So wildlife preserves, National Parks, conservation areas, etc. should all be thrown open to cattlemen (who don't want to pay for state grazing fees aka Bundy), oil companies, logging companies and those other shining examples of land conservation to exploit as they will? If not for the constraints imposed by the feds, they would have used all that PUBLIC land up already.
So the sheriff is at fault? The Bundys were going to pay the sheriff their federal grazing fees? The Bundys weren't grazing their cattle on federal land? Armed militants weren't threatening federal and local law enforcement? What part did I miss by not looking at wnd or breitbart?
Where do you live, beebobby? Thus far you are demonstrating a gross lack of knowledge regarding the issues of "public lands" in the Western US or how promises from the feds have been broken, lifestyles of those who settled this land are being systematically destroyed, and important natural resources are being locked up from public use making us more dependent on foreign oil and other essential minerals.
67.9% of the total area of my State of Utah is controlled by the federal government. Another 7.3% by State government. 75% of my State is in government hands.
Go east of the Colorado / Kansas State line and you can't find a State with more than 14% federal ownership, with the vast majority having no more than 10%. Have New York State, Massachusetts, and West Virginia "used all that PUBLIC land up already"??? Or have private property owners generally been good stewards of the land?
Under the "equal footing" doctrine, Utah and other Western States ought to be treated as fully equal members of the Union. We cannot be equal when the federal government presumes to maintain perpetual ownership and control of the majority of the land mass of our States. This is land on which property taxes are not paid. (PILTs are not equal what would be charged private property owners, much less what the taxable value of the land would if responsibly developed.) Western States are treated as colonial areas. The last time a US President had fun with a pen, 1.8
MILLION acres was turned into a natural monument. That is a land area larger than all of Rhode Island or Delaware. This just happened to lock up one of the largest low-sulfur coal deposits in the entire world. There is not a State east of the Mississippi River that could fund their budgets a single year if they and their citizens lost control of over half of the land in their State.
I do not support armed seizure of federal assets. But don't think for one moment that the feds haven't been seizing massive amounts of land here in the West on top of the unimaginable amount of land they have never ceded to the States after we were admitted to the union.
Your posts on this topic are like those who compare the founding fathers of our nation to terrorists who are unhappy because they cannot wipe Israel off the face of the earth and eradicate the Jewish people. One doesn't have to agree with how the Bundys have handled everything to realize they have some valid complaints.
How many private ranchers in South-Eastern Nevada have been put out of business the last 50 years by arbitrary and capricious BLM policies? How many in Oregon? These are typically family operations, real people, living peaceful lives, until federal land policies and insane "environmental" regulations force them out of business, off their land, and out of their lifestyle. This despite federal promises that federal ownership of land was being continued beyond Statehood only so the feds could assure "multi-use" as different land use rights (lumber rights, mineral rights, grazing rights, water rights) were made available to different entities to maximize use of the resources. Only somewhere in the last 50 or so years, federal land policies have changed to minimize use. We watch as beetle infestations destroy entire forests and create conditions for massive wildfires due to federal land use that prevents proper timber management. We endure high energy costs and low polluting coal and even lower polluting natural gas reserves are kept locked up. Motorized access and ranching are shut out, leaving only the granola-head backpackers able to even visit the land, and much of that land too vast to even legally visit as one can't carry sufficient water to walk between the rare watering-hole.
You demonstrate absolute city slicker, liberal, tree-hugger bias. My ancestors were among the first white settlers to ever come to Utah. For 6 generations their posterity have lived here, doing our level best to pass on the goodness to our large number of children. We were practicing "sustainable" industry before anyone had a word for it. Yes, honest mistakes were made along the way and some corrections have been required. That is every bit as true of federal land managers as it is of private owners. (See the massive Yellowstone fires of 1988.) But there has never been any desire to rape or pillage the land. We intend to be here for another 100 generations.
Charles