Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (43870)	2/7/2002 3:53:22 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 82486

Al Gore: politician, environmentalist and zinc miner For the past 25 years Al Gore has listed a $20,000 mining royalty on his tax return. The royalty is for the extraction of zinc from underneath his Tennesee farm. Al bought the land from his father, Senator Al Gore Sr. who bought the land from the infamous Armand Hammer, the political wheeler dealer and tycoon who had successful business dealings with Stalin and Kruschev among others. When Hammer transferred over the land it included the $20,000 royalty which is much more than he had paid the previous owner. Do you suppose that he was paying for something other than the extracted mineral? The close relationship between Hammer and Gore Sr. was inherited by Junior when he replaced his father in Washington. Gore has used Hammer's private jet and has dined often with the tycoon and other Occidental Petroleum officers. Hammer and his companies have contributed to all of Gore's campaigns. Hammer was an equal opportunity influence peddler who trolled for favors on both sides of the political aisles. He plead guilty in 1975 to providing hush money in the Watergate scandal. Although Hammer died in 1990 at 92 the zinc mine, Pasminco, keeps on turning out those royalties and some industrial strength pollution as well. In his radical environmentalist book, Earth in the Balance, Gore writes that the soil and the water must be "as pure as they came". I guess the high standards touted in the book only apply to little folk like us, certainly not to the Gores, the Clintons or the Hammers. It seems "that zinc from Mr. Gore's property ends up in the cool waters of the Caney Fork River, an oft celebrated site in Gore lore. A major shaft and tailings pond sit practically in the backyard of the vice president's Tennessee homestead. Zinc and other metals from the Gore land move from underground tunnels through elaborate extraction processes. Waste material ends up in the tailings pond, from which water flows into adjacent Caney Fork, languidly rolling on to the great Cumberland." Even though Pasminco Zinc has a good record, it does not come up to the standards of Gore's public environmental pronouncements. It was cited as recently as May 16 by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. It also failed monitoring tests twice in 1996 and was criticized by the Environmental Working Group for some of its practices. Recent tests sponsored by the Wall Street Journal revealed high levels of heavy metals as well as traces of cyanide. Now the picture of Al Gore the environmentalist is complete. Not only does he profit from environmentalism, his book and his political success, but he profits from the resource extraction that pollutes the environment as well. Gore has wedded the two opposites into an unholy composite, polluter/environmentalist that may become the pattern for the power elite of the future.