Utah Demands Feds Surrender Lands by Dec. 31
Posted by richrobinson 9 years, 4 months ago to The Gulch: General
This could get interesting..I'm guessing the Feds don't want to lose here because other States would follow and demand their land back.
I would read the terms of sale really, REALLY carefully, tho... You know how upfront and honorable our dotgov is... wouldn't surprise me if there were some clause in there to steal it back once they got the money.
"The Congress shall have Power . . . to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings"
From what I can ascertain, most of this land in Utah has no forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, nor other needful buildings, and thus are being held unconstitutionally by the Fed gov't.
Of course, that's alleging the current misadministration decides to take the (for them) unusual action of actually obeying the Constitution... Based on past and current performance, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one...
Fast forward to Son of Sage heating up in 1993. Clinton and Babbitt were renewing the efforts to squeeze ranchers, miners, recreationalists off the public lands. The strategy had to be modified. Since Nevada ostensibly cannot sue the feds again over this particular ownership issue, we found a way to make the feds sue us. The Feds were attempting to assign a wilderness area to the core of the Toquima Range in central Nevada. An old toll road stage route (clearly state jurisdiction) had washed out in a flash flood and needed to be opened up again. With unanimous support from all 17 Nevada counties, on July 4th 1994, a county commissioner on a county owned dozer repaired the county road with a showing of hundreds of supporters. Two Forest Service employees showed up and one them claiming to be a Law Enforcement Officer held up a handwritten cardboard sign in front of the dozer and proceeded to run back and forth trying to stop the dozer like an environmental activist. The game plan was that if they try and arrest a Nye County official doing his duty, the fed employee would in turn be under citizens arrest as a citizen no different than anyone else, and thereby force the federal jurisdictional question. Which we knew they didn't have - the very Forest Service "law enforcement" employee had attempted to be deputized the week before by the County Sheriff! As expected, he could only act like an environmental activist and the road was successfully opened in the proposed wilderness area.
The gambit was entirely successful as well, as the feds (under Janet Reno) filed suit against Nye County in federal court in Vegas. This started a 2 year process of obfuscation, death threats, court room wranglings, pipe bombs planted with pointed fingers at "County Supremacists" (Harry Reid's words) and then a decision handed down in favor of the feds from the federal court system. Since then, the US vs Nye County case has been cited as proof of exclusive federal ownership of 87% of the State of Nevada.
Lessons learned? The court system will not decide anything along these lines in true constitutional judgement. As Jefferson wisely noted, there is a generational roughly 20 year cycle in visiting and revisiting tyranny and freedom issues. Here we are in 2014 with a fledgling grandson of Sage brewing in Nevada and in other western states.
The western states need to reflect on these lessons. Don't demand that the public lands be returned willingly by the feds to the proper State - take them back through Nullification of FLPMA.
I knew TR founded some federal parks.
But half the west? Wow, I didn't know that!
I had assumed it was far more a gradual gobble over the years.
I know I've sometimes acted like a loose cannon, but I've been learning a lot from you guys and gals.
Most of TR's Federal lock downs http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trenv.... were decreed as 18 National Monuments for preservation (some of which became National Parks much later) under the Antiquities Acts of 1906, and 150 National Forests under the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 before Congress limited the power of the President to decree new National Forests in 1907. It was a significant increase in presidential land decrees, but did not amount to anywhere near "half the west" and was not the root cause of the vast Federal land ownership.
TR signed into law the Antiquities Act in 1906 and the creation of the US National Forest Service in 1905, and he exploited them brutally, but the progressive agenda for permanent Federal control of the land was well established long before Theodore Roosevelt. The Organic Act creating the management of Forest Reserves passed in 1897. The original 1891 Forest Reserve Act had left the means and standards of management unspecified but granted the president the power to create forest reserves on Federal land (until 1907). The drive for permanent Federal control of the public lands began in the 1870s. It was mainly for government control of economic use, not the preservationism that became so sweeping long after TR. The 1897 Organic Act specified that forest reserves were "to improve and protect the forest within the reservation,... securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States."
For a good history of the origins of the National Forest Service and the kind of statist intellectual mentality for permanent Federal control of land beginning in the late 19th century see The Origins of the National Forests, 1992, Harold Steen ed, which is a compilation of presentations at a 1991 conference on the centennial of the National Forest System.
Today most of the Federal lands are controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (about 250 million acres), not the National Forest Service or the National Park Service. Most Federal land and all BLM land is in the west, and is mostly land that was prevented from being settled in the late 1800s. There is a preservationist trend to restrict and prohibit economic use of all of it under the growing viro movement for eco-socialism, in contrast to the 19th century ordinary socialism, but none of this is because of five national parks signed into law by TR or an alleged decree by TR that 'half the west is owned by Washington DC'.
The National Park Service controls a relatively small portion of Federal lands but its impact should not be underestimated. It has been brutal in seizing private property under eminent domain beginning with mass condemnation displacing thousands of people at Shenandoah and the Smokey Mountains in the southeast in the 1930s. This has been nation-wide, not just in the west, and while it directly afflicts a minority of the population, when they go after _your_ land it's everything, and has impacted over a hundred thousand people.
I'm on a 6-month project in Ogden right now, so if anything does develop I'll have a front-row seat. But I'm guessing nothing will come of this. We'll see.
Utah has a connection with the Galt's Gulch of Atlas Shrugged. It might not seem so at first. But the most likely spot for the Gulch, as some of you might or might not know, is the town of Ouray, Colorado. Which also is the northern terminus of an abandoned narrow-gauge railway line, the Durango. (See "Phoenix-Durango RR.")
Ouray takes its name from Chief Ouray, of the Ute tribe.
Utah was always the main territory of the Utes.
There are MANY places in Utah where I can't even get Sirius radio.
Hidden gulches abound.
Also, I like Douglas Pass in western Colorado near Rangely, CO.
i personally hope they do.
But also, in addressing the perception of corruption, the original idea of keeping government as close as possible to the people was to ensure accountability and responsive behavior on locally elected officials. The federal retention of these lands creates an avenue for corruption and cronyism that is even further out of the hands of the Utah residents. But remember when complaining about corrupt elected legislatures - who put them there?
Even here in NE Nevada, I am currently seeing the TV ads by SUWA (Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance) where they trot out the cost of wildfires issue as being carried by the State should the State take over these lands. What they don't mention is the deplorable Land Management policies of the Feds that have created tinderboxes out of these lands. It's a near standing joke in the west that if you see an area blackened by recent fire - you can bet it is "federally managed" land. I remember in my years living in NE Wyoming - where land is dominantly private - when fires got going, and they have some hellaceous lightning in that part of the world, the County firefighters would be on the scene quickly and literally have it out in time for lunch.
Canyonlands
San Rafael Swell
Arches
Goblin Valley
Monument Valley
These are just a few of the lands that would be turned over to the corrupt Utah legislature. again, while I'm no fan of the Fed, there has to be a better way to administer the lands for the benefit of all.
This article alludes to Clinton's land grab of the Grand Escalate and making it the "first national park managed by the BLM".
I hope that the State of Utah is successful against Washington, DC.