Perhaps not. Are you aware that Alaskans refer to those who live in the “lower 48” as “outsiders?” Outsiders don’t see the humor in our asking for a return of the Federal Gas-Tax collected in a state with absolutely no federal highways, to build a bridge to nowhere.  Or the giggle of this one— earmarking an Interstate interchanges for citizens in Florida, when we ourselves have no Intestates?  What is not funny is that 65¢ out of every Alaska travel dollar leaves this US state in the pocket of foreign interests, who PAC support a U.S. Senator, who used Federal funds to build a “Princess” railroad extension to the airport named after him, which Alaskans who live outside of Anchorage cannot use for public transport.

We have almost no roads, and winters that only a good Alaskan "Chunk" can survive.

As I have used the phrase “PAC supported special interest multinational corporations” rather often when dealing with the “ownership” of American resources, perhaps this is the place to explain what the bought and paid for Jones Act of Congress has —perhaps unintentionally— brought about. The foreign corporation CCL’s concept of supply and demand “free enterprise” is: “The Company's principal activity is to provide global vacation and leisure travel. It operates 12 cruise lines under the brand names: Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Windstar Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard Line, P&O Cruises, Ocean Village, Swan Hellenic, AIDA and P&O Cruises. The Company also operates two tour companies under the brand names Holland America Tours and Princess Tours. The tour business of the Company operates 17 hotels in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, 500 motor coaches used for sightseeing and charters in the States of Washington and Alaska and in British Columbia, Canada and the Canadian Yukon. It also operates 20 domed rail cars which are run on the Alaska Railroad between Anchorage and Fairbanks and two luxury day boats offering tours to the glaciers of Alaska and the Yukon River.”

I also like to think that PAC funded Democratic and Republican politicians did not intend in a laissez-faire way for the oligopoly of Union-Chevron-Texaco-Amaco-BP-Conico-Phillips to set up an outgoing Exxon executive to earn $400 million — wow, does he ever need a tax break— for engineering a further competition-reducing pump price competition by the uncontested merger of Exxon-Mobil.

Look at the BLM map Northern Nevada Mines with the knowledge that if the USGS find of the Robertson over-thrust fault was a separate country, it would be the second largest gold producing nation in the world. Newmont Mining Corporation is the world's largest gold producer, and is headquartered in Denver. The other multiple property operator is Canada’s Barrick. And, right in the middle is Halliburton, which in 2007 opened a second world headquarters in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in March 2007, where Chairman and CEO David Lesar will work and reside, "to Focus the Company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth."

I am not complaining about smaller properties being put into production, as Nevada is America’s hope of competing — if by some freak accident Ron Paul was elected President— with Muslim Malaysia promoting a new gold-standard dinar coin as a means of trade between Islamic nations Islamic nations. Yes, Malaysia is an OPEC oil producing country, now in a massive joint venture building the refineries to close the production gap our “American” oil companies have used as a lame excuse for supply and demand shortages. 

What may be curious here is that oil field experienced Halliburton —as well as political clout— mines the barite lining used under massive sodium cyanide heap leach pads that allow for low cost extraction of gold from massive amounts of overburden. When the U.S. Bureau of Mines was closed down in 1995, and a 1,000 of its research employees were dismissed, it was working on more environmentally friendly leach formulas (as thoria, or cows urine) that could be pumped down a deep drill hole that had been sand-fractured by an explosives, allow to sit and work in a natural way, and then be pumped out for electro winning recovery.

One would think the Bureau of Mines would have been a great help combating global warming of the jet stream emissions from smelters that were exported to places, as Chile — which also passed Nevada by in mineral exploration funding, long ago. The Bureau of Mines was also working on formulas to separate industrially vital silver from base metal ore. What FDR learned after closing down gold mining as unnecessary and illegal in WWII, was that (other than the deep seated disseminated gold of Nevada) a lot of critical metals needed for national defense, were almost a byproduct of mining abundant, U.S., quantities of zinc, copper, lead. Even today when it comes to discussing platinum group metals, and rare earth “associates” that the public has no clue what and why it is needed. 

There is a lot of spy thriller movie material attached to a prospector panning something heavy that makes him ask, “What in the heck is this.”  So, I must shut-up, for now, as if I follow the thought of trying to explain whatever happened to natural resources, I will never get this article finished. Perhaps a book would be more in order?

Especially trying to follow the money threatening the existence of the U.S. Geological Survey —an absolute world-class leader in mineral exploration— in order to “reduce the Federal Budget, the private sector could take over its functions, or could be absorbed into some other agency.” As FEMA?. Perhaps the agency was just having it’s hand slapped for allowing government geologists to letting the cat out of the bag to National Geographic Magazine that there is a 250-300 year supply of clean burning natural gas in North-America, even if people fueled their cars from an uncontrolled $100 adaptation in their own garage.