“Yep, not to mention if the states started to produce their own energy resources (Utah has a TON), they could create possibly a surplus, or at least get us off of foreign produced energy, thereby hindering the enemies who take our money and use it to build weapons against us.”
Its more then just the resources and money.
the United States Federal government also assert power over our States and the people in them to apply environmental and otherwise laws on the sole basis that our behavior is somehow tangentially effecting land they own and have asserted jurisdiction over.
In other-word their mere ownership of the land in our state has given them(in the eyes of their own self-appointed courts) undue and unfair power over our states that goes far and beyond denying us access to most of our own State!
I don’t think most Eastern really understand the gravity of the Federal land ownership situation in the west simply because almost all of their states are not owned by the Federal Government and so they don’t live with theses huge problems like we do.
The United States Federal Government was never suppose to permanently own any kind of non-ceded land within any state of the United States.
Indeed when they bought the land the deal was they were suppose to sell this land off and that was mostly working slowly but steadily up until the 1970’s and the end of the Homestead act.
Now the Federal Government not only hordes 40 to 84.5%(such as in Nevada) of the land in our States, they are actually thou eminent domain taking more and more of it!
Here is a map of Federal land % by State in the U.S.:
http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/map-owns_the_west.jpg
Yes, this is a gigantic problem for western stater!
Bingo! I was born and raised in Nevada, and now live in Utah. Nevada has the Largest portion owned by the FedGov (84.5), and Utah the second largest amount (57.4), so I understand completely. No one back east seems to understand this, and it is an important issue.
You are absolutely correct, the EPA and other agencies further dictate to states what they will and will not do with the land, and they are claiming more and more territory. I suspect it will be given to foreign governments, ala “National Parks nor U.N.” baloney. In Utah, Newly Appointed Gov Herbert (Took Huntsman’s seat when he became an ambassador or whatever he is now) threatened eminent domain on some federally owned lands. I don’t like Herbert, but that move was gutsy. He’s not my favorite candidate, and there’s a special election for his seat this year. I haven’t heard much on who his competition is, but he claims to want to limit/cut government spending on the same fliers where he says that he’ll oppose any cuts to education spending (a hot topic here, to be sure).
For all his bravado, I hope he’ll be kept on track. Utah, in general, seems to be getting serious (not as much as Montana and Oklahoma), but there’s major issues that divide people here, so who knows how we’ll turn out. We need a strong Governor. Huntsman wwas horrible, and Herbert doesn’t seem all that great to me either. In days passed an (R) would get you elected here, but now it’s starting to get murky.
