The Next BLM Battleground
By Douglas V. Gibbs
According to Article I, Section 8, aside from adding territory as spoils from war, the only way the federal government can own property is if they “purchase” it with the “consent” of the State legislature for the purpose of “needful buildings.” Much of the land west of the Mississippi River owned by the federal government was not obtained in either manner. As a result, the Bureau of Land Management unconstitutionally regulates/manages (or should I say “mismanages”) a massive portion of the United States.
Confrontations have emerged in Nevada and Oregon, of late, with the Bundy name attached to both situations. The iron grip by the federal government on these lands has led to limitations on land use, be it for grazing, farming, timber or other uses that in our short history as a country was not so much of a concern not very long ago.
According to Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah, the land belongs to the ranchers, and farmers, and ultimately to the citizens. ”This land is your land,” he says, “and not the federal government’s.”
“It’s like having your hands on the lever of a modern-day Louisiana Purchase,” said Mr. Ivory, who founded the American Lands Council and until recently was its president. The Utah-based group encourages the federal government to give the land back to the States, and the people, and seeks to accomplish this “encouragement” through legislative and judicial means.
Ivory agrees with what folks like the Bundys are trying to accomplish, but he believes more can be accomplished through a more bureaucratic tactic.
In his home State of Utah, the local legislators have passed a law demanding that the federal government return federally controlled land to the state. The federal government has refused to comply, so now a $14 million lawsuit to claim 31.2 million federal acres of canyons, scrub desert and rolling mesas is in place.
Last year, Colorado had a Republican state senator from the agricultural eastern plains of the State sponsor a bill to create a Colorado Federal Land Management Commission, to study turning over federal lands to the State. The measure never made it out of the Republican-controlled State Senate.
Oregon’s lone Republican Representative Greg Walden, the Republican who represents the Oregon district where the Bundy takeover was playing out, stood up in Congress to deplore the tactics of the armed protesters, but sympathized with their frustration.
“More than half of my district is under federal management, or lack thereof,” Mr. Walden said, expressing anger at the Bureau of Land Management. “They have come out with these proposals to close roads into the forests. They have ignored public input.”
“The land policies now are, basically, lock it up and throw away the key,” said Leland Pollock, a commissioner in Garfield County, Utah, a county roughly the size of Connecticut with pine forests and stunning red-rock spires. “It’s land with no use. The local economy’s really suffered as a result. Grazing has been reduced. We used to have a thriving timber industry — that’s all but gone.”
While the armed standoffs may be fueled by constitutional reasoning, there are more than just the federal government goons these people have to deal with. The media and the court of public opinion is also watching. Being right is not enough in a culture where perception is a primary key in everything we do. The Bundy gang have been called “right-wing extremists” who are willing to use “dangerous and irresponsible” means to fuel their “lawlessness and violence.”
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid commended the report, saying in a statement, “It is time for Republicans to come to their senses and stand up to these extremists and denounce the horrible values they represent.”
Horrible values? Is individualism and State Sovereignty a couple examples of horrible values to Senator Reid? Remember, Harry Reid is the guy who has said in the past that the Tea Party’s belief in limited government is “anarchy.”
The Center for American Progress Report calls the movement to return the federal land back to its rightful owners a “radical county supremacy movement … which argues that county sheriffs are the highest law enforcement authorities in the United States.”
Source: http://politicalpistachio.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-next-blm-battleground.html
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