We have penned another letter we are now sending again on a weekly basis to President Trump below.
We are also including, along with the letter, a link to a webpage which lists all of the Congressmen in the country. All you have to do is enter your zip code and you can forward (copy and paste) this letter to them. We are going to do everything we can to get a meeting with the Trump Administration and have a few Congressmen we are asking for help with facilitating that meeting. Putting pressure on your Congressman will help.
Please take a few minutes out of your day and send this letter along with a short note to your Congressman telling him/her to respond to the letter and hear the small miners, it’s about time they listen.
President Donald J. Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Blvd.
Washington DC 20500
Dear President Trump, February 20, 2019
We are again writing on behalf of the nearly 1 million small scale miners and mining claim owners in America and appealing to you and your administration about the out of control regulatory agencies in America. This represents the 71stletter sent to your administration since your inauguration. While your administration did previously reply and set up a conference call with the USFS in Washington DC over our concerns initially, the USFS have completely and utterly ignored us since that call. They refuse to take calls, answer emails or communicate on any level once we exposed illegal activities within this agency and provided them with factual information surrounding the egregious acts by USFS agents and Supervisors. The problems and illegal activities we outlined and provided evidence of previously have escalated and have even expanded to other states now with calls coming in from Montana, Idaho, California, Washington, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon. We have come to learn the very people we spoke with are part of the very swamp you are actively trying to drain.
Sir, please forgive our candor, but we are at a crisis stage not unlike the one we hear you are declaring at our border behind me on the news. That you have a certain amount of guts is not in doubt by us, your loyal citizens. We greatly applaud you for that and for fighting the fetid swamp that can only be described as those who oppose freedom and individual liberty. Values and principles our founding fathers carefully crafted in our founding documents which we believed were granted to us as our fundamental rights. We too fight, and fight like hell, we just lack the tools you have which is why all we want is to talk, to tell our story, to provide you or your administration with the facts and to have someone follow up. See, the fetid swamp permeates throughout all aspects of the USFS, BLM, EPA and other alphabet agencies as you are undoubtedly aware. We just want a conversation with someone YOU trust, someone who can listen. Not someone left over from a previous administration who is protecting the very swamp you are trying to drain.
I remember growing up as a boy looking at our Forest Service Ranger teaching us how to build camp fires and how to recognize a Doug Fir from a Noble favorably, with admiration and a certain amount of awe. Sure, there are still a few of those folks around, in fact we have many friends within these agencies today, but the departments and agencies have changed, and changed dramatically. We have specific and undeniable facts and evidence of just how far some in these agencies are willing to go to achieve their ever elusive Utopian agenda. Burning cabins, bulldozing roads, gating, locking and blocking mining claim owners, property owners and public land users from their lands. Lands we pay property taxes on. Lands we have fundamental rights “granted” by Congress and signed into law by previous Presidents. Complete and total disregard for federal law and the supremacy clause. Enacting unilateral and illegal regulatory schemes to shut down legal and environmentally friendly, scientifically sound and exhaustively studied, approved and efficient methods of mining just because it doesn’t fit their ideology.
This has now reached a critical stage with some of these agencies acting as Congress by shutting down giant swaths of our country from all mining, even on a minuscule scale. In some cases, they are even openly stating “we don’t care what you do, we will never allow you to mine again”. Sir, we aren’t talking about mining where giant corporations come in and tear down a mountain with Cat D11 dozers. We are talking about small operations which represent the vast majority of mining claims in America. These are the very operations which built this great country and expanded the West and gave rise to states like “The Golden State” of California, Nevada “The Silver State” and Montana’s motto “Oro y Plata” gold and silver to name a few.
According to the USGS, 80% of gold is still in the ground. How do you get that out? You dig a hole. As a developer, you know the first step to raising a building is to break ground. Over-regulation by USFS, BLM, EPA and threats of lawsuits, or actual lawsuits by radical environmental groups bring this development to a standstill. California, Washington, Montana, Idaho and Oregon small scale mining is under attack by the very government who’s charter is supposed to “encourage mining”. They are working with, and in some cases, speaking for environmental groups in opposition to suction dredging and other methods to extract the minerals in an environmentally friendly manner. As an example, some states are using suction dredges to create fish habitat, but other states are claiming the activity destroys fish habitat. That is the very definition of hypocrisy. Even if one is lucky enough to find someone within one of these agencies to react to evidence against one of their own, it is extremely rare anyone is ever fired, they are typically just transferred to another location and the problem re-occurs all over again. We call that the perpetual cycle. What is happening to our country? When you have people who are supposed to be working for the people actively working against them, and the very people who pay their salaries are having their own money used against them you have tyranny.
President Trump, small-scale mining is not a recreational activity. For example, if two men or women went out on their mining claim and found giant seam of gold worth 50 million dollars, they would want to develop that deposit, hire people, mine the gold. Right now the government, both federal and state are working with the environmental groups and are stopping that from happening all across the west. We just want to talk to you about this, formulate a plan, which we have some sound ideas of to provide relief for these miners and to also provide you with factual evidence of just how bad this problem has become in these agencies. Our numerous FOIA’s, investigations, affidavits, statements and videos prove our claims. It is not a question of if sir, it is now a question of what now. Do we have bake sales, raffles and garage sales to raise money to sue our own government while they use our tax money to defend their illegal actions without fear of accountability because Congress passed laws protecting them? We have also learned through our FOIA’s that if you speak out against their actions, or as our Constitution puts it exercise “a redress of grievances”, you are labeled some form of terrorist or radical activist. Sir, we are just hard working, middle class folks with the boot of government on our necks and only strive for the freedoms and liberty our country promised, nothing more, nothing less.
Please, we implore you, have one of your staff reach out to us because we are not going to stop until you do.
Sincerely,
Mr. Shannon Poe
President, American Mining Rights Association, AMRA
(209) 878-3910
PMB #607, 6386 Greeley Hill Road
Coulterville CA 95311
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