolution 27 declares an official day to commemorate mining in Michigan. Mining Day will fall on September 6th.

It’s clever to create a holiday for mining on 9/06 — the area code of the Upper Peninsula. But it’s also a little strange that the holiday will fall on a Sunday in its inaugural year (so much for sabbath and the respite it promises from the workaday world). Labor Day falls on the 7th of this year, and on the 5th in 2016; so maybe Mining Day will help put the focus on the Upper Peninsula’s archetypal laborer, the miner. But as the text of the resolution never even uses the word “miner,” “worker,” “labor” or “laborer,” and notes only in passing that mining in the UP “attracted immigrants from around the world,” it might be a little hasty or naive to conclude this measure is being taken to honor the working men and women of the region.

Casperson himself promotes Mining Day as a day to recognize the role of mining “in the settling of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula” and as a “way of life” characteristic of the region, and in a press release, he added that the day would also be an opportunity to “celebrate and support responsible mining operations” in the state. So SR 27 doesn’t just look back to a bygone era of mining, but forward, positioning mining as a “growing industry” in Michigan. The adopted resolution even includes language about the “Limestone mines” in the news lately.

In this way, SR 27 tees up a second resolution that Casperson introduced: SR 28, another pro-mining measure that met with unanimous approval. In this resolution, the Senate expresses its unqualified “support for the renewed growth of mining in Michigan.”

This is not just boosterism or servile flattery. SR 28 actually serves a couple of important political functions.

First, it burnishes Casperson’s legislative track record at no political cost. Down the road, he can and probably will claim some responsibility for the jobs that mining companies create in the UP.

Second, SR 28 establishes legislative precedent. Casperson and others can point to this resolution and the unanimous support it received when introducing other pro-mining legislation or when confronted with challenges to mining projects already underway. Interviewed about the bill, Casperson made this explicit: “we will work to remove any remaining barriers that could inhibit the continued growth of responsible mining interests in Michigan.” No barriers to continued growth: but still, somehow, “responsible,” as if responsibility can be had without limits.

The barriers to growth Casperson has in mind are, first and foremost, the flimsy ones upheld, but barely, by the EPA in the face of the new mining boom. The federal agency has not prevented any mining projects in Michigan; but it has so far been the primary obstacle to the building of CR 595, which was originally planned as a haul route for Lundin’s Eagle Mine. The EPA entered and then upheld its objections to construction of the road, and denied the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality authority to permit the road. (The US Army Corps of Engineers along with the US Fish and Wildlife Service had also entered objections.)

Casperson elsewhere has tried to cast this as a standoff between state sovereignty and federal government intrusion. Now, with SR 28, Senator Casperson has enlisted the full body of the Michigan Senate in his crusade to cut that haul road through the Michigan wilderness, and show big government what’s what in Michigan. (He’s been on similar state-sovereignty kicks to reinstate wolf-hunts — which caused him some embarrassment when he was caught fabricating stories of children being stalked by wolves — and to prevent the limiting of emissions from wood-burning stoves by the EPA.)

Casperson is now colluding with the Marquette County Road Commission to sue the EPA over CR 595. So far, the Road Commission and affiliated CR 595 die-hards have created a 501c4 non-profit organization called Stand U.P., which says it will raise $500,000 to cover the lawsuit. But there’s no reason to stop there. As a 501c4, Stand U.P. can fund the EPA lawsuit as well as a broad range of activities in the name of improving the “social welfare” — a concept even the IRS calls “abstruse” and lacking any clear definition. 501c4 organizations are not required to disclose the names of donors, but Brian Cabell figures “it’s safe to say” that the money for Stand U.P. won’t come in “$5 contributions or bake sales or lemonade stands. It’s mostly corporate money.”

Even if the EPA lawsuit fails, then, there is little to prevent Stand U.P. from becoming (unless it already is) a trough of dark money. No wonder the Senator is eager to celebrate mining’s return to the Upper Peninsula.