Here’s a must-read column by Perry Pendley with The Mountain States Legal Foundation.
National Review: Bundy Ranch Standoff Could Spark New Sagebrush Rebellion; Westerners are tired of having Uncle Sam for a landlord
In the late 1970s, Carter’s “War on the West” spawned the Sagebrush Rebellion, which Governor Reagan welcomed by saying, “I am a Sagebrush Rebel.” Reagan, as governor of California, a vast public-lands state (nearly half is federally owned), knew what most Americans do not; that the federal government owns a third of the country. Most of that land is in the eleven western States and Alaska. In rural western counties, Washington owns upward of 60, 70, 80, and even 90 percent of the land.
Meanwhile, though energy development is booming on state and private lands across the country, leasing of and permitting on the vast federal estate run by Salazar’s successor Sally Jewell is a bust. Jewell travels the West threatening local officials that Obama will issue the type of national monument designations that got Clinton hung in effigy in rural Utah. Finally, the EPA, which last December put a million acres of Wyoming land, including the town of Riverton, into an Indian Reservation, released new “wetland” rules, the enforcement of which against a Wyoming man drew national headlines.
Little wonder that there is talk of another Sagebrush Rebellion, that Utah has passed enabling legislation to secure title to federal lands it needs for its citizens, an effort in which other States have joined to one degree or another, and that legislation proposed by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to sell 3.3 million acres of federal land deemed by the Clinton Administration
Meanwhile…
The Washington Examiner: EPA says CO2, cow-pig manure and urine rank 1-2-3 as global warming threat
In the EPA’s “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks,” the agency said that greenhouse gas emissions dropped 3.4 percent in 2012 from 2011. And emissions are down to their lowest level since 1994.
Besides cars and trucks, one major reason is because of cow and pig manure and urine, which produce harmful methane and nitrous oxide. Both of those have been on the increase. In fact, methane and nitrous oxide rank second and third behind carbon dioxide as the top three drivers of global warming, said the EPA.
In the section titled “Global Warming Potential,” the EPA says carbon dioxide ranks first followed by methane and nitrous oxide, both produced in big numbers by the animals. Methane increased 68 percent in emissions from 1990. “The majority of this increase was from swine and dairy cow manure, where emissions increased 53 and 115 percent, respectively,” said EPA.
Comments
J. C. Kantorowicz – Great Falls
Thursday, April 17, 2014 8:21 AM
If memory serves correctly, those lands now considered “federal lands” were to be held by the federal government ONLY until such time as some individual or entity wanted to care for them as their own private property. The paramount RIGHT of the American citizen is the ownership of PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Granted, some lands are so unique as to require protection as National Parks. However, this mindless addition of “Areas of Critical Environmental Concern” being turned into defacto wilderness areas must stop. The recognition of human industry and the furtherance of mankind REQUIRES the production and use of our natural resources. We were placed on this earth to make use of those resources available to us to further our species. Recognition of the danger facing other species and desiring to protect those species is a desirable human trait…… NOT a mandate to elevate other species over the human species.
Until the voice of reason becomes louder than the voice of environmental protectionism, this nation and our individual rights to own and protect our private property…… Our most basic of freedoms are in grave danger.
vinny in Livingston
Thursday, April 17, 2014 9:28 AM
The case for “equal footing” State ownership of undeeded land.
Bundy’s Case: Feds Do Not Own the Land Where His Cattle Graze
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/18038-bundy-s-case-feds-do-not-own-the-land-where-his-cattle-graze