Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property

[appal_jack]

Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property?

A giant Anglo-Australian mining company is getting the rights to a huge copper reserve - and we don't know what US taxpayers are getting in return.

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.

That's enough to provide every single unemployed American a minimum-wage job for an entire year. That's enough to pay for a year of tuition at a public institution for every college student in the US.

And yet the GOP big-shots call themselves "fiscal conservatives"! "Fiscal conservatives," my you-know-what.

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 ten pages of the bill, pages 441 to 450 (out of 697).

Much more at link:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/29182-did-the-gop-just-give-away-130-billion-of-public-property

Infuriating! The public comment period of the EIS seems like the main way to exert pressure on this, with letters to Obama & Vilsack also being worthwhile.

-app

[liberal N proud]

1. They would give it all to oligarchs and corporations if they could get away with it

[butterfly77]

2. They have sold..

Streets and toll roads to foreign countries All during the Bush years and traded mangoes for nuclear weapons.

[quadrature]

3. low grade ore

not much royalty

[appal_jack]

4. Not low grade public land though.

Or, that's what people who live near there say. I've never been to that exact location, but oppose public-land giveaways on principle.

-app

[quadrature]

16. the value of the copper, makes this kinda like a 'jobs' project that pays for itself

(if I read the story correctly)
as for the land swap,
you would have to look at the
properties involved, to decide
if the deal is fair

[another_liberal]

5. I just wonder how much Rio Tinto is sending to GOP reelection campaigns in secret . . .

No doubt it's only pennies or less to the dollar for what our copper is worth, but Republicans are historically quite cheap when one goes to buy them.

[jimruymen]

6. carving up America; aided and abetted by Democrats

for one, we shouldn't be doing this to our land and certainly shouldn't be facilitated by Democrats; oh, I forgot we're about to fast track the TPP

[appal_jack]

10. Indeed.

You make a good point in bringing up TPP and the other trade agreements moving their way through the system under Obama's supportive watch. The investor-state dispute courts and many other provisions of these 'agreements' (to which I certainly do not agree) will be used to further enclose and appropriate public lands and other resources.

-app

[Fearless]

7. And what did the president get us in return?

[Dwight42]

15. Obama's return is coming in a couple of years

Well the public got nothing at all, as is so usual in this neo-liberal/conservative political climate but Obama, like Bill Clinton before him will make several hundred millions of dollars on the lecture circuit and speaking engagements over 10 years after leaving office.

Bush on the other hand took most of the Obama administration to be rehabilitated enough, thanks to Obama not arresting him and his administration for war crimes and even socializing with him to go on the lecture circuit and get his percentage for selling out the people of the United States to the corporate world.

[blackspade]

8. More GOP poison.

Everything they touch leads to death.

[valerief]

9. I'm sure McCain and Flake are being taken care of, and that's all

that matters--making rich people richer. The rest of us? Let me quote the oligarch with, "Fuck them."

[ejbr]

11. Maybe they want to generate tax revenue

that they will eventually have the poor pay instead as soon as possible.

[fingrin]

12. Rio Tinto

are parasites. Here in New Zealand they effectively blackmailed the Government for a bail out with the threat of job losses because they were losing money. Surprise, fucking surprise the next year they announced record profits.

[quakerboy]

13. No.

Im sure they got paid plenty.

[jwirr]

14. And here we are with another foreign country (Canada - Keystone and BP - the Gulf) that is given

more help than our own American small businesses.

[Scuba]

17. President Obama signed this law. Sickening. Is his veto pen out of ink already?

[FBaggins]

18. The article is pretty deceptive

It was in no sense a giveaway of $130 Billion. The author doesn't come close to establihing that value (a property simply isn't worth the current market value of all of an estimated resource that has yet to be recovered and won't begin recovery for a decade).

Nor do I see anything about the (much larger) property that was swapped. The Congressman insinuates that the appraisal will be cooked, but doesn't even give his own estimate of what that other property is worth.

I don't doubt that it's a sweetheart deal... but the author's apparent need to use extreme hyperbole hints it isn't.

OTOH... I think Mr Grayson would use extreme hyperbole if his evening meal included wax beans instead of green.