Posted on 01/29/2008 9:48:11 AM PST by ddtorquee
[Bill Clinton's 1996 declaration of] 1.7 million Utah acres as a national monument, thereby depriving an energy-starved U.S. up to 62 billion tons of environmentally safe low-sulfur coal worth $1.2 trillion and minable with minimal surface impact, was a political payoff to the family of James Riady.
He's the son of Lippo Group owner Mochtar Riady. James was found guilty of — and paid a multimillion dollar fine for — funneling more than $1 million in illegal political contributions through Lippo Bank into various American political campaigns, including Bill Clinton's presidential run in 1992.
Clinton took off the world market the largest known deposit of clean-burning coal. And who owned and controlled the second-largest deposit in the world of this clean coal? The Indonesian Lippo Group of James Riady. It is found and strip-mined on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan.
The Utah reserve contains a kind of low-sulfur, low-ash and therefore low-polluting coal that can be found in only a couple of places in the world. It burns so cleanly that it meets the requirements of the Clean Air Act without additional technology.
"The mother of all land grabs," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said at the time. He has called what was designated as the Grande Staircase of the Escalante National Monument the "Saudi Arabia of coal."
When Clinton signed the proclamation, he promised to exchange other federal lands for the land that was taken. But a fair exchange was impossible, Hatch said, since no other land in Utah had a trillion dollars worth of clean coal.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Hey at least he’s not a neocon, who cares if the Clinton’s get back into office. /s
We were all screaming about this and a whole lot of other stuff 10 years ago. It will be interesting to see if anyone cares now - they didn’t back then.
Why can’t we take it back as a matter of national security?
Can Bush reverse this by executive order? If he can, why hasn’t he?
carolyn
For the same reason every President since Carter never reversed his EO banning nuclear fuel reprocessing: too many people with too much money to make would be VERY upset. They also hold considerable amounts of Federal Treasury debt.
no he can not...that was discussed....it’s a law thing
Bingo
I always thought that President Bush would turn the several thousand acre monument into a one acre monunment.
It's a law thing? Well I'm glad you cleared that up for this old fool...."a law thing"....
did not mean any disrespect.....there are links and probably in this search engine.......I do have the skills to do that however.But it is fact.....Something about the process keeps an EO from undoing it....
oops....do not have the skills
my bad
I have read that Wyoming is paved with coal just a few feet below the surface. That’s one hell of as lot of coal. But I think it’s soft coal and I guess that don’t count.
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