Trump Stomps for Alaskan Gold

Recall Johnny Horton’s hit “North to Alaska,” with the one liner “we’re goin’ north, the rush is on.” Well, Joe Biden ended any mining for gold, solid or liquid, in America's Last Frontier via his “plan to make the state a natural museum.” Enter President Trump’s EO stomping.

The WSJ editorial board was pretty blunt about it: “One of President Trump’s good deeds [last week] was lifting Joe Biden’s economic punishment for Alaska. Mr. Biden treated America’s largest state worse than he did Iran. Mr Trump … signed an executive order to [reverse than regressive plan] to unlock the Last Frontier State’s ‘extraordinary resource potential.’” Recalled were Biden’s six executive orders on his first day in office “taking aim at drilling, roadbuilding and hunting.” Afterward, the old man “suspended and stymied Congressionally mandated lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, blocked oil and gas development in nearly half the National Petroleum Reserve, banned drilling in the northern Bering Sea, canceled lease sales in the Cook Inlet, slapped a roadless rule millions of acres of forest, choked off mining projects, and denied Alaska Native veterans promised land allotments.”

The result? An economically challenged Alaska is no more “beautiful” but a whole lot poorer. To right the imbalance of common sense, “Trump’s order begins to reverse these restrictions & puts a special focus on Alaska’s LNG Project – a plan to develop the state’s enormous North Slope natural gas potential with a pipeline to supply the U.S. and Pacific allies” which “Japan is especially keen on.” Trump’s order also restarts the proposal for a 211-mile road to the Ambler Mining district, an enormous deposit of minerals crucial to manufacturing and national security. Trump of course will be swamped with the usual green lawsuits, but rightly says the editors, “his order is worth defending up to the Supreme Court.”

Davd Soul