How
Obama is locking up our land
By Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
Waving goodbye to property rights…
My column today raises bright red flags about a
little-noticed, radical green land grab program underway at the White House
called the “Great Outdoors Initiative.” Keep in mind my previous coverage of
Obama’s
War on
the West and
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s job destruction.
The War on the West is a war on property rights, a war on the economy, and a war
on the American way of life.
***
Have you heard of the
“Great Outdoors Initiative”? Chances are, you
haven’t. But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly
with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold
millions of acres of both public and private land. It’s another stealthy power
grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American
way of life.
In April, President Obama issued a memorandum outlining his
“21st
century strategy for America’s great outdoors.”
It was
addressed to the Interior Secretary, the
Agriculture Secretary, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the
chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The memo calls on the officials
to conduct “listening and learning sessions” with the public to “identify the
places that mean the most to Americans, and leverage the support of the Federal
Government” to “protect” outdoor spaces. Eighteen of 25 planned sessions have
already been held. But there’s much more to the agenda than simply “reconnecting
Americans to nature.”
The federal government, as the memo boasted, is the
nation’s “largest land manager.” It already owns
roughly one of every three acres in the United
States. This is apparently not enough. At a “listening session” in New Hampshire
last week, government bureaucrats trained their sights on millions of
private forest land throughout the New England
region. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack crusaded for “the need for additional
attention to the Land and Water Conservation Fund — and the need to promptly
support full funding of that fund.”
Property owners have every reason to be worried. The Land
and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is a pet project of green radicals, who want
the decades-old government slush fund for buying up private lands to be freed
from congressional appropriations oversight. It’s paid for primarily with
receipts from the government’s offshore oil and gas leases. Both Senate and
House Democrats have included
$900
million in full LWCF funding, not subject to congressional approval,
in their energy/BP oil spill legislative packages. The Democrats have also
included a provision in these packages that would require the federal government
to
take
over energy permitting in state waters, which
provoked an outcry from Texas state officials, who sent a letter of protest to
Capitol Hill last month:
“In light of federal failures, it is incomprehensible that the United States
Congress is entertaining proposals that expand federal authority over oil and
gas drilling in state water and lands long regulated by states… Given the track
record, putting the federal government in charge of energy production on state
land and waters not only breaks years of successful precedent and threatens the
10th Amendment to the United Sates Constitution, but it also undermines common
sense and threatens the environmental and economy security of our state’s
citizens.”
This power grab, masquerading as a feel-good, all-American
recreation program, comes on top of a separate, property-usurping initiative
exposed by GOP Rep. Robert Bishop and Sen. Jim DeMint earlier this spring.
According to an
internal, 21-page Obama administration memo, 17
energy-rich areas in 11 states have been targeted as potential federal
“monuments.” The lives of coyotes, deer and prairie dogs would be elevated above
states’ needs to generate jobs, tourism business and energy solutions.
Take my home state of Colorado. The Obama administration is
considering locking up some 380,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land and
private land in Colorado under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Vermillion Basin
and the Alpine Triangle would be shut off to mining, hunting, grazing, oil and
gas development and recreational activities. Alan Foutz, president of the
Colorado Farm Bureau, blasted the
administration’s meddling: “Deer and elk populations are thriving, and we in
Colorado don’t need help from the federal government in order to manage them
effectively.”
Indeed, the feds have enough trouble as it is managing the
vast amount of land they already control. As the Washington, D.C.-based
Americans for Limited Government group, which
defends private property rights, points out: “The (National Park Service) claims
it would need about $9.5 billion just to clear its backlog of the necessary
improvements and repairs. At a time when our existing national parks are
suffering, it doesn’t make sense for the federal government to grab new lands.”
The bureaucrats behind Obama’s “Great Outdoors Initiative”
plan on wrapping up their public comment solicitation by November 15. The
initiative’s
taxpayer-funded website has been dominated by
left-wing environmental activists proposing human population reduction, private
property confiscation, and gun bans, hunting bans and vehicle bans in national
parks. It’s time for private property owners to send their own loud, clear
message to the land-hungry feds:
Take a hike.