Quick update on some happenings:
Tuesday we took an L.A. Times reporter and his camerawoman mining for a story they are working on about how the floods this year have helped out small miners. Of note, he asked me where we stand politically and this is what I told him: “We are not Republicans or Democrats because frankly, we can’t identify with either party. We are more constitutionalists than anything else”. He asked me “what is a constitutionalist”?
I told him “a constitutionalist is someone who believes in the documents this country was founded on, the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution. That we believe in our Representative Republic and its method of creating laws. Laws which are brought up in the House of Representatives, voted on, sent to the Senate, back to the House, then ratified/signed into law by the duly elected President of the United States if they pass a majority of votes. If a U.S. citizen disagrees with the law, or wants to challenge it, he/she can then file a lawsuit and challenge the law through our court system. This can be challenged through the Federal courts and up to the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court. Once that challenge is heard and a ruling is issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, it is then settled law. Some laws we like, some we do not, but we simply believe all people should be held to the same account no matter their their job, position, political affiliation or wealth status. There are three equal branches of government, the executive branch, the judicial branch and the legislative branch. We believe in these principles and believe they should be applied to all of us, not just those who are not in politics. It is why we formed AMRA”.
He said “sounds like you are Americans”. I responded “precisely”.
We took them out to an area where the floods had scoured all the vegetation off of a large section of bull creek and exposed bedrock. We ran a MikeRon (Micron) sluice for about an hour after busting some of the cracks open and pulled about a gram of nice chunky stuff. The story should air in a month or so.
We hiked our butts off yesterday looking at a new claim to soon be added to AMRA’s holdings. It is one of the best claims I’ve walked in years. We are adding two new Idaho claims very, very soon and have several more we are working on. Yes, we are still looking for those ever-elusive Nevada claims. We have plans for more Washington State claims, Socal, Utah, Colorado and Montana claims.
Tomorrow, we are cleaning up “The Office” in preparation for our outing on Saturday and Sunday, open to the public and free for all. Signs will be posted showing the way from Coulterville all the way to the claim(s).
We still need some volunteers for tomorrow to help cut up some of the downed trees and fix the road. If you can, please come up and lend a hand.
Yesterday while returning from the claim hike, I received a call from the Stanislaus NF and they kindly informed me while they were at “The Office” claim, they found a large roll of hose someone had left there. They are holding it for me to pick up today as they were concerned someone lost it and wanted to return it to us. This shows how the relationship with the USFS should be, working together, mutual respect and a level of professionalism we all want. So, thank you SNF USFS for calling us, we appreciate that very much.
We are actively planning the GGOS “Gold and Great Outdoor Show” we are hosting in Auburn September 23rd and 24th, with out annual dinner being on the 23rd. Wow, this is going to be huge. We are going to need a lot of volunteers.
We have finally received our so-called completed FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request from the EPA on the Idaho suction dredge issues and true to form, they charged us over $1,200 for records the public has a fundamental right to have. The majority of the file was our own Facebook posts, my radio speaking transcripts, our website posts and I’m sure at some point in another FOIA, this very post here will be included in another file. The EPA seems quite concerned about every single letter of every thing we say. I guess we are doing something right.
We are working very closely with WMA (Western Mining Alliance) on several issue’s, but we are not posting about those as we don’t want to give the environmental groups and those which oppose public land use any heads up. More to come soon on this….
Brandon Rinehart’s case looks as though it is garnering some traction with being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and we will be writing a letter to the Solicitor General appealing requesting this next week.
We have no less than 15 people right now, all across the U.S. we are representing and advising on issue’s they have with management and regulatory agencies which have violated their rights, one new on is Glen Billeter who worked with Parker Schnabel on Gold Rush a few years ago.
Lastly, yes, we do sincerely believe we will be legally dredging in California in the near future. And that is all we will state about this topic at this point.
We’ll keep you all posted on as much as we can, but we’ve learned not to tip our hand too far.
Thank you for the support and thank you to all the AMRA staff.