Harry Reid must be so proud. “Revision of our mining laws has been a regular topic for more than 100 years,” Reid wrote in 2009 when he was Senate Majority Leader. “During my time in Congress, I have fought against and defeated many ill-conceived reform efforts that would have hurt rural Nevada.”
Reid was being modest. He fought against and defeated every effort, no matter how ill- or well-conceived, to reform the antiquated 1872 Mining Law when he was in the Senate.
This week, Reid’s successor, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, kept alive Nevada’s hallowed tradition of protecting gold mining corporations from having to pay federal royalties on minerals taken from federal lands.
Officially, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee conducted a hearing Tuesday. But for Cortez Masto, it was a campaign event, designed to shore up what little support a Democratic senator might hope to garner from rural Nevada voters, and more importantly, encourage Nevada Gold Mines – the unholy alliance between Barrick and Newmont that accounted for three-fourths of the gold mined in Nevada in 2020 – to politely refrain from spending a bundle against Cortez Masto as she seeks reelection in 2022 against Big Lie conspiracy peddler and Westerner wannabe Adam Laxalt.
For the rest of this article: https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2021/10/07/senator-assures-industry-nevada-will-remain-a-mining-colony/