BLM and USFS Lack Enforcement Authority on Federally Managed Lands
© Jean Voigts 2002The U.S. Constitution and laws of Congress have never provided for a general grant of law enforcement authority to the federal government. Our national government was purposefully created by our founding fathers to be a government of “limited” powers. World history has repeatedly proven that an uncontrollable and intrusive bureaucracy destroys a free society. When unelected and union protected, life-time bureaucrats assume the role of a national police force, which has no accountability to the citizens, we step dangerously close to tyranny. The recent para-military BLM raid on the Bundy Ranch in Nevada was a shocking example of such tyranny.When state and county law enforcement jurisdiction is usurped by armed federal employees, acting under color of office, it places the citizen in the difficult position of either submitting to an unlawful act by the federal employee or resisting under threat of bodily harm and/or death. As citizens of our states become increasingly aware of the fact that the armed employee of the BLM, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal land management agencies most likely exercise only the power of citizen’s arrest, a right vested in all citizens, the opportunity for a major breach of the peace arises. That fact that a massacre under the I-15 highway interchange near Mesquite, NV was averted is considered by many observers to be a miracle.Both civil and criminal jurisdiction were vested by the Constitution in the States, including in instances where lands within the State’s boundaries are managed by the Bureau of the Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), etc. In 1956, the U.S. Attorney General issued a comprehensive two-volume report entitled, Jurisdiction Over Federal Areas Within the States: Report of the Interdepartmental Committee for the Study of Jurisdiction Over Federal Areas Within the States. TheReport was the first comprehensive federal study on the subject of jurisdiction on federally managed or owned lands. The Report also inventoried all federal areas to determine what type of legislative jurisdiction applied to those lands. In Nevada, with over 86 percent of the land within its borders federal land, much of which is managed by the BLM and USFS, the issue of jurisdiction becomes paramount to determine whether the federal or state government has police power, power of taxation, management of wildlife, etc.
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Proposed rules will ‘result in the financial demise’ of ranchers
It is impossible to address an issue if its existence is unknown. I suspect many people are unaware of proposed rules that the Nevada Cattleman’s Association (NCA)said would “most likely result in the financial demise of a significant percentage of family ranch operations.”Are those words strong enough for us to pay attention? It is not too late to stop this.The proposed rules are surrounding the plight of the Sage Grouse, which environmental groups want to be listed under the Endangered Species Act as “threatened.” Yet, as I wrote about in detail at Tavern Keepers, the rules will likely not protect the Sage Grouse, just as rules to protect the Desert Tortoise have beenineffective.As an aside, the best place I have found for regulations is here, where you can access all open regulatory documents. There are a depressing amount on the Sage Grouse alone. Many are likely unaware of upcominglegislationrules and regulations written by unelected bureaucrats from the EPA, IRS, FDA and many, many others that can potentially impact your life and your business.Just today, 103 new regulatory documents have been added. Today alone, comments are closing for 26 documents.It is reminiscent of a quote by James Madison in The Federalist No. 62.The Desert Tortoise has not fared better under the “protection” of the Endangered Species Act. This is documented. Yet, activist groups continue to use “strategic litigation” to pressure the government for more protections for the Desert Tortoise, and for many, many other plants and animals.Many of these activist groups openly bash livestock grazing on their websites. So, instead of advocating for something, they seem to be advocating against something.Studies have found that grazing reduces wildfires, which is cited as one of the main threats to the Sage Grouse. In fact, research shows that “since the 1970s, the frequency of wildfires has increased at least four-fold.” Is there a connection?As I wrote at the Brenner Brief,Many others have also observed the correlation between severe wildfires and declining grazing activities. Yet, completely legitimate academic studies that find any benefit to grazing are left out of the supporting evidence used to justify listing the Sage Grouse as threatened.Consider the following excerpt taken from meeting minutes of NDOW’s “Sagebrush Ecosystem Council” from October:During a House Hearing from 2004 titled, “Wildfires in the West: Is the Bush Administration’s response adequate?” representatives from the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Fire Commission submitted a statement saying in part,In 2007, John Berlau of the American Thinker observed that although “climate change” was being blamed for the increased intensity of the wildfires, “…environmentalists have hamstrung Californians in their efforts to clear the dry brush [to protect certain species] that is providing the fuel for this massive fire.”The seeming goal of many of these radical environmental organizations is to designate the most land possible under the the highest protection of “wilderness,” (i.e., roadless, no grazing, no ATVs, etc). Some have made the connection that wilderness designations really has nothing to do with protecting the environment, and is more likely a part of a United Nations initiative referred to as Agenda 21.As the standard of living continues to fall and as prices rise, it should be noted that designating wilderness areas is often devastating to local economies. It is not a stretch to think that further destruction of the beef industry would not fare well for consumers.While climate change is the preferred scapegoat for the increasing intensity of wildfires in the West, it seems that the policies imposed by radical environmentalists are more likely to blame. In the meantime, all relevant studies should be included in background documentation for the Sage Grouse.
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- GREEN POWER IS REALLY POPULAR . . AND IS WINNING THE ARGUMENTS. . .
This is a false narrative - do you support renewable energy over fossil fuels? Most uninformed say yes I do. Now let us alter the question just by including more information - - do you support renewable energies over fossil fuels if it means that your taxes or utility bills will increase by more than three to ten times - the answer is now NO WAY.
All studies that I have read clearly show that without Government -[federal, state and local] subsidies the alternative energy company would go bankrupt and close. They can not compete without government and EPA forcing laws - 10% then 15% then 20% well we have done that for 50 years and it has not worked has it?
Even Germany admits that the high cost of green energy has cost them jobs and they are buying nuclear power from France and are now building COAL PLANTS. Spain had the same result. Britain islands have canceled taking offshore wind power as it cost more to switch when winds die and they must still have fossil or nuclear base load capacity on idle. They are paying 100% of the contract for the offshore wind to just shut down.
As all can see the green power has to have 100% conventional - coal, gas - nuclear plants backing up so the the real cost of green includes the cost of the other plants not getting any return on investment. It is called economic costs if government did not require set percentages then there would be no sales at the real cost of production.
Send the people the real cost billing for actual total cost of green power and listen for the roar of lions in the streets.
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"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final or total catastrophe of the currency system involved."-- Ludwig von Mises
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- (Breitbart) – Americans have become increasingly concerned about the federal government’s seizure of privately-held lands and property, especially after the Cliven Bundy incident in Nevada. Now another land owner, Bill Johnson of Temecula, California, claims his property at Vail Lake, the largest privately-owned lake in California, is being threatened by the county, state, and federal governments.Johnson purchased 11,000 acres of land in Riverside County over 17 years ago, including Vail Lake, encompassing over 1,000 square surface acres of water. Now Johnson claims various levels of government are trying to seize the property, using intimidation under the guise of environmental concerns.Johnson told Breitbart News: “The habitat is free of any endangered species. The government just wants it because it’s part of their ‘core area’ due to the properties of water and enormous size.”He mentioned that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) currently manages land parcels on either side of Vail Lake.“The EPA needed to come up with 42,000 acres in the area to ‘protect’ the kangaroo rats,” Johnson said. “They intimated property owners into giving up their land.”Duncan Hunter, a Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California from 1981 to 2009, has known Johnson since the 1970′s.“There’s a common thread between Johnson’s situation and the Bundys’ situation,” Hunter told Breitbart News. “The heavy hand of government has played in both of those cases.”The land of over 15,000 property owners in Johnson’s county was ultimately bought off by the Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Plan (MSHCP), an entity comprised of state and federal government agencies. The MSHCP told land owners that for environmental reasons, their property could not be developed, split, or farmed.“They devalued properties,” Johnson said. “The government told property owners that selling to the state would be voluntary. They said, ‘If you don’t sell to us, you won’t be able to sell it to anyone.’ The land became worthless and devalued since you can’t farm it or build on it.”Hunter argued that the federal Endangered Species Act allows counties to bully residents into giving up their properties.“If the government says you can’t use your property for anything, they’ve essentially taken your property from you,” he said. “Essentially, you’re not a real property owner. Then the government has the best of all worlds–they paralyze your use of the property but they still demand property tax from you.”The former congressman said that the state and local government has leverage over citizens using the federal government as an arm. The Endangered Species Act is used “as a way for local governments to build empires, employ people, and make money,” Hunter said. “The federal government passed the Act, which said that an array of plants and animals are to be protected and cannot be disturbed. Some plant and animal exists almost everywhere.”He said the counties and the cities have understood the value of the Act and used it to exert power over land owners.Jeff Stone, the Riverside County Supervisor, has also known Johnson for many years.“Johnson is certainly not happy and I can understand that,” Stone told Breitbart News. “The pendulum has swung way too far to the left with regards to the Endangered Species Act. It has impeded on some property rights, there’s no question about that.”Stone mentioned, however, that the county is only enforcing federal law through the MSHCP.He said, “Could Bill Johnson build whatever he wants without our plan? The answer is no. He would have to go to the federal government.”Stone said that the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act is particularly unfair to citizens who purchased their land before the MSHCP was put into place, such as Johnson. Buyers who purchased their land after the plan was put into place, however, purchased their land knowing it might be protected for endangered species.“If the federal government wants to preserve the land that Johnson has had for 17 years, they should step up and buy it for market value,” Stone said. “There has been an assault on property rights by the federal government. The plan was adopted prior to me being on the board. It’s a plan that I have to live with, but I still have my concerns about property rights.”Currently, the BLM has control over about two-thirds of Riverside County, according to Johnson. “The county claims they need the land to protect lots of rare species,” Johnson said. “But there have been studies done that that just isn’t true.”The MSHCP further claims the land should be under government control, since Johnson owes $4.75 million in property taxes, penalties and interest on overdue fees. Johnson has largely refused to compensate the agencies trying to seize his property. He believes that the tax assessments would be fair if he were able to develop or farm his own land–but because the MSHCP will not allow this, his property value is substantially less.Johnson said, “How can you pay taxes on property you can do nothing with? The government will sneer at you and say, ‘It’s our property. You need to pay taxes, but the property is ours in the end.’ During the 17 years that I’ve owned Vail Lake, I have not built one single thing on the property. The minute I bought my land, they started taking all my rights away. They stripped the zoning, general plan, and specific plan for the property and open space designation, depriving it of its value.”Stone added, “Johnson could make the argument: I am paying property taxes on land that I cannot maximize for my own benefit–why should I pay taxes on land that I cannot develop? I think he makes a valid argument there, but the laws are the laws.”A California-based spokesman from the BLM told Breitbart Texas that the agency has a thorough process for determining which lands it ultimately chooses to manage.“We start with a public scoping period,” the spokesman told Breitbart Texas. “We engage the public in telling us the issues they want us to address–we also address stakeholder groups like environmental groups. Those people are all engaged in the process. We then develop draft plans and environmental impact statements, which go out for public review and comment.”He mentioned that the BLM is only able to seize privately-owned land from a third party. The spokesman said, “Sometimes a third party will purchase that land from willing sellers, then they transfer that land to BLM to become [federal] public land.”In many cases, state or local authorities like the MSHCP act as the “third party,” and leave home owners very little choice but to sell by barring their land from being developed. MSHCP then hands the land over to the BLM, which currently controls both plots of land bordering Vail Lake.Breitbart News made multiple attempts to reach out to the MSHCP. Although a representative did not return phone calls, explanatory information is accessible on the entity’s website. 500,000 acres of land in Riverside County was “designated for preservation” to protect certain species.“About 69% or 347,000 acres was already public or quasi-public land when RCA was formed in 2004,” the MSHCP website states. “This land forms the core of the habitat conservation plan. RCA’s work focuses on the remaining 153,000 acres needed to fulfill the plan’s requirements and is expected to take at least 25 years. To date, 27% of the remaining goal of 153,000 acres has been acquired.”That remaining land will likely be taken from private citizens in the county, like Johnson.Johnson is no stranger to government land grabs. In 1995, the County, along with help from federal agents, seized his 2,000 acre ranch on the Santa Rosa Plateau. Johnson said he lost over $18 million on the property, which the county claims to have seized to protect the endangered kangaroo rat.Johnson said people in his county, and indeed across the U.S., are becoming concerned about the growing government power over land rights. “There is a growing understanding that this is wrong,” Johnson said. “Everyone understands, even some of the environmental advocates, that this has spun out-of-control.”Hunter added that Johnson’s case is “a real point of principle. When property rights are discretionary, and a government entity has the power to take it from you, then the danger of political corruption and manipulation of property rights becomes very real.”
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- Silly NYT argument . . all political parties have charts about which States they can carry and what is the mover inside that State.Strategizing is POLITICS for real. Read the part about the FDR use of the races and the KKK to bring the Black vote in this article then explain who started the dividing along racial lines.The progressives started the divide and conquest method under Teddy Roosevelt went on with Wilson and then FDR. If one looks at the results in the actions taken by either party in DC there is very little difference.Look at the spending under both parties, look at the finger pointing - under the current government the President and his people are always on attack - war on Blacks, war on poor, war on women, war on Granny and her health needs, war on campus date rape, war on sex in the Military.War on reducing spending, war on profits that allow businesses to expand and hire new workers, war on energy, war on utility costs, war on success and developing our abundant natural resources.Now advance to the war on landowners and farmers using the E-GREEN groups in conjunction with Federal agencies like BLM, USFS, EPA, Clean Water act, Clean Air Act and the endangered species act.All moves are political as Washington and the 545 members of the 3 branches usurp any semblance of LIMITS under the Constitution. They have marched towards a super powerful Central Government that is without limits. They use our own tax dollars and borrowing ability to bribe the States, Counties, Cities and even the individuals by dividing them into voting blocks and using money to motivate each group.The parties call it their BASES - look at how the current placating the environmentalist groups by making prohibitive rules and regulations. These slow down, increase costs, and stop infrastructure construction like highways and bridges.To blame any single group or individual on the current use of hate, anger, envy, resentment to divide voters is ridiculous and should be dismissed out of hand.Take the money and power from DC and watch 13,000 lobbyist leave town. Yes, repeal the 14th, 16th and 17th amendment and the 545 will have very little power to wield and sell.
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- There is only one way to fire the 545 super powerful usurping individuals in Washington, DC and that is to take away the money and the power. They must be forced back under the strict limits of Article I, II and III of the Constitution.The best most simple correction and a way to fire 13,000 Lobbyist and a few million agency government Union employees. These people all are feeding off the taxpayer they take and borrow the nation into generational poverty and then brag about all they spend to help citizens live better?
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- The only way to win is to fight smart and that is at the State level. Here is a program that can save the REPUBLIC and Restore State rights and powers but it will take work and I am not sure Conservatives are ready for hard work. It seems that all blame parties well parties are made up many factions and it has been that way from the beginning.http://articlevprojecttorestor...Now if you truly want to "KEEP THE REPUBLIC" as Franklin answered the lady we gave you a REPUBLIC if you can keep it. Well, we are currently functioning as a pure Democracy majority wins. This usurping can be halted - are you ready to take the fight to the far left and all the progressives? Will you join and work hard?
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- I feel sad for you for you are being used and provided with false premises that you repeat line for line - it is the way of the Progressive left extreme. Repeat a lie often enough and wide enough and most will believe it to be true.The rich do not care what politics do - look at Bill Gates - Microsoft did not have a lobbyist for decades until the Attorney General sued them. You need to recognize that the rich pay taxes on a voluntary basis - in fact all taxes are voluntary. No one is forced to work and earn money - if there are no earning or profits then there are no taxes.The rich can live on the cash reserves and never pay a single nickel in taxes by investing in non taxable programs like muni bonds and State bonds. So, keep pressuring the rich and they will either leave that State or in the case of over 3,000 this year - they gave up their US citizenship and took their money with them to tax havens.Just as Toyota did in moving their US headquarters from high tax California to no tax Texas.
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- The Agua Caliente Solar Photovoltaic (PV) facility in southern Arizona, currently the world’s largest solar PV plant, completed construction on April 29.The 290-MW project—located between Phoenix and Yuma—is jointly owned by NRG Energy, through its subsidiary NRG Solar, and MidAmerican Solar, a subsidiary of MidAmerican Renewables. The plant will sell its electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric under a 25-year power purchase agreement.The development of Agua Caliente was supported by a $967 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. First Solar Inc. designed and constructed the plant using its thin-film solar PV technology, and will operate it for NRG and MidAmerican.Agua Caliente is one of a series of large solar projects built to support California’s 33% by 2020 renewable portfolio standard (RPS). Others include the 392-MW Ivanpah concentrating solar plant near Las Vegas, which came online in February, NRG’s 250-MW California Valley Solar Ranch near San Luis Obispo, which was completed in 2013, and Exelon’s 230-MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch northeast of Los Angeles.“Large-scale utility accomplishments, like our Agua Caliente project, raise the bar in terms of our clean-energy technology and production,” said Tom Doyle, president, NRG Solar. “Proving that we can build both the world’s largest solar thermal and now one of the world’s largest solar photovoltaic facilities advance NRG’s mission to reshape the energy landscape that is incredibly beneficial to both the economy and in how we produce and consume energy.”The Agua Caliente plant will not hold its title for long, however, as another MidAmerican and First Solar project, the Topaz Solar Farm near San Luis Obispo, is nearing completion and will total 550 MW when it comes online later this year.Topaz and Agua Caliente may also be the last of such projects in the U.S. for a while, as demand for large solar PV plants has slowed now that California’s utilities say they have enough capacity in development to meet the RPS.—Thomas W. Overton, JD is a POWER associate editor (@thomas_overton, @POWERmagazine)
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- Washington, D.C., April 28, 2014 – Here’s a classic case of how Congress can slyly pick the pockets of American consumers. The victims don’t even know that they are missing the money.Although in the larger framework of the federal budget, the amount isn’t very impressive, since 1992 consumers of electricity from nuclear plants have paid about $2.6 billion to the Department of Energy to a fund allegedly dedicated to decontaminating and decommissioning formerly-DOE owned uranium enrichments plants. But consumers have already paid these costs in the prices the government charged for separative work units (SWUs) when it ran the store.It looks like this nasty process that Congress uses to steal from consumers will continue.The levy on electric customers to pay for enrichment cleanup is entirely aimed at the wrong targets. DOE’s now-closed or sold-off enrichment facilities were built with taxpayer dollars to support entirely military aims. It was all part of the secret World War II Manhattan Project to create nuclear bombs, eventually dropped on Japan but (thankfully) nowhere else ever again.After the war, when the then-Atomic Energy Commission and the Eisenhower administration were trying to create a civilian nuclear power program, the AEC started selling SWUs to civilian utilities. For the period from 1969 to 1992 when the AEC and its successor, the DOE, ran the enrichment enterprise (most of the time as a world-wide monopoly), sales of civilian enrichment servicesincluded the future costs of shutting them down and cleaning them up.In 1992, two things happened to change the enrichment landscape. First, DOE began the process of spinning off its enrichment program to the private sector, creating the U.S. Enrichment Corporation to run the program as a contractor and then, in 1993, selling the entire enrichment complex to USEC. Also in 1992, Congress passed the first major energy legislation in over a decade, the 1992 Energy Policy Act.The 1992 law created the “Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommission (D&D) Fund” to finance cleanup at the former DOE sites in Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. The legislation imposed fees totaling some $150 million per year, adjusted for inflation over the next 15 years, although civilian consumers of nuclear electricity had not contributed to the construction or operation of the government facilities.Again two things happened when the fund was created. First, as with the nuclear waste trust fund that taxes consumers of nuclear power to finance the government’s feckless nuclear waste disposal program, the federal government treated the D&D funds as just another, fungible, source of dollars. There was no apparent attempt to see that the money actually went to the cleanup of the enrichment sites. Instead, the dollars flowed into the general coffers of the government. There simply is no such thing as a federal government trust fund, or, as the mind-numbing debate over social security reform in the George W. Bush administration called it, a “lock box.” These boxes have no locks that Congress cannot pick.Second, once the federal government gets a new stream of revenue, it is almost impossible to close it down (again, take a look at the nuclear waste fund). The Obama administration’s current budget proposal would extend the D&D tax on nuclear consumers for another 10 years, raising another $2.4 billion or so.Today, congressional appropriations committees are considering the administration budget and both the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Nuclear Energy Institute are opposing the extension of the D&D tax. In a letter to the appropriators April 18, NARUC said, “Consumers of electricity generated by nuclear energy met their obligation to the D&D Fund with a total contribution of $2.6 billion. Despite having met this obligation, NARUC was disappointed to see this tax resurrected” in the Obama budget.What are the odds that Congress will kill the D&D tax? My guess is less than 10%.
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