Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property? [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-the-GOP-Just-Give-Away-by-Alan-Grayson-Copper_Mining_Property_Public-Lands-150213-773.html



The Tonto National Forest in Arizona

Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property?
By Alan Grayson
OpEdNews Op Eds 2/13/2015 at 12:57:08

In December, two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, pushed Congress and the President into giving away what could amount to over $130 billion in public property.

~snip~

I'm talking about the huge giveaway to the mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton in the Defense Authorization Act. It was splayed across 10 pages of the bill, pages 441 to 450 (out of 697).

Rio Tinto is a 142-year-old mining company headquartered in London with management offices in Melbourne, Australia. It has a market capitalization of $74-$87 billion. BHP Billiton is a 155-year-old mining company, also run out of Melbourne. It has a market capitalization of $124-$126 billion. Based on market value, they are the #1 and #2 largest mining companies in the world. Rather than actually competing against each other (no chance of that happening!), they joined hands. Rio Tinto owns 55 percent of a company called Resolution Copper Mining LLC, and BHP Billiton owns the remaining 45 percent. And thanks to the maneuvering of GOP senators McCain and Flake, the US government is handing over land with more than $130 billion in underground copper to Resolution Copper.

In a land-swap deal, the Defense Authorization Act took four square miles of Tonto National Forest -- public land in Pinal County, just outside Superior, Arizona -- and gave it to Resolution Copper, so that Resolution Copper can build a copper mine on the site. According to Resolution Copper's website, the copper resource under that land contains 1.6 billion metric tons of copper-rich ore, which itself contains 1.47 percent copper. (That's roughly 30 pounds of copper in every ton of ore.) So there are approximately 23.5 million tons of copper sitting under those four square miles of public property.