Enough, Already!

      This is a response to yet one more attempt to cover Trump’s grievous shortcomings by attacking former SecState Clinton regarding the “Uranium one” deal. The tipping point for me, today,  was the allegation that in a nine-member unanimous vote Clinton was (somehow) the “swing vote”, a mathematical impossibility. I, therefore, did even more digging. This is part of what I found:

       "For a bit more fact vice blither: US mining law allows any corporation with a US address to claim mining rights and has, for well over a century, allowed said rights to be sold by that corporation to foreign interests. The Committee on Foreign Investments in the US (CFIUS) has only existed in current form since 1988 but was established by the Ford administration by Executive Order in 1975. 

       Since 1988, through 2014, there have been 2,124 required notifications of foreign desires/intent to invest in American interests which were considered worthy of CFIUS consideration. Of these, up to 2000-2008 (the Bush 43 years) only 18 were investigated, 7 were withdrawn (most by committee recommendation before going to the President) and 10 were nixed by POTUS, 8 by Bush 41, 2 by Clinton.

        In the Bush 43 administration, there were 561 notifications, 32 full investigations, 63 tenders withdrawn, 3 nixed by POTUS. Worthy of note is that in the Bush 43 years, both Bush and the Committee approved a Chinese consortium’s acquisition bid for US oil corporation Unocal, and an offer from Dubai Ports World, to buy P & O which, if approved, would have ceded control of most US east coast container ports to an Arab corporation! In both cases Congress, with both Houses under Republican control and concurring, concerned that these decisions were adverse to US security, rejected those decisions, nixing the deals.

       During the Obama years up to 2014, there were 627 notifications of intent, of which 151 were investigated. This was a much higher frequency of concern than that demonstrated by the Bush 43 team. Of these, 146 were withdrawn (due to initial adverse response) and 15 were nixed by POTUS. 

      The CFIUS, as previously stated, unanimously voted to approve the Uranium One deal. As SecState, Clinton could have done nothing to stop it as only one vote of nine, including:  Department of the Treasury (chair), Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Energy, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Office of Science & Technology Policy. Additionally, The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Labor are non-voting, ex-officio members of CFIUS. That Clinton lady must really know Kung-Fu or something equally deadly to bully all those men, some Republicans, into voting as she wanted!

       Now, the rest of the story. While Trump, his ignorant sycophant fan base and others too stupid for critical thinking, continued nattering about Uranium One, the Trump Justice Department, in February 2018, debunked their fearless leader’s story, based primarily on the fact that after listening to the “witness” rail on about “Clinton Cash” (gotta sell that book) concluded that, in navy speak, he was a lying sack of shit regarding any “play for pay” aspect to the Uranium one issue. Remember this was Trump’s Justice Department and Trump’s FBI. So, rave on, haters. Wishing it were so won’t change facts.

       Again, allow me to make this clear: I don’t think we should have ever allowed foreign nationals to obtain control over US soil resources, but the law allowing that is older than I am and would require Congressional action to be altered. We allow BP to drill in US coastal waters, which is yet another US energy resource. Where’s the outrage? It needs to be remembered that Uranium One was a Canadian company which bought the mining rights from Americans who sold it to them. The sale to Rosatom transfers zero uranium to Russia, and in a flash, if needed those mining rights could be voided. Minus an export license, all the Uranium mined by Uranium One stays here unless we allow its export. So, why are we here in the first place? Because US energy companies chose not to operate uranium mines in the US back when yellowcake uranium ore was so cheap as to be only marginally profitable.