Privitization of BLM Land

[DrJean]

Who is "they"?
Why the fears?
The previous plans were taking all the lands away from the citizens and refusing to keep agreements like allowing those they took it from to let their cattle graze on it.
Now we have fears of someone who wants citizens to run their own country doing what?

Breathe folks. We have a vote, we have a voice. If we use our voice then perhaps for once our lawmakers will LISTEN to us and hear what this majority needs and values?

Is there someone, an organization that advocates for van dwellers--all van dwellers without charging us bigly?

 

[Gigi]

And then there is Canada and Mexico...

 

[wayne49]

The Guardian is a UK based, slanted politically, news media organization.

Many Brits call it the "Grundian" and take its articles with a grain of salt.

Regardless of political slant, they are marketing fear. Everyone is selling fear.

Anxious consumers spend more than complacent ones.

Boogeymen are everywhere. Under your bed, in your fridge, on your toothbrush.

See or read "something", check "something" out intellectually, before reacting emotionally.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

The Guardian is a UK based, slanted politically, news media organization.

Frankly, it's unclear to me why a British publication is even covering an American issue like this.  How many Brit readers would even give a damn, one way or the other?

There's got to be an agenda of some kind at work here.

 

[VanKitten]

It's exactly what the GOP has promised they would do.

Just like repeal the ACA. Now people are shocked that they will move forward and do exactly what they promised?

When will people stop voting against their own self-interest?

 

[SVan]

It's exactly what the GOP has promised they would do.

Just like repeal the ACA.   Now people are shocked that they will move forward and do exactly what they promised?  

When will people stop voting against their own self-interest?

Yes, it's written in the GOP platform and has been, in one form or another, since at least the 1990s. 

But the recent push is a bit more disturbing as it has the concerted efforts of organizations like Americans for Prosperity (Koch Brothers, etc.) funding land privatizing organizations like the American Lands Council. These are powerful and strategically sophisticated efforts. Short of directly privatizing federal land, the other scheme is to push feds to give land back to states who will then sell it to private industry (very cheaply) or allow it to be exploited by developers and extraction industries who, essentially, have more control of state/local government which can keep any regulatory agencies pro-industry. Local control is easier to corrupt than federal. It's simply about making it easier and cheaper for those who want to develop and extract from these public lands. 

There are plenty of reasons to complain about federal regulation of western land, but people seem only to see their personal inconveniences and not the dangers and long history of environmental degradation and land spoiling at the hands of private enterprise. If nothing else, you'd think the fiscally conservative would be troubled by the fact that we give away the use of public land at a such cheap prices. At least get the most money you can for the public's asset. And perhaps consider the cost of cleaning up the mess unregulated industry always seems to leave when it's taken all it wants from the land. 

The article posted by the OP is pretty lazy journalism, but some google searching using keywords of anything I've mentioned or mentioned in the article will get you started on more concrete truths. It is difficult to get good investigative journalism on this (and other subjects) because the details require serious time and energy to uncover and people want to get everything free on the internet. Try subscribing to a magazine (or three) that pays people to look hard at things that are not simple, especially where well-financed forces are engaged in both overt and covert forms of influencing public policy.

A few links to short pieces with relevant info-

https://psmag.com/an-inside-look-at-utahs-land-grab-legal-scheme-cdad44963ef7#.5c4cfxw7k

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-bundys-occupy-oregon

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/opinion/the-land-grab-out-west.html?_r=0

 

[DrJean]

Hmmm... can we group together and buy our own lot of it?

 

[bullfrog]

In Utah you can rent school lands reasonably if you can figure out how. In Kane county you must have 40 acres in order to meet zoning laws for a structure. I know of a person who has 40 acres with a horse coral and hay shed no utilities, and no possibility of ever getting them, or water. 225 miles from Walmart. 10 miles from small food store/gas station. 41 years left on his lease, 99 years originally, $1200 a year. I can camp on BLM land within site of it for free. Why worry when you can play for free!

 

[Raven+Squid]

The privatized portions would most likely not be free and probably not accessible.

 

[bullfrog]

Government, private citizens, all the tech can't keep people from crossing the border which is pretty well established do you really think they can manage let alone prevent people from camping on waste lands they own or used to own?

 

[DrJean]

I really don't fear much negative effects unless it comes from politicians.

From what I think, it will take quite a while to change any thing massively---just look at how long "all sides" of politicians have tried to re-manage BLM lands. To me, the current admin is against government taking over all the American citizens' land and rights. Doesn't sound like someone who will take and give it to the highest bidder to me...

I know previous politicians who bought into the globalism and gave away our sovereign rights to own property in the future...and yet the next president countered that and renegged on the agreement.

No reason to be worried over something that hasn't even begun to be developed with the new day eh?

Take care for today... eat, sleep, play, work if you must and then do the same for tomorrow.

 

[bigsallysmom]

The bad guys don't need to get their hands on all. They just buy enough and then convince their legislatures to agree to close off roads that pass through these properties. Or they will lease the subsurface rights then block it off in the name of safety.
New Mexico couldn't survive without these lands because it brings tourists and tourism is all the state has going for it.

 

[waldenbound]

If they did try to privatize BLM lands, there would be so many groups lining up to fight it. Sierra Club, Audubon Society, The National Park Foundation, the entire tourism industry. I'd like to see some Congressman is to tell Moab Utah their town is being wiped off of the map because people can't camp or use the roads. Then there's REI, The North Face, Patagonia, anybody who's anybody in the outdoor industry will fight this.
When the last big government shutdown happened in fall of 2013, they closed the National Parks for a few weeks and the public threw a fit. You don't mess with America's National Parks, the public loves the National Parks and won't stand for it.

 

[Goshawk]

It's just not going to happen. Enforcement would cost more than the natural resources gained from ownership. Hell its hard enough for many local cops to deal with local county homeless. It's not going to happen on BLM lands.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bigsallysmom]

There's more than just national parks and blm land to be concerned about. In NM there are national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, monuments, wilderness areas and lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
In the Sacramento Mountains there is only one place you can stay for free that has moving water. Bluff Springs. The rest is on private property.

Those of us who care about the Sac Mts points out that the state cannot afford to pay for putting out a major fire. That doesn't matter to the folks who want it. Because they want to sell it to people willing to gamble that the federal government will come in anyhow.

Until last year, the county with the majority of the Lincoln National Forest was controlled by three ultra conservative commissioners who were elected by similar ilk. They have spent a million taxpayer dollars in the last 20 years fighting the forest for a tiny group of ranchers who think because they have had the cattle leases for decades that they now own the place. The same commission has paid taxpayer money to the american land council controlled by the koch brothers. These ranchers believe that when the federal government gives the land to the state that the state will sell the land to them. Yeah right. Nitwits. Only in the last couple of years did people show up to the commissioners meeting to hold their feet to the fire. it will still be years before voters can vote them out.

Maybe some of you are thinking that because blm is ugly, desert land that it's not worth anything. It's worth a lot. Oil, gas, water, minerals. On top, own enough acreage and you can put a power plant on it or become the trash dump for a big city. Sink radioactive materials under.

The people trying to take away the land love complacency. It's allowed them to get as far as they have.

 

[TrainChaser]

When I read an article that starts with 'Republicans' or 'Democrats' in the first sentence, my BS meter goes on full alert.

Doing a little research, I see that the BLM controls a little more than 245 million acres of land, and the Forest Service has about 1,261 million acres = 1,506,000,000 (1.5 billion) acres.

If Congress is going to sell off 640 million acres of land = 1 million square miles of land; in one piece, that would be an area equal to just over 1.5 ALASKAS, OR SIX CALIFORNIAS. Doesn't that seem a bit much to you?

If you're afraid of this, your state has two senators and somewhere between 1 and 53 members in the House. So why don't you contact yours and ask them two simple questions: 1) Is this true? and 2) How would they vote?

And remember what H.L. Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless serices of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

How much of this have you seen since the election this past November?

 

[slynne]

Hmmm...   can we group together and buy our own lot of it?

I would imagine so and probably if this happens, that will be the best way to keep the lifestyle going. Form a club and buy land for everyone to camp on for free.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

I would imagine so and probably if this happens, that will be the best way to keep the lifestyle going. Form a club and buy land for everyone to camp on for free.

This only makes sense if your goal is to live as cheap as possible.  Personally, I'm doing this so I can travel and see the country.  I don't want to sit on the same boring piece of land all the time.

 

[slynne]

Yeah. I don't want to sit on the same boring piece of land all of the time either. Good point. But a club could buy more than one piece of land. One thing that would work in the favor of such an organization is that private land is already pretty cheap in the states with lots of BLM land and it would get even cheaper if it were privatized and sold. Van dwellers don't seem to need too much land to camp on. It isn't a purpose like grazing that requires hundreds of acres.

I know that we aren't supposed to talk politics here but I am hoping that my activism in this area will pay off and that the land won't be sold so we can keep the status quo. But this is such an important dream for me that I want to make sure it will be available to me in the event that I fail.

 

[Crow]

When I read an article that starts with 'Republicans' or 'Democrats' in the first sentence, my BS meter goes on full alert.  

Doing a little research, I see that the BLM controls a little more than 245 million acres of land, and the Forest Service has about 1,261 million acres = 1,506,000,000 (1.5 billion) acres.

Yeah, this article is very misleading.   The 640 million acres that it mentions is the grand total of ALL federal land.  I'm pretty sure they're not going to sell the Grand Canyon to Exxon.

Don't know where you got the 1,261 million number, the number I found  was 500 million but regardless, only 193 million acres of what ithe Forest Service manages is federally owned.

Of the 640 million acres, about 193 million is Forest Service,   247 million is BLM land (surface acres that is,  BLM also manages the mineral rights for 700 million acres).  The rest of the 640 is Fish and Wildlife, National Parks, and military.

Nonetheless, we the people do need to jealously guard our access to public lands.  It does indeed have unimaginable value and greedy little minds are always scheming for ways to get greedy little fingers in it.