[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Obama and the Mining Cartel

[Bill Totten]

The Senator's Golden Western Strategy

by Steve Conn

www.counterpunch.org (August 23-24 2008)


A few days ago, Fairbanks Mayor Jim Whitaker co-authored an Anchorage
Daily News piece in favor of the mining industry's $6 million to $8
million war to put down ballot measure Proposition 4. Then he was
invited to speak at the Democratic National convention. It is no
coincidence that Obama invited Whitaker to the Democratic National
Convention in Denver next week.

More than Whitaker's Republican credential is at play. Obama has made
friendship with Big Mining part of his Western state strategy. There's
gold in them there hills! Political gold for Obama!

As every reader of the Alaska Dispatch knows, Proposition 4 targets the
Pebble Mine and its monstrous proposal to build earthquake-proof dams
bigger than Hoover or Grand Coulee from mine tailings to hold back toxic
lakes that could poison the Bristol Bay fishery. Proposition 4, by its
language, would ban large metal mines from discharging harmful amounts
of toxic chemicals into salmon streams or drinking water supplies.
Proposition 4, by its language, would ban large metal mines from
discharging harmful amounts of toxic chemicals into salmon streams or
drinking water supplies. {1}

This insane project is opposed by Alaska environmentalists, bringing as
it does to the Great Land, Alaska's own version of what they call in
West Virginia, "mountaintop removal". But the mining industry,
apparently flush with cash, looks beyond this travesty. It sees
Proposition 4 as a nefarious plot to restrict mining everywhere in the
state, and it now is flooding the airwaves and print media with a
torrent of red herrings, from an attack on the rich boys who use the
area as a playground with their own secret, six-figure slush fund, to
the measure's unknown fate on future jobs and future mining projects.

State and federal candidates are mostly silent. Both NANA Corporation
and Willie Hensley, father of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,
are adamant that the initiative could devalue claims settlement land and
Red Dog's expansion. Subsistence and commercial fishing are pawns.

Mayor Whitaker was invited to speak at the Obama-orchestrated Democratic
convention as part of Obama's strategy to slide Alaska into his
electoral pocket, a winning national strategy, this after Ann Hayes's
IBEW-funded poll that showed the presidential race to be a close one.
But contributions from friends of mining and the Native corporations to
aid his national campaign could be a secondary benefit, win or lose in
Alaska.

More than a Republican-turned-Obama supporter, Obama has recruited a
spokesperson for the mining industry's effort to crush the initiative,
it with a mere two year shelf-life, against a strip mine and a toxic
threat to a world-class fishery.

Where does Obama really stand on mining and its costly aftermath?
Research (apparently not accomplished by Seattle-based Timothy Egan in
Thursday's New York Times op-ed on Obama and his strategy to woo Western
voters) shows that Obama curried favor with miners in both Nevada and
Idaho during primary season by opposing statutory amendments proposed to
a 1872 giveaway tax law (long termed "corporate welfare" by both Ralph
Nader and the Cato Institute). The federal government gets zilch from
mining on its land, not even enough to cover clean up costs.

The General Mining Law of 1872, wrote Ralph Nader, "is a relic of
efforts to settle the West allows mining companies to claim federal
lands for $5 an acre or less and then take gold, silver, lead or other
hard-rock minerals with no royalty payments to the public treasury.
Thanks to the anachronistic 1872 Mining Act, mining companies, including
foreign companies, extract billions of dollars worth of minerals a year
from federal lands, royalty free. Change is regularly blocked by Western
lawmakers."

Now Obama has joined the club long peopled by the likes of Don Young. In
late 2007, according to CBS, A House-passed bill would have imposed a
royalty of four percent of gross revenue on existing hard-rock mining
operations and eight percent of gross revenue on new mining operations.
The reform bill would have put new environmental controls on hard-rock
mining, set up a cleanup fund for abandoned mines and permanently ban
cheap sales of public lands for mining, according to CBS.

CBS reported: "Obama said the legislation, favored by environmentalists,
'places a significant burden on the mining industry and could have a
significant impact on jobs'. He also opposes the proposed fees."

Just as he has shifted his position on offshore drilling, he has
telegraphed his willingness to be negotiable on mining. He appears to
assume that environmentalists will forgive and forget, both in Alaska
and nationally, if his chosen symbol of Alaskan Republican support at
the Denver convention is also a shill for an Alaskan environmental
disaster waiting to happen. After all, the "Vote No to Ballot Initiative
4" is backed with mining dollars for votes far in excess of mining
contributions to the presidential race of either candidate {2}.

Links:

{1} A description by Anchorage Daily News's Bluemink is a must read:-
http://eyeonpebblemine.org/wp-content/uploads/pebble-proposes-vast-dams-for-waste.pdf

{2} http://www.opensecrets.org/

_____

Steve Conn is a retired professor of justice at the University of
Alaska, and former director of Alaska Public Interest Research Group. He
lived in Alaska from 1972 to 2007 and is now based in Point Roberts,
Washington. He recently helped collect more than 5,900 signatures from
Alaskan voters to put Ralph Nader on the 2008 Alaska Presidential
ballot. He can be reached at: steveconn at hotmail.com.

http://www.counterpunch.org/conn08232008.html


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