"More important is the right to develop mineral resources. That right has been slowly strangled over the years by extreme environmentalists in the EPA to the point where most new US resources come from other countries."
Nonsense. On my land alone we mine the rock for your roads, sell water to local businesses, harvest timber for your homes, as well as have ample coal and iron for our industries. We've just drilled our latest oil well, too.
More broadly, the Bush Administration has just opened up vast new stretches of Alaskan property for mining and drilling...and existing federal law already permits you to force the government to sell federal land to you for less than $100 per acre where-ever you can establish profitable mining operations.
The EPA (and lawsuits) and such are problems, no doubt, but hardly on the scope that you claim.
According to testimony at a House committee, the decline of domestic resource development is getting serious:
"During the 1990's while the rest of the US economy was booming, there was a serious decline in U.S. mining activity, a decline that continues today with some of the trends and impacts illustrated below:
"Since 1996, there has been a 73% decline in new claims.
Exploration expenditures have continued to steadily decrease and grassroots exploration has virtually disappeared in the U.S. More money is consistently being spent on overseas projects.
Mid-size producers and “juniors”, generally where most exploration investment dollars come from, have chosen to invest overseas rather than in comparatively equal opportunities in the US."
George Bush doesn't control the courts and the lawyers. He barely controls the low level beauracrats in his own administration. What will happen after we get another Democrat in the white house? When Hillary takes over?
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/archives/108/testimony/anncarpenter.htm