Braxton McCoy

Guys are still out there hunting.

They're still out there fishing.

They're still out there with their family.

Timber extraction, mining, oil extraction, all of that is still happening on public lands.

Perhaps not the scale that everybody wants, but it is happening.

Another thing that we have in place that a lot of people don't know about that I actually think is terrible...

in a lot of ways is you can hard mineral claims.

My understanding is that that old law that goes clear back to like 1871 is still in place.

And they think it was the hard minerals act.

I can't remember the exact name, but it within that act, it establishes that anyone, including a foreigner can come here.

And if they find hard minerals,

and get a claim approved, they can mine it.

And under that system, the federal government gets nothing from it.

Whereas in other extractionary processes, they get a percentage.

So I think on minerals like lithium, I think the federal government gets a sub 10% as far as revenue sharing goes.

I think the states on those same things get something like 4%.

Don't quote me on all these numbers, but it's something like that.

The revenue sharing process.

And a lot of these mines are foreign people.

I think that's a real problem that should be addressed, but nobody seems to want to address that.