Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2019 16:58:35 GMT
"Three years ago, the North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows sold a hundred-and-thirty-four-acre property in Dinosaur, Colorado. The buyer was Answers in Genesis, a Christian nonprofit based in Kentucky, which was founded by the Australian creationist Ken Ham. Answers in Genesis is dedicated to promoting young-Earth creationism, which holds that the Earth was created in six days, several thousand years ago. According to documents related to the sale, Meadows was to be paid about two hundred thousand dollars for the property, in monthly installments, the last of which was paid last year.
Neither the sale nor any such payments are noted on Meadows’s congressional financial disclosures, which he is required by law to file annually. Meadows is a founding member of the very conservative House Freedom Caucus and is one of the more prominent members of Congress; last year, Donald Trump reportedly considered making him the White House chief of staff. Why didn’t Meadows disclose the property or the sale? The congressman declined to comment for this story. In August, the Charlotte Observer reported that Meadows—who, before becoming a congressman, was a successful real-estate developer—owned land in northeastern North Carolina that he had also failed to list on his disclosure reports. It’s possible that these nondisclosures reflect a pattern of ignoring congressional reporting rules.
It’s also possible that Meadows wanted to avoid drawing attention to the Colorado property and the complicated and perhaps unflattering story behind it. The property is not an ordinary piece of land but a rich site for finding dinosaur bones, and this appears to be the primary reason that Meadows bought it. Those bones then became the subject of a long-running fight among young-Earth creationists—and they are likely the reason that Meadows sold the land, ultimately, to Answers in Genesis. Meadows’s involvement with the land may have been, in part, a moneymaking venture, but it seems chiefly to reflect his commitment to, and entanglement with, the contentious and controversial world of creationist paleontology....
Among the handful of countries where the vast majority of dinosaur fossils have been discovered, the United States is the only one where such bones, when found on private property, belong to the landowner, rather than to the government. “It is this legal structure that allows creationists to dig dinosaurs and pretend to be paleontologists,” Kirk Johnson explained. By keeping the land in the hands of young-Earth creationists, Meadows would insure that they could tell the story of any fossils found there. “He bought it to secure it for Pete,” Taylor told me, referring to DeRosa. Creation Expeditions, DeRosa’s company, conducted more fossil tours on the site, as did Vision Forum. “That ten-year contract let them just do whatever they wanted,” Taylor said. “Pete and his sons took a bunch of people in there, made a lot of money on tours. It was a commercial operation.”...
Brett Kappel, a lawyer whose work focusses on campaign finance and congressional ethics, reviewed documents related to the sale and ownership of the land in Colorado. Meadows’s failure to disclose the sale appears to be a violation of the Ethics in Government Act, Kappel said, and it would not be his first...
"The fact that there had been an agreement to lease the property to fossil hunters, even if the rent was never paid, seriously undermines the argument that the property was not held for investment.”"
www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/mark-meadows-and-the-undisclosed-dinosaur-property
Neither the sale nor any such payments are noted on Meadows’s congressional financial disclosures, which he is required by law to file annually. Meadows is a founding member of the very conservative House Freedom Caucus and is one of the more prominent members of Congress; last year, Donald Trump reportedly considered making him the White House chief of staff. Why didn’t Meadows disclose the property or the sale? The congressman declined to comment for this story. In August, the Charlotte Observer reported that Meadows—who, before becoming a congressman, was a successful real-estate developer—owned land in northeastern North Carolina that he had also failed to list on his disclosure reports. It’s possible that these nondisclosures reflect a pattern of ignoring congressional reporting rules.
It’s also possible that Meadows wanted to avoid drawing attention to the Colorado property and the complicated and perhaps unflattering story behind it. The property is not an ordinary piece of land but a rich site for finding dinosaur bones, and this appears to be the primary reason that Meadows bought it. Those bones then became the subject of a long-running fight among young-Earth creationists—and they are likely the reason that Meadows sold the land, ultimately, to Answers in Genesis. Meadows’s involvement with the land may have been, in part, a moneymaking venture, but it seems chiefly to reflect his commitment to, and entanglement with, the contentious and controversial world of creationist paleontology....
Among the handful of countries where the vast majority of dinosaur fossils have been discovered, the United States is the only one where such bones, when found on private property, belong to the landowner, rather than to the government. “It is this legal structure that allows creationists to dig dinosaurs and pretend to be paleontologists,” Kirk Johnson explained. By keeping the land in the hands of young-Earth creationists, Meadows would insure that they could tell the story of any fossils found there. “He bought it to secure it for Pete,” Taylor told me, referring to DeRosa. Creation Expeditions, DeRosa’s company, conducted more fossil tours on the site, as did Vision Forum. “That ten-year contract let them just do whatever they wanted,” Taylor said. “Pete and his sons took a bunch of people in there, made a lot of money on tours. It was a commercial operation.”...
Brett Kappel, a lawyer whose work focusses on campaign finance and congressional ethics, reviewed documents related to the sale and ownership of the land in Colorado. Meadows’s failure to disclose the sale appears to be a violation of the Ethics in Government Act, Kappel said, and it would not be his first...
"The fact that there had been an agreement to lease the property to fossil hunters, even if the rent was never paid, seriously undermines the argument that the property was not held for investment.”"
www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/mark-meadows-and-the-undisclosed-dinosaur-property
