Grubby Grabbers
Hands OFF!
I understand why they didn’t—but I regret that the Founding Fathers didn’t use the phrase “Life, Liberty and Private Property.”
You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.
A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, ...
President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.
How’s that “transparency and accountability” workin’ out for ya?
...national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent… looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises…
The 21-page document, marked “Internal Draft-NOT FOR RELEASE,” names 14 different lands Mr. Obama could completely close for development by unilaterally designating them as “monuments” under the 1906 Antiquities Act.
...One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. ...
Clinton ended that. “Energy Independence” whassat?!?
...in Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development."
Teh iWon will end that. “Energy Independence” whassat?!?
Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states’ freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.
That’s why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.
It was particularly disappointing that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, voted against the amendment. The government owns more than 80 percent of the land in Nevada and the unemployment rate there is 12.8 percent.
The interesting thing is the checkerboard effect: the BLM owns every other section in vast areas of NV, prohibiting any private ownership of parcels larger than a section [640 acres] in a place where one grazing cow can require up to 20 acres to sustain it. It’s a passive limit on business creation and food production. [The hassle to graze on BLM land is unimaginable. The Federal Gubbmint does not make a good neighbor.]
Where the Federal Gubbmint gets the idea that removing land from private ownership is useful—in any way—is beyond me. Ok—so it’s the Watermelon ECO-movement and the World Gubbmint Socialist Unions that push for reduced private ownership of lands—along with private ownership of handguns and other self-defensive items. How impossible would it be to take over a country wherein there is an armed citizen behind every blade of grass defending what he knows to be his own property? Whereas a city full of apartment hamsters and cubicle monkeys would barely notice the change.
The Democratic Congress refused to stop it, but one sure way Americans could help block it is if they decide some Democrats should lose their jobs on November.
Next entry: FYI
Previous entry: First Steps
