Just when was it that the United Snakes of America declared war on the Coeur d’Alene Mining District, and why?

We were ruminating, fulminating on these weighty questions last week. Pretty clearly, the opening salvo was fired in the final decade of the 19th Century, when Federal troops were dispatched under a declaration of martial law to lock up 600 miners here who were striking for decent wages.

Then of course during World War II there was the undeclared conscription of lead and zinc miners here who were prevented from taking better paying jobs in the shipyards of Puget Sound to keep wresting rocks from our earth that could be smelted into bullets and cartridges to kill Germans and Japanese.

For that trouble, we were rewarded, in 1984, by being declared a federal Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and we have been struggling under the EPA’s yoke ever since as have some 70 mining companies who produced bullet-makings for the government in the 1940s, most of them mom-and-pop operations. Or was it in 1991, when agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation swooped down upon us, shutting down our card games and seizing our slot machines, in their assault on our laissez-faire way of life?

Was it just last year, when the US EPA sweated a $200 million settlement out of Hecla Mining Co. for alleged “environmental damages” for having the temerity to mine silver, lead and zinc in the Silver Valley? (That amount, ironically, is about what Hecla intends to spend extending the life of the Lucky Friday by some 30 years.)

Or was it just last week, when the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration shuttered the Lucky Friday mine for up to a year on an utterly vacuous claim that is main vertical access way, the Silver Shaft, had miraculously become unsafe  overnight? This is the same MSHA that inspects the shaft every three months, most recently a month ago. What changed in 30 days to render the Silver Shaft unserviceable? According to MSHA, 30 years’ accumulation of crud leaking from sand lines that have built up along the mile-deep, 18-foot cylindrical shaft’s concrete liner.

This is federal government arrogance at its height. It is brazen and it reeks of ass-covering. It is also ineptitude at its height, to the detriment of some 200 Hecla Mining Co. employees and a like number of Cementation Corp. contract workers who were at work sinking the new No. 4 Shaft internal winze. As of late last week, Hecla miners were barred by MSHA even from maintaining the critical pumps to keep water out of the lower workings of the Lucky Friday, where most of the machinery is. The 4 Shaft is collared on the 4,900-foot level and most of the current ore hauling was being done on the 5,900-level to the Silver Shaft.

Miners tell this reporter that scaling-off accumulations of sand-line leaks has been an ongoing maintenance procedure since the Silver Shaft – unique to a district where wood-lined, rectangular (and infinitely more maintenance-intensive) shafts are the norm – was commissioned in 1983. Hecla, treading lightly, says it doesn’t consider the MSHA closure order politically motivated. We beg to differ. It is all about politics. In the wake of the April, 2011 death of drift-miner Pete Merek on the 5900-level, MSHA directed Hecla to re-route that heading into uncharted territory. Following MSHA’s orders led to a pair of rock-bursts in November and December last year, the latter of which injured seven men. Our friendly local miners figure that MSHA’s order to close the Silver Shaft is directly connected to its mandated screw-ups on the 5900 – essentially to distract attention from the injuries the agency’s order caused. Some early scuttlebutt that MSHA had been pestering Hecla to clean up the Silver Shaft likely is rumour-mongering by the federal agency. But MSHA doesn’t pester: it writes citations, issues orders and demands fines; it doesn’t give advice.

Years ago MSHA was staffed by inspectors who’d spent years underground breaking rock for a living. They knew the art of the possible and the practical, and could with considerable moral authority cite a company that was bending the rules to the detriment of safety. The new breed of cat is different: college boys with little or no experience in the reality of hard-rock mining. The hard-rock miners they are ostensibly there to protect hold their ineptitude and their rule-book rigidity in contempt.

So, 3.5 million ounces of silver production from the Lucky Friday will be held off the books of America’s export balance sheet this year. Our silver consumption will continue at or above its current rate, so we’ll have to import more silver, and print more paper dollars to pay for it – which just drives up the price of milk and gasoline for all of us and the 400-plus miners now on the bricks.

No doubt some Goldman-Sachs-style short-seller made off like a bandit when the MSHA order caused Hecla’s stock to crater from $6 to nearly $4 in a day’s trading last week. Given the cozy cronyism between Wall Street and the United Snakes Government these days, might we wonder if more than just politics were involved?

This wasn’t a war that the hardy people of northern Idaho started, back in the 1890s, or the 1980s, the 1990s, or just last week. We’d rather be known as the culture that brought decent working conditions, women’s suffrage, and other enlightenments to the nation’s conscience. But it is a fight we need to finish, and finish decisively.

Has gold finally reached its peak, or will it continue going up? The precious metal has had a 10-year-plus bull run, but since 2008 it’s been on a tear. This week it breached the $1,900 threshold for the first time, before retreating a bit. Today gold moved up again. And soon, your employer may be offering gold and silver as part of your employee benefits package.

The ability to buy gold and silver is the latest voluntary benefit program available to employees, according to Employee Benefit Adviser, a trade newsletter.

No, it’s not part of a retirement plan. It’s a separate program, like the extra life insurance you can buy through payroll deduction. But as with a 401(k) plan, you can buy fractions of precious metals by dollar-cost averaging as little as $25 each pay period.

One company with 16,000 employees went live with the program yesterday, and 10 more companies have signed up, according to Todd Fletcher, voluntary benefit specialist with SilverSaver.com, which offers the plan through Mass Metal, based in Lawrence, Kan.

“It’s a way for people to take a portion of their savings and put it into precious metals,” says Fletcher.

How it works

As soon as a worker buys 20 ounces of silver or 1 ounce of gold, they can take possession of it immediately. Or they can store it in a secure vault at First State Depository, a facility in Wilmington, Del. All holdings are insured by Lloyds of London, Fletcher adds.

It costs employers nothing to offer it and requires minimal administration, but employees pay transaction fees on purchases — though at a discount to what Mass Metals charges individual clients. The typical premium is 7.49 percent, says Fletcher. “What we do for employees is put it at 4.99 percent.”

If employees need to sell their investment, they pay no transaction fees.

How is the price of gold determined? Josh McCleary, Mass Metal’s chief operating officer, says the company has a once-daily price. “We purchase in the morning hours typically, and (the price) is applied to all the individual transactions that happen through the site between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Central Time,” he says.

“Our goal is to mirror other internationally recognized prices like the London daily fix that is set at 6 a.m. What we do is try to get as close to that price as possible. So over the last 18 months we’ve been within 1 cent of the London daily fix on silver.” The same method applies to gold, he says.

Anyone who pays attention to CNBC sees the price of gold fluctuate all over the place from one minute to the next. So if the price of gold goes down later in the day, employees will be stuck with the earlier price. But McCleary says that’s the nature of having a once daily price.

“Some days we’re going to be below where it is later in the day, and some days we’re going to be above it,” he says. “But the whole plan is set up as a savings vehicle for people, not a trading vehicle. So if people are buying every pay period through our site, it’s not going to necessarily matter what it’s doing minute by minute. They’re dollar-cost averaging into precious metals. Kind of like a mutual fund. People that save using mutual funds don’t sit there and watch the stock ticker every minute.”

I don’t think it makes sense to use this benefit as a retirement planning vehicle. But this is one way to make the physical commodity accessible to small investors.

Just keep in mind that the metals have long left the mines and are selling at nosebleed levels. Yet they may also have more room to go.

Fletcher says he got out of the stock market a year and a half ago because he didn’t care for the volatility. “One of the things about precious metals is, they’ve never had a value of zero. Ever.”

Investing in Silver
Thursday, June 16th; 4:00-5:00 EST

Register Here

From silver bars to Morgan dollars, the lure of silver entices investors and distracts collectors. And now we have the America the Beautiful 5-ounce silver coins, both bullion and collector versions. If you are interested in buying into the silver market, don’t miss as Dave Harper, editor of Numismatic News, explains the options available and just where collector silver coins fit in the mix. Find out when you should pay melt value for a silver coin and when you can expect to the price to be based on its collector value.

Investing in Silver

Free Online Seminar Silver, silver, silver – it’s the hot topic in today’s market, but what does that mean for you? During the FREE online seminar Investing in Silver, slated for Thursday, June 16, the experts of Krause Publications will take you behind the story of silver’s history-making price climb, and explore options for getting in on the silver rise.

The dynamic seminar duo of David C. Harper, executive editor of Numismatic News and Debbie Bradley, numismatic editorial director, will cover many angles of the silver market during this FREE online seminar, including:

• Silver’s history and its rise in popularity within investment circles
• Silver and its various forms (bars to bullion and more)
• Silver’s history – facts and fiction
• Silver’s cycles and how to use what you know
• Silver coins – melt value or collector value?

If you’d like to submit a question to David Harper, there is a space at the end of the registration form to do so, and your question may be discussed during the online seminar.

This is a free online seminar from the experts. Register for it here

“The latest action shows gold holding well ABOVE its 150-day MA and consolidating. Frankly, I thought gold was in for another test of its 150-day MA, but I may have been too pessimistic. Gold does not seem to want to test its MA (so far) this time, and that’s a bullish factor. As I write this morning June gold is up over 19 points, and there seems to be urgent buying in gold.

We now know that there has been a dramatic reversal in world central bank thinking, and instead of selling gold as they have been doing, world central banks, on balance, are buying gold. We know that China, Russian and many Asian countries are urgently increasing their gold-to-reserves ratio.

Rising gold is also putting pressure on the silver shorts. I’ve heard that there is now more silver shorted on the COMEX than is available in physical silver.

A few weeks ago, shorting silver was considered a “no-brainer.” In this business, if you run with the crowd, you’re liable to get trampled to death.

An increasingly large percentage of America’s population is approaching “retirement age.”…As I’ve said before, the Federal Reserve was created secretly by bankers. The Fed is owned by bankers, and it was created for banks and bankers. Bonuses at the big banks are currently larger than ever as are dividends. In the meantime, Americans of retirement age have run head first into the brick wall of zero returns.

…So from now on, you can expect a veritable avalanche of “good times talk” out of Washington. The employment figures will be skewed to the administration’s advantage, the inflation figures will be a lie, the benefit that the government has bestowed upon us will be exaggerated. And the Bin Laden victory will be touted to the high heavens. Hey, “at last we’re safe.”

But more powerful than anything else will be the trend of the stock market. If the bull market dies here or even if it corrects severely, the pressure will fall heavily on the administration and the Congress.

For this reason, I expect the rest of the year 2011 to be “wild and wooly.” I expect government lies and propaganda to reach a crescendo. I’m bracing myself for a parade of surprises. Politicians love power and perks. But to keep those two, they must also keep their jobs. Therefore, coming up, I expect an extreme in dirty politics and internecine political battles. The year 2011 should wind up as a banner year for political and economic propaganda, all lies and bull-shit.”

Source: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/5/20_Richard_Russell_-_Silver_Shorts_Liable_to_Get_Trampled.html

By Evan Weinberger
Law360.com, New York
Tuesday, February 8, 2011

http://www.law360.com/securities/articles/224556

According to the order, six of the seven cases pending against JPMorgan and HSBC were filed in the Southern District of New York, while the seventh is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The panel found that consolidating the litigation would “eliminate duplicative discovery; prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings on class certification, discovery, and other pretrial issues; and conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel and the judiciary.”

The suits were spurred in part by a statement in October by Commissioner Bart Chilton of the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission saying there had been “repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets.”

The CFTC has been investigating the silver market for two years, and Chilton said the “fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control” silver prices should be prosecuted.

The suits, which specifically allege violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and the Sherman Act, claim that the banks collaborated to suppress the price of silver futures and options contracts by amassing “enormous” short positions in Commodity Exchange Inc., or Comex, beginning June 1, 2008.

Many of the allegations in the suits come from information provided by a whistleblower who used to work in the London office of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the suits say.

The whistleblower is not named in the complaints, but in testimony before the CFTC in March, Bill Murphy, chairman of the advocacy group the Gold Anti-trust Action Committee, said it was a metals trader in London named Andrew Maguire.

After Maguire went public in March, the defendants began to unwind their positions in Comex, the suits claim.

Since then, the net short position of silver futures that are held by commercial banks — the vast majority of which are made up of JPMorgan and HSBC — has dwindled by more than 30 percent, the suits say.

As that happened, the price of silver skyrocketed, reaching $24.95 an ounce in October, its highest level in 30 years, the suits contend.

JPMorgan and HSBC declined to comment on the suits.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP is representing HSBC.

Counsel for JPMorgan was not immediately available.

The MDL is In re: Commodity Exchange Inc., Silver Futures and Options Trading Litigation, MDL number 2213, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

A bipartisan bill in the Senate that would repeal the unpopular 1099 provision in the healthcare law garnered 60 co-sponsors on Jan. 27, giving the legislation its best chance at passage so far.

Since Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Mike Johanns, R-Neb., introduced the bill, lawmakers have quickly signed onto the measure, which would eliminate the requirement that businesses file the forms to the IRS for every vendor with which they have at least $600 in transactions.

The measure has the support of 45 Republicans and 15 Democrats.

Johanns failed twice last year to push through a bill, even though Democrats, Republicans and the White House agreed that the provisions would place an “onerous burden” on businesses.

He credited President Obama’s backing of the repeal, combined with lawmakers learning about the issue, for his bill’s fast popularity in the 112th Congress.

“We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses,” Obama said in his State of the Union address on Jan. 25.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dr. Steve Isom

January 31, 2011

(803) 753-7061

(803) 422-4245

questions@scsoundmoney.com

The South Carolina Sound Money Committee announces the South Carolina Economic Summit for Sound Money: Gold & Silver on Monday February 7, 2011 at 5:30 PM at 300 Senate Street Columbia, SC. This is an educational opportunity of a lifetime on monetary policy which is foundational to all liberty and prosperity issues. This event is to educate business leaders and members of the public in the Constitutional means to correct the problem of debasement of our currency and loss of wealth and liberty. Tickets can be purchased at www.SCSoundMoney.com/Donate.html

Presenters are Dr. Larry Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation of the Advancement of Monetary Education, and Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. author of “Pieces of Eight”.  They will address the gathering via interactive video conference.

Constituents are asking their legislators to be in attendance using these invitations. http://www.SCSoundMoney.com/Invitations.html.  We hope all 60 seats are filled with legislators to learn the Constitutional facts of their authority and obligations to act in the monetary interests of their constituents. Although the seats will be unavailable to the activists, there will be plenty of opportunities for them to contribute to this event in rather unique ways. Come prepared!

Dr. Steve Isom, committee chairman says, “Come and learn how you can support the move to honest constitutional money.” Patricia Wheat, member of the committee agrees. She said, “…it would stabilize our economy while everything that is centralized to wall street and the federal reserve is obviously flushing down the toilet. …it would actually draw business into SC because if the currency in SC is stabilized it makes it a safe place for businesses.” She adds, “The state would want to [do this] because morally and ethically it is the best option for people.”

Tickets are $45.00 per person to be paid in advance. Seating is limited. Tickets may be purchased at www.SCSoundMoney.com. Dinner will be served.

Dr. Larry Parks is the Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME). Dr. Parks has studied the money issue for more than 30 years and was a student of the free-market economist Murray Rothbard. He is a frequent speaker on what he calls “The Fight for Honest Monetary Weights and Measures.”

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School). For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. He is the world’s most foremost authority about the role of our Constitution as it relates to money.

For more information call the South Carolina Sound Money Committee at (803) 753-7061

Read SC’s bill below
South Carolina House Bill No. 4501

WHEREAS, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in Beer Company v. Massachusetts, 97 U.S. 25, 33 (1877), that the police power of the States “extend[s] to the protection of the lives, health, and property of the[ir] citizens, and to the preservation of good order”; and

WHEREAS, the protection of the lives, health, and property of Virginia’s citizens, and the preservation of good order in the Commonwealth, depend upon the maintenance of both an adequate system of governmental finance and a sound and robust private economy; and

WHEREAS, an adequate system of governmental finance and a sound and robust private economy cannot be maintained in the absence of a sound currency; and

WHEREAS, the present monetary and banking systems of the United States, centered around the Federal Reserve System, have come under ever-increasing strain during the last several years, and will be exposed to ever-increasing and predictably debilitating strain in the years to come; and

WHEREAS, many widely recognized experts predict the inevitable destruction of the Federal Reserve System’s currency through hyperinflation in the foreseeable future; and

WHEREAS, in the event of hyperinflation, depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System, for which the Commonwealth is not prepared, the Commonwealth’s governmental finances and Virginia’s private economy will be thrown into chaos, with gravely detrimental effects upon the lives, health, and property of Virginia’s citizens, and with consequences fatal to the preservation of good order throughout the Commonwealth; and

WHEREAS, Virginia can avoid or at least mitigate many of the economic, social, and political shocks to be expected to arise from hyperinflation, depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System only through the timely adoption of an alternative sound currency that the Commonwealth’s government and citizens may employ without delay in the event of the destruction of the Federal Reserve System’s currency; and

WHEREAS, “legal tender” denotes a currency that must be accepted in payment of a debt denominated in United States “dollars” if the parties have not stipulated that some alternative currency is to be used as their medium of payment or are not otherwise required to use such alternative currency; and

WHEREAS, the Federal Reserve System’s currency has been designated “legal tender” under color of Title 31, United States Code, Section 5103; and

WHEREAS, under Title 12, United States Code, § 411 and Title 31, United States Code, § 5118(b) and (c), the Federal Reserve System’s currency is not redeemable in gold or silver coin or the equivalent in bullion; and

WHEREAS, that the Federal Reserve System’s currency is not redeemable in gold or silver coin or the equivalent in bullion is being identified by more and more experts as a, if not the, major reason for the ever-increasing instability of the Federal Reserve System; and

WHEREAS, all gold and silver coins of the United States are designated “legal tender” under the aegis of Title 31, United States Code, §§ 5103 and 5112(h), and must be so designated perforce of Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, pursuant to Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of and the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, each State must make gold and silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; and

WHEREAS, the Supreme Court of the United States in Lane County v. Oregon, 74 U.S. (7 Wallace) 71, 76-78 (1869), and Hagar v. Reclamation District No. 108, 111 U.S. 701, 706 (1884), has ruled that the States may adopt whatever currency they desire for the purposes of performing their sovereign governmental functions, even to the extent of adopting gold and silver coin for those purposes while refusing to employ a currency not redeemable in gold or silver coin that Congress has designated “legal tender”; and

WHEREAS, “the police power” being the primary sovereign governmental function of every State, under Lane County and Hagar every State may adopt its own currency, consisting of gold or silver, or both, whenever necessary and proper to facilitate exercises of that power in aid of the general welfare of the State and its citizens; and

WHEREAS, under the aegis of Title 31, United States Code, § 5118(d)(2), and perforce of Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to, the Constitution of the United States, Americans may employ whatever currency they choose to stipulate as the medium for payment of their private debts, including gold or silver, or both, to the exclusion of a currency not redeemable in gold or silver that Congress may have designated “legal tender”; and

WHEREAS, under the aegis of Title 31, United States Code, § 5118(d)(2), and perforce of Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 and Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to, the Constitution of the United States, the citizens of Virginia may choose to employ as the medium for payment of their private debts whatever alternative currency, consisting of gold or silver, or both, that the Commonwealth may adopt in the exercise of “the police power”; and

WHEREAS, in light of the possible instability of the Federal Reserve System, proposals for states and their citizens to adopt an alternative currency consisting of gold or silver, or both, are receiving increasing attention throughout the United States, as evidenced by bills that have been or are being introduced in the legislatures of the States of Georgia, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and South Carolina; and

WHEREAS, various systems of alternative currency employing gold or silver, or both, in the form of coin or its equivalent in bullion have already proved themselves in the free market, and could either be employed by the Commonwealth directly or be used as models for a new system created by the Commonwealth to meet Virginia’s unique needs; and

WHEREAS, the adoption of an alternative currency consisting of gold or silver, or both, would not destabilize the present monetary and banking systems, the Commonwealth’s governmental finances, or Virginia’s private economy, because it would not compel or commit the Commonwealth or her citizens to employ such alternative currency to the exclusion of the Federal Reserve System’s currency immediately, but would merely make the alternative currency available, and enable it to be used in competition with and preference to the Federal Reserve System’s currency, to the degree that the need for such use became apparent; and

WHEREAS, the United States Congress, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve System have taken and are preparing to take no action to provide the United States with an alternative to the Federal Reserve System’s currency, in the likely event that the latter would be destroyed through hyperinflation; and

WHEREAS, because legislators in Virginia know or should know all of these facts; and because the General Assembly has the authority, the ability, and the duty to take timely action to deal with this situation without first seeking the approval of or assistance from Congress or any other state; and because the Constitution of Virginia provides, “That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them”—for these reasons, the citizens of the Commonwealth will properly conclude that the members of the General Assembly will be primarily responsible if the Commonwealth is found to be without an alternative currency when the Federal Reserve System’s currency collapses in hyperinflation, or some other related economic calamity supervenes; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That a joint subcommittee be appointed to study whether the Commonwealth should adopt a currency to serve as an alternative to the currency distributed by the Federal Reserve System in the event of a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System.

The joint subcommittee shall consist of eight legislative members who shall be appointed as follows: five members of the House of Delegates to be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Delegates in accordance with the principles of proportional representation contained in the Rules of the House of Delegates and three members of the Senate to be appointed by the Senate Committee on Rules. The joint subcommittee shall elect a chairman and vice-chairman from among its membership.

In conducting its study, the joint subcommittee shall call or hear from such witnesses and take such other evidence as it deems appropriate and shall consider recommendations for legislation, with respect to the need, means, and schedule for establishing such an alternative currency.

Administrative staff support shall be provided by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Delegates. Legal, research, policy analysis, and other services as requested by the joint subcommittee shall be provided by the Division of Legislative Services. Technical assistance shall be provided by the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Bureau of Financial Institutions of the State Corporation Commission. All other agencies of the Commonwealth shall provide assistance to the joint subcommittee for this study, upon request.

The joint subcommittee shall be limited to six meetings for the 2011 interim, and the direct costs of this study shall not exceed $12,000 without approval as set out in this resolution. Approval for unbudgeted nonmember-related expenses shall require the written authorization of the chairman of the joint subcommittee and the respective Clerk. If a companion joint resolution of the other chamber is agreed to, written authorization of both Clerks shall be required.

No recommendation of the joint subcommittee shall be adopted if a majority of the House members or a majority of the Senate members appointed to the joint subcommittee (i) vote against the recommendation and (ii) vote for the recommendation to fail notwithstanding the majority vote of the joint subcommittee.

The joint subcommittee shall complete its meetings by November 30, 2011, and the chairman shall submit to the Division of Legislative Automated Systems an executive summary of its findings and recommendations no later than the first day of the 2012 Regular Session of the General Assembly. The executive summary shall state that the joint subcommittee intends to submit to the General Assembly and the Governor a report of its findings and recommendations for publication as a House or Senate document and shall specify the date by which the report shall be submitted. The executive summary and the report shall be submitted as provided in the procedures of the Division of Legislative Automated Systems for the processing of legislative documents and reports, and shall be posted on the General Assembly’s website.

Implementation of this resolution is subject to subsequent approval and certification by the Joint Rules Committee. The Committee may approve or disapprove expenditures for this study, extend or delay the period for the conduct of the study, or authorize additional meetings during the 2011 interim.