The price of gold
Mining firms pay nothing to extract the ore, leaving us to pay billions in cleanup costs.
Gifts of jewelry — particularly gold — are a perennial favorite on Santa's list. And with the metal's price hovering near $800 an ounce, the tiniest golden bauble, bangle or bead will be a coveted commodity. But even if you don't elect to splurge on this luxury, it will still cost you plenty because mining companies from around the world can take gold from U.S. lands basically for free, leaving taxpayers with nothing but the cost of cleaning up the damage that mining leaves behind.
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We listened to the same rhetoric here in Wisconsin with the Crandon mine project. Reading the mining company crap is deja vu. They always say that they have just met the toughest mining laws in the country, but the truth is that they will spend more on your politicians than they would ever be willing to spend cleaning up their mess once the ore is gone.
We are a pretty easy country to deal with. A foreign company can come in, and for a pittance in taxes, compared with their revenues, and a promise of jobs for a few years, they will forever alter the landscape, leave us the mess, and take our resources out through Canada, so we can buy them back.
We won this battle in Crandon, Wisconsin, but it took years of perserverance and the realization for the politicians that if an environmental disaster happens on their watch, it will taint them forever, affecting their precious careers and future advancement 'serving' the public.
Keep up the pressure.
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