Daschle's also proven to be the kind of senator who is always willing to screw over the downtrodden to help a big time political contributor. An example. Around Christmastime of last year, Daschle quietly attached a rider to the Defense Appropriations Bill granting total legal immunity to the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Mining Company, which operates the Homestake Gold mine in the Black Hills. This mine, which was once owned by William Randolph Hearst and has been in nearly continual operation since the Sioux were driven out of the mountains, has generated more than a billion dollars in revenue. George Bush Sr. sits on their board of advisors.
The Sioux haven't seen a dime. But they have seen the mine devour and despoil a huge chunk of their mountains. When the gold runs out, the Homestake mine will leave behind an environmental ruin of poisoned rivers, cyanide-laden leach ponds, toxic tailings piles and a hole in the earth a mile wide and 1,000-feet deep. Daschle's rider means that the US government assumes the costs of cleaning all this up, amounting to a $50 million bail out for a foreign corporation. "This re-affirms an unsurprising truth," says legal scholar Edward Lazarus. "This country deals far more generously with foreign corporations that buy our land than with the native peoples from whom we took it."
The Sioux haven't seen a dime. But they have seen the mine devour and despoil a huge chunk of their mountains. When the gold runs out, the Homestake mine will leave behind an environmental ruin of poisoned rivers, cyanide-laden leach ponds, toxic tailings piles and a hole in the earth a mile wide and 1,000-feet deep. Daschle's rider means that the US government assumes the costs of cleaning all this up, amounting to a $50 million bail out for a foreign corporation. "This re-affirms an unsurprising truth," says legal scholar Edward Lazarus. "This country deals far more generously with foreign corporations that buy our land than with the native peoples from whom we took it."