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Commentary - Sierra Times.com
Hate
CARA. Fear CARA.
By
John Lankford 08.13.01
Tell your Congressmembers you can't live with CARA. You will be right, for more reasons than any one person knows. By the time you finish this article, you will know more of them than almost anyone else, including active CARA opponents.
Suggestion: First read the article. Then go through again and hit the links, with smelling salts or paramedics nearby.
CARA is the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, House Bill HR 701. Its purpose, stated in its Title, is "To use royalties from Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas production to establish a fund to meet the outdoor conservation and recreation needs of the American people, and for other purposes."
More specifically, it proposes to divert for fifteen years, (unless renewed), $3.125 billion a year of those royalties from their normal flow into the federal Treasury, directing it instead into a Conservation And Reinvestment Act Fund. From there it is allocated to a number of federal agencies and programs, other governmental entities including states, localities, and Indian tribes.
Each recipient is authorized to spend its share for purposes generally described by the Act. With one exception intended to provide some protection to private owners whose properties the recipient entities covet, the money flows on with little or no further Congressional action or public scrutiny.
That alone is reason enough for The Competitive Enterprise Institute to oppose it. It is an abdication, an extraordinarily vast abdication, of Congress's Constitutional role of spending citizens' money for specified public purposes and facing whatever interrogation and controversy might arise in the process.
At least since Cincinnati Soap Company v. U.S., 301 U.S. 308 (1937) , the US Supreme Court has maintained that if Congress chooses to delegate its duty to functionaries not directly accountable to voters, nobody has standing to make a Constitutional fuss about it. As a result, citizens who believe Congress should debate, deliberate, and appropriate, all under the gaze of such citizens as care to concern themselves, have to persuade their Congressmembers not to pass such schemes as CARA.
To make matters worse, even CARA's supporters acknowledge many of the recipient agencies have a recent history of horrid squandering and abuses of money entrusted to them. Advocating CARA, its prime co-sponsor Rep. Don Young, (R-Alaska) acknowledged many of those abuses in a June, 2000 speech to the Outdoor Writers' Association of America.
Young has found it necessary to sponsor the Pittman-Robertson Reform Act to address waste and misspending by one intended recipient, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its in-turn recipient state analogs. The parallel bills are Senate Bill 2609 and House of Representatives Bill 3671. Although committee hearings have been held on the reforms, their text has not been made available to the Library of Congress, according to the Library's "Thomas" Internet service.
The National Rifle Association has announced support of CARA, deploring the abuses and deciding to trust the proposed reforms.
G. Ray Arnett, former Executive Vice-president of the NRA, could not disagree more. Arnett, also President of the National Wildlife Federation and a NWF board member for 18 years, wrote this to the House Resources Committee considering CARA: "Like pouring gasoline into an inferno, CARA will pour a guaranteed annual fire hose of cash into a broken system. CARA is bad legislation with serious flaws that can not be made acceptable with minor amendments here and there. At best, this rearranging of the Titanic's deck chairs, so to speak, may result in outwardly making a rotten apple appear to be palatable, but the apple is still rotten."
Rotten, indeed, in ways ranging from misapplications of fund noted by Rep. Young and the NRA to land-grabbing onslaughts to homicide.
Scorched Earth
Such tales of federal land grabbing abound, happening one after another after another after another. And while grabbing more and more land, steadily nudging longtime farmers and settlers away, the agencies have proven miserable stewards of their winnings, derelict curators of the burgeoning public trust. When in 2000 the Clinton Administration raided Forest Service funds to pay for legally questionable buys of large tracts as national monuments, the Forest Service responded, as reported by United Press International in August, 2000, by laying off 45% of its field firefighter force, hiring a few more upper-rank paper pushers with the savings, and watching the West burn, even as government environmentalists killed bull trout and forest alike by restricting firefighting techniques.
Allison Freeman, environmental policy analyst at Competitive Enterprise Institute, says, “Four of every ten acres in the United States are already owned by federal, state, county or local governments,” adding, “Most of this land is grossly mismanaged, including sixty percent of the national forests that are considered to be in a ‘very unhealthy’ condition. Transferring well-managed private lands into the hands of federal bureaucrats is the height of irresponsibility.”
General Accounting Office audits and other reviews of federal agency landholding policies have found woeful derelictions, as Young's speech and NRA's Susan Lamson's testimony in support of CARA noted.
On August 6, 2001 Fox News's Kelly Beaucar reported, "Earlier this year the report by the Department of Interior's Inspector General (IG) reported $13 billion in backlogged maintenance costs as of September 1999. The report included problems such as crumbling buildings on historic Ellis Island, dangerous park buildings in Montana, and out-of-control forest fires on federal parkland." Property rights activists charge CARA will force private landowners off their lands. In "When the Eagles Return," the latest of many of her columns deploring Green-nappers' and like-thinking government functionaries' assaults on the American West, Diane Alden explores the consistency of the Klamath Falls incident with years of landowner torment.
The American Land Rights Association taunts CARA as the "Confiscation and Relocation Act", and headlines one recent article, "Like the Klamath? You'll love CARA."
The bill's
supporters maintain they have installed adequate safeguards for landowners.
Under Section 205, Federal land acquisitions from private owners by the
Agriculture and Interior Departments for purposes of the Land and Water
Conservation Act will have to be specifically approved by Congress. The
presentation to Congress requires the Departments' Secretaries first to:
"(i) seek to consolidate Federal landholdings in States with checkerboard
Federal land ownership patterns;
"(ii) consider the use of equal value land exchanges, where feasible and
suitable, as an alternative means of land acquisition;
"(iii) consider the use of permanent conservation easements, where feasible
and suitable, as an alternative means of acquisition;
"(iv) identify those properties that are proposed to be acquired from
willing sellers and specify any for which adverse condemnation is requested;
and
"(v) establish priorities based on such factors as important or special
resource attributes, threats to resource integrity, timely availability,
owner hardship, cost escalation, public recreation use values, and similar
considerations."
Section 10 acknowledges the Constitutional requirement for fair compensation for property taken by eminent domain, and somewhat equivocally adds that "Federal agencies, using funds appropriated by this Act, may not apply any regulation on any lands or water until the lands or water, or an interest therein, is acquired, unless authorized to do so by another Act of Congress."
To these and other safeguards, critics reprise the comment national founder Patrick Henry made when asked why he opposed replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution: "I smell a rat."
Smallholders' advocates laud private ownership and deplore further socialization of the land, however benign. Their and other property rights advocates' requests for public hearings around the country were not granted. Over their opposition, authority for compulsory takings remained in the Act. The restraints on those do not clearly apply to the states, which receive a major portion of the money. And there were rules before, and agencies simply violated them.
Finally, the Environmental Protection Act has proved a trump card for proponents of what Alden has called "rural cleansing", steadily moving private holders away by various assaults along very broad regulatory, revenue, ecological, and economic fronts. When Green activists do not find accord with government functionaries at any level, they simply sue, using donated money and often government grants to exhaust and demolish private opponents.
Taxpayer Woes
The National Taxpayers Union opposes CARA due to the government costs expanded government land ownership and maintenance and program administration will propose.
Others have pointed out the nearly $47 billion CARA will cost would otherwise be deposited in the general fund. In 2000, the Act was deferred in budget reconciliation negotiations in Congress, and at that time Congress was pondering a considerable federal surplus. Also, CARA calls on states to provide matching funds in order to receive land acquisition disbursements, and many state governments would do so by calling for state and local tax increases.
This year, much of the surplus has been committed to a tax cut aimed at stimulating an economy gone flat. At this time, however, signs of the stimulus's taking effect remain faint or entirely lacking. Just prior to government's August break, at Administration insistence, Congress eschewed a Farm Aid Bill version that would have spent extra money on many ecological and conservation measures addressed by CARA.
It would seem that if the country could not afford $2 billion above the budget in early August, Congress, in three vacation weeks, can hardly have found $3.125 billion for next year and 14 subsequent years for purposes that were judged un-fundably low-priority in 2000. Consistently, although the Bush administration backs CARA, doing so after calling Farm Aid extras wasteful violations of the budget agreement would be ludicrous.
To those tax-conscious objections might be added more: The infusion of artificially-aggregated money into any land market drives the land's price up, just as occurs when wealthy people develop a taste for country estates. Farmers hoping to acquire tracts or expand what they have must compete against spare money to do so. When the competitor's purse is partly filled by the farmers' own money, (the Fund being provisioned by rents and royalties belonging to all citizens), they are forced to subsidize their buying competitors. Next, the very fact of land being acquired long-term or permanently and removed from the market aggravates scarcity of buyable acreage, again forcing land prices up to the detriment of those who need it most and would do most with it. The tax impact strikes triply. Should a private landowner need or want to sell acreage, artificial value appreciation joins with general inflation to generate a higher nominal return over original purchase price, thus a higher capital gain tax. But while the owner holds the land, its artificially inflated value inflicts greater property, or ad valorem, taxes in most states and localities. Finally, when the owner dies, inheritances by families or favorites can be expected to be burdened by state and federal death taxes much higher than the constant-dollar, stable-market land values would generate.
A scheme most likely to squeeze private landowners from so many directions would inevitably depress economic growth, exerting an influence precisely opposite to that of the tax cut stimulus the Bush Administration made its top-priority legislative goal.
Why They Do Love It So
Kelly Beaucar's August 6 Foxnews article quotes Rep. Young thusly:"We had an agreement with the American people … to put money into the land and conservation fund and we have not done that – we have taken and spent the money for other purposes. What we'd like to do is expand that program to go beyond the land and conservation fund and into historical preservation, into urban parks, into wildlife rehabilitation."
In Insight Magazine in 1999, Frontiers of Freedom Chairman Malcolm Wallop, a former Senator from Wyoming, and FoF Myron Ebell charged Young, a former fiscal conservative, had changed directions dramatically to support CARA.
R.J. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, after listing public land-taking abuses, wrote this: "(Rep.) Don Young knows that in spades. He fought that sort of taking of private lands by the National Park Service and the National Wildlife Refuge system for much of the last quarter century. He knows precisely that is how the game is played. So does (cosponsor Rep.) Jim Hansen (R-Utah).
"But now, since this vast pork scam is to be their "legacy," they cover it up and deny it." There is something in CARA for a broad range of members of the political class. Money is spread far and wide, at federal, state, and local levels, for 15 years. In CEI's August 2001 Update, Allison Freeman tracks the porkflow as skillfully and readably as anyone in Son of CARA
Susan R. Lamson, NRA's Director of Conservation, Wildlife and Natural Resources Institute for Legislative Action, specified that NRA supports CARA because CARA's Title III adds funds to the Wildlife Restoration Act. Its fund is partially filled by hunters buying ammunition, firearms, and archery equipment, paying an excise tax. Recreational areas supported by that act, also known as Pittman-Robertson, are supposed to include public shooting ranges. There is a shortage of ranges, Lamson said, and NRA apparently expects more money to mean not only game, but also more ranges: Something for everyone.
They Get the Assets, We Get the Business
They all get theirs. That is, they get ours, because that aggregate almost- $47 billion is our money. With it, they may get first our rights to live on and enjoy open land, and then, at bargain prices, the land itself. It cannot be forgotten that in the hands of the Green-nappers, the Environmental Protectection Act is trumps. Hunters cannot hunt abundant species if their stamping and shooting would annoy ones deemed endangered. Shooting ranges would no doubt be too noisy, and possibly present various vermin allegedly found nowhere else on Earth from taking their pleasure and maintaining their numbers.
The elimination of campers from the campgrounds, visitors from the public parks, and inhabitants from the countryside, leaving it to be ranged only by the animal, the accredited, and the anointed, is the precise objective of Green-nappers from local Eco clubs through the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, et al, clear to whatever gathers around the United Nations' Agenda 21, the one-world design for planetary greening.
Even more ominous, if that were possible, is this. Urban, suburban, and exurban living implicitly indoctrinate denizens of such areas with lessons of dependency. Life is hurried, abundant, and full of variety, but a person has almost no control over getting what is needed and wanted. Someone brings it, and one arranges to pay. One depends on the bringing.
Another lesson of high population concentration is obedience to a large number of rules one hardly notices, but has little to do with making. People living at close quarters have no elbow room, and all must coordinate their actions closely to reduce friction.
Self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and self-confidence are not the lessons of the metropolis. They are the lessons of the field and forest People living in rural areas often have to plan ahead, make do, or do without. Self-discipline comes with the territory. Neither the police nor the shopping malls are right around the corner.
No person who bears arms lawfully or becomes owner of a significant piece of the land does so without soon realizing the condition is more obligation than amenity. But those who find the obligations, and meeting them, agreeable and fulfilling.
The lessons taught by life in the countryside boil down to hardy individualism and voluntary, not coerced or necessarily abided, cooperation -- neighborliness.
These are the very qualities social engineers find troublesome in their intended livestock. And that is the ultimate terror of CARA and like-minded legislation. Proponents are not all would-be enslavers: Many are well-intentioned people who believe it is good for us to hand over what we have, take what is given in return, and do as we are told. Many others do believe in liberty, but they believe it can withstand just one more run of the pork wagon, in the same way problem drinkers who deny they have problems always believe they can handle just one more drink or few. But their companions are Platonists keen to reverse the Enlightenment, as recommended by Pierre Manent in The City of Man, or even reverse civilization -- for us -- as advocated by Jeremy Rifkin in Algeny. And they are perfectly serious.
The author who makes the best contribution to our understanding of CARA and all confiscate-and-redistribute schemes is George Orwell. He understood that, while human living conditions are important, even more important is maintenance of the habits and notions of personal identity, integrity, and improvement. And he understood that advocates of such as CARA, knowingly or unwittingly, prescribe a course that would not only violate the remaining tatters of the United States Constitution, but erode and eventually eliminate the sorts of minds that could conceive and comprehend it.
How to avoid this one more significant tightening of the shackles, in the face of all of the powers avid to bring it about?
Use what stopped personal information disclosure by medical care providers and by banks. Use what has stalled taxation of the Internet. Use what has balked gun confiscators.
Pick your favorite reasons to hate and fear CARA from the foregoing or your own self-reliant research. Then, by paper mail, telegram, telefacsimile, electronic mail, or face-to-face communication, send messages.
Send many messages.
So far the government has shown itself incapable of doing a good job of protecting and improving the land it now has. And now they want to aquire more land to neglect and abandon? This doesn't make any more sense than most of the rest of the decisions made by a Congress that is hell bent on spending us into prosperity.
If anything, we need a reverse CARA that would be disposing of land the Federal government is not taking care of. Abandoning the land to wilderness and forest fires is NOT good stewardship of our lands. Our forefathers had more vision than this. We should have the same vision for cleaning up our public lands and making use of them instead of abandoning them.
I agree with the notion of turning over federally owned land to the states. Teddy R. probably thought he was doing a visionary thing when he proclaimed the first National Parks into existence. Personally, I believe he would be appalled at the notion that the US Government now "owns" 42% of all the land within the USA.
You stated,
"...the US Government now "owns" 42% of all the land within the USA."
Here is Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution which states the only way the U.S. can "own" land within the boundries of a state.
"To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings:"
So as you can see, our federal government just cannot decide to purchase land within the boundries of a sovereign state without the consent of that state.
The blame for our federal government owning 42% of all land within the USA is the fault of the governed in each state.
The citizens of each sovereign state have "sold" their land to our federal government in a constitutionaly correct manner, which was obviously a foolish thing to do.
Excellent work once again MM.
Bump for later reading/ranting.
There was no selling of land by the states . The feds assert ownership. Do a search on lfederal land ownership and you will quickly see that the USSC has repeatedly ruled that the federal government can own land outside of the narrow definition you cited from the Constitution. I do not agree with it but that is the state of things for now.
"To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings:"
Where have you seen a state being compensated for the "purchase" of land, within the state? All actions I have seen, to date, have been aimed at private owners and the states haven't said squat about it. Where are the "needful buildings"? The Fed's are limited pretty much to forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other needful buildings, which I would presume to mean Post Offices and Court Houses as these are enumerated functions of the Fed's.
The few USSC cases that I have read about federal ownership and jurisdiction within sovereign state boundries, have never question the constitutional ability for the our federal government to "own land."
In all cases, the land which was owned or in which our federal government exerted jurisdiction over, was purchased, obtained, whatever, following the prescribed constitutional procedure.
If your state has not followed that procedure of selling a sovereign states' property to our federal government, I suggest you file an immediate federal lawsuit to recover your state's title over such property.
You wrote,
"All actions I have seen, to date, have been aimed at private owners and the states haven't said squat about it."
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution:
"...and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;"
In most cases, as you probably know, the federal land grabs aimed at private owners have been related to Enviromental Protection and Endangered Species acts.
These federal laws are laws enacted under the jurisdiction of "all treaties made." Otherwise, our federal government would have no jurisdiction within a sovereign states boundaries.
That is why it is so imperative that we vehemently fight ratification of treaties by the U.S. Senate, for instance Kyoto Accords, UN gun control initiatives, etc., because that is the mechanism the socialist's and communist's in the U.S. use to exert jurisdiction over sovereign citizen's property and rights.
BTTT
Read these:
TESTIMONY of SUSAN R. LAMSON of NRA-ILA, Conservation, Wildlife, and Natural Resources re: CARA
And...
Wow! I didn't know that the NRA supported this garbage. They will be getting a phone call tomorrow from me. Thanks for the other two links as well.
You are most welcome.
NO-ONE who claims to support individual liberties should be agreeing to this trash!
Thank you for posting this. It is very important everyone contact their congressional representatives to urge them to vote no on CARA.
On a related issue, would someone be interested in starting a petition against CARA? I have been trying to write one myself, but I admit I'm not very good at this kind of thing. It would be great to get one going and submit it to congress before the vote.
Thanx for posting this Movemout. I find it especially troubling that the NRA is supporting this. I intend to call them tomorrow, with hubbies membership number in my hand.
Bump for later read.
BTTT
BTTT
VERY good article, Movemout!
Thanks, Granny, for the bump.
It all ties together - the EPA, the ESA and CARA.
The more we feed the monster, the more likely it becomes that it will eat US one day.
We NEED a petition against CARA, just like we needed one against the ESA and Klamath Falls.
The more I study this, the more I'm convinced it is a done deal. A really bad deal. You are correct in tying EPA and ESA. I can't believe they are pulling this heist in broad daylight with alarm bells jangling loudly and nobody seems to mind.
I've now read this article twice, and it was scarier the second time.
Just returned from a long weekend to this EXCELLENT post! Bookmarked and well appreciated. We MUST do all in our power to prevent this bill from passing in the House.
Let's start with the NRA!!!!
We MUST do all in our power to prevent this bill from passing in the House.
Let's start with the NRA!!!!
I agree!
BTW, indexing this to landgrab....
Also BTW, this post is linked to a thread I started here:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
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