The Pombo Public Lands Giveaway passed in the Budget Reconciliation in the wee hours of the morning just before Thanksgiving. Here's a cute
animation about it called "While You Were Sleeping" by Mark Fiore. There are many problems with the Budget Reconciliation. One is this lands giveaway, described in the opening
diary in this series. Also
this on press coverage and editorials on the
Pombo Amendment.
One notable organization working on this is Resource Media, focused on media outreach on environmental issues in western states. One project: coordinating outdoorsmen's & sportsmen's groups. This helped with the latest Republican Senator to take a public stand against the Pombo Amendment. Excellent job of coalition building! Additional details below:
This from the
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, December 7, 2005/today):
In a rare break with fellow Republicans, Sen. Wayne Allard said Tuesday that he will oppose proposed mining law changes that critics say would trigger a "fire sale" of public lands. ... Allard, R-Loveland, said in a release Tuesday that it's worth considering reforms to the mining law, but not in the middle of the budget debate.
"Concerns about the implications of this provision have been raised by public interest groups and private property groups," Allard said. "I look forward to working with my colleagues to update the 1872 mining law, but I do not believe the provision under consideration by the conference committee is the way to achieve this needed reform of the law."
As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, Allard is a candidate to sit on the House-Senate conference committee that will determine the final shape of the bill.
Meanwhile Tuesday, Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Denver, joined seven other Democrats from Western states in a letter to Senate leaders expressing their strong opposition to the mining provisions.
And from the Denver Post:
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard came out Tuesday against mining legislation before Congress that would allow private companies to purchase federal land. Allard is the second Western Republican senator to oppose the legislation, authored by GOP House members from the West. Last week, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said he would oppose the measure.
...
Allard's announcement came as 43 Colorado hunting and fishing groups urged him to oppose the legislation, which is included in a larger budget bill. He sits on the Senate Budget Committee. The groups, ranging from the Colorado Wildlife Association to the Colorado State Muzzle Loading Association, say the provision would damage habitat and block access to good hunting sites.
Allard had also been pressed to oppose the legislation, an overhaul of the 1872 Mining Law, by the organization representing Colorado county governments and the company that owns the Aspen ski area.
Trout Unlimited is one of the many outdoors groups which has taken an active role in this issue. Their website is one of many which can take you through the process of registering opposition to the Pombo Amendment with elected officials. They have fact sheets, press links, and more. Anyone who prefers clean water to polluted streams should count TU as a friend and ally.
In another example of excellent coalition building, the Jewelers of America (link pdf of their letter to Hastert) have also come out publicly against this provision.
The Denver Post went beyond just reporting the story in an editorial this morning:
Sen. Wayne Allard should be applauded for opposing mining law changes in a congressional budget bill. His views could be heard at a crucial stage of the legislative process.
As a senior member of the Budget Committee, the Colorado Republican may be assigned to the conference committee that will resolve differences in House and Senate versions of the budget reconciliation bill. If he's on the conference committee, Allard should work to remove two House provisions, involving mine patents and oil shale projects, that could harm Colorado.
...
Pombo and Gibbons recently hinted they may amend the proposal to allow hunting and fishing after patents have been granted. However, their half-baked fix is a pretend solution designed to distract a legitimately worried Western public.
The measure flat-out alarms local governments. Allard's office has heard opposition from both the Colorado Municipal League and Colorado Counties Inc. The counties fear the mining amendments "would open the possibility of every little mining claim being developed without regard to land-use patterns," explained CCI executive director Larry Kallenberger.
The mining provisions also have earned the wrath of numerous recreation and environmental groups including the Colorado State Muzzle Loaders, Trout Unlimited, the Izaak Walton League, National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy and the Colorado Wildlife Association. In addition, there's formal opposition from conservative Republican U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas and six Western governors. (Colorado's Bill Owens wasn't one of them.)
It was a broad and credible coalition, and Allard clearly got the message.
The Pombo Amendment is about lands giveaway, but it's also about giveaways to the gold mining industry. Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV), the reputed author of the provision, has massive amounts of cyanide intensive gold mining in his district (which, if it were a separate country, be the second largest gold producer in the world), and has penned other legislation over the years as special favors for that industry. This article by Robert Samuelson in today's (12/7/05) Washington post, addresses economic questions about gold:
Even stripped of its role as money, gold retains an economic mystique. About 85 percent of annual consumption goes for jewelry and, to a much lesser extent, other commercial uses, mainly electronics and dental work. But the recent price run-up seems driven by the remaining 15 percent: investors, speculators and hoarders. These include commodity funds, hedge funds and wealthy individuals. Especially in Asia and the Middle East, the rich hoard gold bars. In the first nine months of 2005, the investment and speculative demand for gold rose 62 percent, reports the World Gold Council, an industry group.
Except for the belief that gold will go higher, just what motivates these buyers isn't clear. Take your pick of anxiety, says analyst Philip Newman of GFMS, a consulting firm: inflation, financial crisis, terrorism, general global disorder. Because holding gold can be an alternative to holding dollars, rising American inflation and a falling dollar on foreign exchange markets are often cited as reasons for higher gold prices. But the dollar has recently strengthened on foreign exchange markets, and the evidence of increasing inflation is thin. True, oil temporarily made it worse. But excluding erratic food and energy prices, inflation has remained at about 2.5 percent since early 2004. Perhaps gold buyers glimpse dangers not apparent in the statistics.
...
Meanwhile, growing wealth in India, China and the Middle East has revived jewelry demand; that's up 12 percent this year after a 5 percent increase in 2004. Jewelry is often more than adornment; it's also a store of wealth. Consider India. "For thousands of years, [gold jewelry] has been a means of savings," says George Milling-Stanley of the World Gold Council. "Seventy percent or more of consumption is among the rural population. They don't have access to banks, stocks or bonds. They don't trust government or paper currency."
Also, many such places do not allow women to own any other form of wealth. So the question of gold consumption, and the destruction left in its wake, has a strong connection to issues of social justice in South Asia. Samuelson concludes:
Though new mines often require a decade to bring into production, supply could ultimately overtake demand. Or prosperity in India and China might multiply by many times the world's gold bugs. They may regard gold as a more trustworthy form of saving than any currency, even though gold investments don't pay interest or dividends. Whatever happens, the fears and anxieties that give gold its speculative appeal could intensify or dissipate. Gold is an unending mystery, because its value lies less in what it does for us (unlike sugar, copper or oil) and more in what it symbolizes. It is almost as unfathomable as the human drama itself.
I was disappointed to hear Ed Schultz on Air America the other day, carrying on about what good advice it is to invest in gold. Shouldn't these "progressive" types know better than to push hoarding something which causes so much suffering and destruction in its production.