Ending Fed land grabs!!
Community
This article isn't even close to accurate. Obama did not "acquire" lands for the National Monuments listed. They were already federal lands. Designation of National Monuments does not include private lands, thus there is no literal seizure of lands in the formation of monuments. It appears that Breitbart is assimilating the number of acres of National Monuments designated by Obama (which was tops for Presidents) as new land acquisitions, which is not true.
"The budget proposes that it will “reduce funding for lower priority activities,” such as new major acquisitions of federal land."
Back in the 1970's, the first National River was "acquired", the Buffalo River National Park. The government came in and forced private landowners to sell to them. This caused families to lose land that had been in their families for generations. It even caused at least one to pass away of a broken heart, (google "Granny Henderson"). All in the name of "Preservation". Now we have a river that is no cleaner than it was when they took it over, one county in particular that gets no property taxes from the land, but much of the headache of law enforcement, less access to parts of the river than we had back then and a whole lot of bad feelings because of how the government took it over. When it comes to fertilizer application, I am even restricted more than the people on the other side of the highway (literally that is the dividing line) and I am 17 miles from the river.
Yeah, so having witnessed this first hand (although my family lost no land personally), I think less land purchases by the feds is a good thing.
There is publicly owned lands inside the areas obama designated as monument lands, these privately owned properties are now held to the same restrictions as the federal lands. If you own a house its grandfathered, but when want to sell there's only one buyer, the govt. If you want to build a house on your land you can't. Its now under govt control.
NY state government does it continuously, they buy up all the private acreage they can inThe Adirondacks, ( Boreas Ponds Tract, most recent) and then lock most out of it with their restrictive Adirondack Park Agency land use regulations.
"Silvio O. Conte Wildlife Refuge has plans to take 7 million acres of private land from the headwaters in Pittsfield NH"
"There is also the Umbagog Wildlife Refuge growing by 2 million acres from upsate NH into Maine for the next horror story!!!"
Umm, Spike, do you have links to either of these claims?
Matt
Thumper,
National Monument designation does not affect private land inholdings within the boundaries of the monument.
At least not until some eminent domain bs is thrown in there...
Spike,
I never said there was no new acquisition. I pointed out that the two large monuments were not actually acquisitions and no land was taken from private landowners to create them. Federal refuge expansion/acquisition needs Congressional approval.
Spike,
My searches don't turn up a shred of evidence to collaborate the 2 massive land grabs you mentioned.
Matt
Spike,
Thanks for the links. I didn't respond because I didn't see any definitive planning for either a 2 million acre, or 7 million acre land grab, as you stated earlier. The only map I see simply shows areas of possible future expansion, nothing more.
Perhaps I didn't dig thru your links enough, but frankly I don't need to. Federal accusations of that size require an act of Congress, and there are no such acts.
As for your tin foil concerns over Agenda 21, that's a legally non-binding UN statement of intent, only. The US congress has never had a formal debate or vote on it, therefore it isn't law that can be implemented in the US.
Matt
I live in the middle of the Umbagog Communist Refuge. The feds 1.pay no taxes. 2. heavily restrict hunting, no turkey hunting, bear baiting, trapping, steel shot for everything 3. two articles of orange clothing, even for bow hunting 4. No blinds or tree stands left overnight 5. no bicycles. 6. only two hounds for hunting. These are just a few of the unelected bureaucratic rules. They own 14,000 out of 36,000 acrescin our town, so far. To find their plans for the Silvio Conte Refuge, simply go to their website. It is going to be 7.2 million acres. I am an unpaid activist who has been fighting this takeover of our state for 10 years. I have testified twice to the House of Reps and twice to the Senate. A group of us including several timberland organizations, are going to Washington to talk with the President concerning this takeover. In 1992, a fellow activist attended a "sustainability" conference in Rio de Janero. He came back and told us about that conference and how the US signed onto it. That pact was named Agenda 21. It is happening but sooner or later there could be a tipping point, but that will be too late for us in Northern NH and Maine. Interestingly, a former classmate of mine who recently retired from an intelligence agency told me that my worries are for naught as we will see war very soon. He told me that I was lucky to live up on the border, 200+ miles from a city with the White Mountains between. That was all he would say. I pray he Is wrong.
Gray Ghost, I will try to post a map of the Silvio Conte proposal. They just finalized their second CCP, Comprehensive Conservation Plan. They will be taking 135,000 acres. 52% of two towns will be federally owned. 30% of two others, and varying percents of several. In 15 years, a new CCP will take affect. That one will add another 250,000 acres. No Congressional approval needed. The only power Congress has against this bureaucracy is taking away funding but we elect people that won't do that.
Conspiracy theories abound on Bowsite these days. Ran by the Tin Foil brigade. Thank God for you diligence gentlemen. I sleep better at night knowing your at the computer. WOW!
People ridicule those who care about government over-reach until it hits them. I went through a lot of flak when I raised the alarm about our landgrab until the right people got letters from the feds wanting their timberlands. We are a property tax state. No income tax, sales tax. You take away our tax base and the rest of the remaining residents get shafted. In order to survive up here we eliminated our police dept and cut back on other services. This is a logging community. The feds do not cut. No timber taxes, which hurts. We are rapidly losing our young families. The little village next to use is now almost totally gone with the feds surrounding 3 families and watching their every move. You mow one inch ovwe the line and get cited. Upton, Maine will be down to 2700 acres with the next CCP. This is not tin foil, this is reality here. People who live in suburbia or cities have no clue what rural America is facing. The elite who come up here with their huge pickups trailering atvs and snowmobiles are starting to find out as trails close because the pressure on private land is too much. Those timberlands taken by the feds were our life-blood and the flatlanders playground. The feds don't want you here, or us. Also, the national monument Obama established in Maine, 80,000 acres was private land owned by Roxanne Quimby, a screaming anti. No Congressional approval needed. Part of the Green Line Project. There may be tin foil conpiracies but a lot of people wear blinders too. This government is too big, too cumbersome, and too much "one size fits all." Local input and local cultures are being killed. Funny how we bend over backwards for some guy who thinks he is a woman but don't give a crap about people being forced out of their homes. There will be a correction someday, and we as a nation will deserve it. We have ignored the advice of our forefathers and have turned over our lives and responsibilities to government. Liberty lost.
Quoted from the Silvio Conte proposal:
Acquiring New Refuge Lands
Under all alternatives, we would continue to acquire lands within the refuge’s approved acquisition boundary from willing sellers to protect and restore important habitats. The Service only acquires an interest in land from willing sellers when there is an agreement on terms and price and funding is available. Lands within the refuge’s approved acquisition boundary do not become part of the refuge unless their owners willingly sell or donate them to the Service; the boundary has no impact on property use or who an owner can choose to sell to."
That doesn't sound like a "land grab" to me.
And didn't Roxanne Quimby donate her own land? You may not like it, but the Feds didn't force her to do that.
Matt
I've never seen where lands required by government entity's didn't pay property taxes. More misinformation coming from the same conspiracy theorists.
"I've never seen where lands required by government entity's didn't pay property taxes"
Much of the Buffalo National River runs through Newton County Arkansas. BNR pays no property taxes. Here is an excerpt from the link:
" Newton and Searcy Counties are the two poorest in the state, but the Park Service did nothing to alleviate the situation even when presented with an opportunity. Not only that, said Patterson, the loss of tax revenues produced by the NPS driving landowners from their homes has further weakened an already suffering school system. "
And then there's this one:
" First, I'd like to talk about PILT--Payment in Lieu of Taxes. My experience is that few government officials among any of the Federal land management agencies understand this program. There is a myth that when a Federal agency buys land the county will automatically benefit from the acquisition through increased PILT payments. For most counties this is simply not true. First, PILT payments seldom equal taxes collected. Second, if counties are capped by the operation of the formulas they get nothing."
The only two people that I know who have had property taken by eminent domain were compensated well in excess of the value of their property. Both of them quite happy about it.
SA - I'm glad the folks you knew were compensated above their property value, and I mean that sincerely. Not everyone is however. We lost 30 acres of our best hayfields for a highway expansion 40 years ago. We did receive appraised value after we argued a little bit, so money wise we made out all right, (really needed those fields tho but highways do have to go in certain places).
In the case of the Buffalo River that I have referred to, people got what Uncle Sam offered which wasn't always market value. Since some of those farms had been in the same family for well over 100 years, there really wasn't a way to compensate some of them, they were handed a little money and just plain driven off. Again look up "Granny Henderson" for one of the saddest stories.
On a city level, some years back the city of Springdale Arkansas decided it needed to connect one of it's streets. There was a farm (40 acres maybe, I don't remember for sure), that their street would have to split in half in order to connect. The told the farmer that the increase in property value of his land would be more than equal to the price of the land they were taking so they told him they were not paying for it. Fortunately when it went to court, the judge in the case had some common sense and made the city pay for the land they needed.
Ask the people that lost their homes, cabins, resorts, and other businesses inside the now areas of Voyageurs National Park or the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness if they were "well compensated" and you might hear a different tune.
When you sell to the feds, your neighbors have their property taxes rise as the feds pay no taxes. They pay in lieu of taxes, PILT. It is 24% of what it is supposed to be. In NH it is based on current use rates which are 10% of what the rate a homeowner with less than 11 acres pays. They also have the right to use eminnent domain. They have used it up here. When the feds buy up here, the first thing they do is burn the buildings down. That devalues the property and being just land, makes it eligible to be valued as current use. I suggest all of us read Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, especially his views on property ownership. A lot of you guys have no idea as to what is going on up here. We are living it, not reading the USFWS propaganda. As one lady who is wealthy stated at a meeting, "it gets rid of the riffraff up here." She had a tree fall across her property and had it removed. The stump was right on the property line between her place and the refuge. She was cited and fined. Not a fan of them anymore. Shoots Straight, you are wrong about the feds paying property taxes. Go to your nearest BLM office in Montana and ask them. This is no tin foil conspiracy, just a government wanting control over water, energy, timber, and wildlife. So what if people get taxed out of their homes, lose their livelihoods, can't enjoy traditional uses of the land, it's all for the public good, right? Only about 47% of this country works to support the rest. Let's put more wallowing at the public trough. Out of all that land Quimby donated, 75,000 acrea will be open to hunting. The 85,000 left is going to be seed acreage for the new national park she wants. No hunting.
SCOTUS Will Decide When Government Can Stop You From Selling Land
DC: While the Senate Committee on the Judiciary grills Judge Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court will decide one of the biggest property rights cases of recent years.
The case concerns a Wisconsin family who argue the government has unconstitutionally taken their land by refusing to allow them to sell it.
The Murr family owns two pieces of property on the St. Croix River in Wisconsin. They attempted to sell one of their waterfront lots (called “Lot E”) to finance improvements to a cabin they own on the second plot (called “Lot F”). The value of Lot E had been assessed at $400,000. Environmental officials blocked the sale for violating conservation rules. A county board further declared that state law required the two lots be merged into a single piece of property that could not be broken up and sold in smaller parcels.
If effect, the Murr family argues, the government-mandated merger of their properties stripped them of nearly half a million dollars, as they are now unable sell Lot E. They argue this constitutes a violation of the Constitution’s takings clause, which prohibits the government from seizing private property for public use without “just compensation.”
“We felt our rights had been violated,” Donna Murr told The Associated Press. “If the government is going to take your property, they need to pay for it.”
more here
So why not sell a 99 year lease?
Henry...even if they were able to lease that parcel, you know damned well both the EPA and county would find ways to make it impossible for the leasees to even access the property.
If you have a mud puddle on your property that's water in it most of the year it's considered a "vernal pool" that might contain endangered "Fairy Shrimp" here in California. If you do Anything to disturb that pool you will be fined big time. Over in the coast there is an area that was split up in the 1800s for Dairy farmers. The national parks moved in and declared the area a national seashore. Each parcel would be worth millions except the Feds won't let it be sold for anything but what it's used for. They are all dairies or pasture land. The owners live in very modest homes or mobile homes. There is a high fenced Tule elk preserve out there and there used to be a good number of Fallow deer running wild. The Feds came in and exterminated over a thousand of the fallow deer because they are a non native species. Occasionally a bull tule elk gets out in one of the farms. If the rangers see it they shoot it. I sure would be one pissed off person if I lived on a pice of land that my ancestors owned and lived in poor conditions because the Feds won't allow me to sell some of my land to anyone except the government for peanuts. They can't hunt on their property. There was some huge fallow deer running wild that were huge. In the1930s the SF zoo released fallow and Axis deer there. They could have sold tags for them and owners could have charged an access fee but No.
