|
From: Meghan Belaski-Ashe
Good Afternoon, I am writing today, from my personal email address, to offer the SEC a different kind of public pathway for ensuring these extraction/mining disclosure rules proposed by the SEC take effect, and take effect with regulatory fury as soon as possible. Let me put it as simply as possible, these companies, the ones protesting the rules, obviously have something on the line here, and quite frankly, between the once off thought of filing a false claims case, or qui tam case, against the entities I'm about to describe in this email, and the ability to just put it all out there as publicly as possible, I believe I found the perfect balance disclosing the information to the SEC-Office of the Whistleblower some time ago, without an attorney, while still able to challenge the outside layer of the insularly institutions that work for that elusive 1% through valid, and often public, communications with state and federal agencies, as well as the often inept staff of our elected politicians, usually without revealing more than I should. Usually. Turns out you don't have to be a mathematician to know something's wrong in our world equation. The first thing wrong seems to be the statistical likelihood of 1% of the worlds population, aka 1% of 7 billion people, owning more than half of the worlds wealth. That makes no sense to a commoner like myself, and it shouldn't make sense to people like you who work for the SEC, and the agencies that you work with in tandem, to ensure fair, educated and capable markets are always functioning as a reflection of a healthy global economy, and a reflection of the quality of people like yourselves, who fight for justice in jobs like yours, when proposing rules like these, and regulate the markets without a self-interested future on the horizon. These proposed rules are a great step forward; a giant leap for mankind if you will. So thank you in advance. Unfortunately many laws currently in place seem to have been crafted as obstructionist acts, including those that don't give the Department of the Interior any law enforcement capabilities, a reliance on decades old data to suggest BLM lands on the auction block for oil and gas lease are environmentally sound, while at the same time removing any ability of the BLM to enforce environmental standards on public lands, even when they may become potentially responsible parties for an environmental incident, the fact many legal land patent records in states like Utah and Nevada have never been verified by the National Archives records in Washington, DC, yet, the same parcels of land with no verification to the legal land patent records, go up for sale and lease to oil and gas companies all the time, with some of the most unique American history and landscape attached, and in situations like mine, when you find your family history, which is history of federal record, has actually been re-written if you will, not by the BLM, or DOI, but by an employee of the BLM or DOI, do you start to get a sense of why these rules are appropriate across the board, in every instance, and should be enacted as soon as possible. Retroactive if possible. The oil, gas, mining, banking industries can't even file for an accurate foreclosure in my home state of Colorado, a foreclosure with oil and gas royalties hidden in the shadows of the financial crisis, or to the federal government in Utah and Nevada as it concerns mining claims, based on the accuracy of the records currently being used to proclaim mineral rights, which includes the new gold, aka water, so you can be certain any pushback against disclosing what types of payments are being made to foreign and domestic government entities in mining disclosures is because these companies are, at their core, money launderers, human rights violators, and war-profiteers, and can't afford for the rest of the world to know what they've really been up to, or how they managed to get such an exclusive seat at a table built for 7 billion people and counting. It's shameful. But redeemable. The only thing most of these entities should be responding to in March 2016, according to the rules set forth by the SEC, as it pertains to the scope of allowance on comments issued today, 2/26/16, is the 5th Amendment. Let me elaborate. Attached to this email is a small file of documents related to the fact that the history of my family in federal records has been altered over the course of many decades, to convey a false history in the Great Basin region of the U.S., and it's about time the companies that have benefited from decades of lax, to non-existing oversight of mining claims and extraction practices in this region, put the paperwork on the table. If these companies are getting, or have gotten these minerals from public lands, then it's public information people. If Congress helped you steal my family history, they will account for their actions as well. They are public servants too, and they are going to have to explain, to the public, what the motivation was in acting as an accessory-after-the-fact to a crime like this. Especially if someone, or something, helped alter an ethnographic and archeological history while working for the federal government, and then filed paperwork verifying a false history in order to have the lands claimed public or abandoned, in order to one-day recover a trillion or so dollars in extraction royalties from a parcel of land that cost 15 cents an acre at a "public auction", carries no tax burden, and often comes with a decade long lease or more, then yes, I believe someone needs to explain this to the rest of us, because its sounds like a raw deal if you ask me. Corporations are people, so find someone in your corporations to explain people. Many of the companies protesting the SEC mining disclosure rules, need to explain how they have benefited from land swap deals, working in conjunction with a few wayward employees of the BLM and Forest Service, over a lifetime in some cases, that are/were actually industry insiders, to falsify a shared American history, and are given cause to do so when our legislative branch of government writes "laws" that allow these pervasive, and criminal acts to determine market conditions, and further inequity around the world. It's 2016 everyone. Colonialism is not cool anymore. Anywhere. And you picked on the wrong family when you picked on mine, because unlike many of the corporations who are ok committing crimes against humanity in resource extraction practices, I am not, and I have the upper hand here. I believe in human dignity and human rights, and those things are not possible with the destructive and often murderous nature of resource extraction around the world. Let's start here, in America, and set an example for the rest of the world. If you are getting your minerals from fraudulent acts, or from false histories, we want to know. And we want to know if you have been keeping strange bedfellows with the money that flows from, and to, these known frauds. Shouldn't be too hard to comply with if you're not doing anything wrong. If Congress would like to know the secrets I know about the Great Basin, and the crimes they have helped perpetrate there, that only the SEC-Office of the Whistleblower et al., know right now, then you can subpoena me. I'd be happy to tell you what I know that you don't. And what all the Utah and Nevada "leaders" should be investigated for when trying to insert last minute land deals into legislation, holding smoke-in-mirros hearings in Congress, for nothing more then the next campaign contribution from the people they are really trying to protect with these wasteful abuses of our taxpayer money. Investigate your campaign contributors. That's worth something, I promise. Actually, let me do it for you Congress, I have a 3-year head start. Oh, and for all the Hammond/Bundy types out there, don't use this as further justification for your ignorant and childish acts in "protesting" the BLM. You are showing more than your ass here, you're showing your hand too. And I read your hand as this: an individual in the BLM, years ago, gave you a special privilege that really had no legal justification, and now you are scared that your secrets are about to be revealed, so you feel compelled to proclaim to the public that the BLM is trying to unjustly rob you of some right that does not even exist. The BLM is just trying to get their rightful property back from a bunch of squatters who are breaking the law, and have been for years. The BLM finally took notice. It's as simple as that. These Hammond/Bundy types may even need public assistance (welfare) to get back on their feet after we kick their asses off our public lands, and demand a proper accounting of mineral extraction practices, at home, and abroad, in order to make more perfect this union for all of us, not just a few of us, and to set an example the rest of the world can follow moving forward in this new era of accountability. Once again, thank you SEC et al., you are the best. Sincerely, Meghan Belaski-Ashe |