I may fall in love with Paul, as I also agree that the Fed claims to control too much land. Recently, I saw that they have expanded the set aside of TR by ten times. They do a lousy job of managing it. However, I would reenact the Homestead law so the land goes to people, not states.
Yea, I notice that Rep. Paul is the only one talking about how much land the federal gov’t controls or “owns.” Nothing infuriates me more than seeing outfits like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, or the Nature Conservancy, buy up a ranch that has been productive for generations and give it to the idiots, morons, mouth-breathers and congenital liars who staff the BLM, USFS, Park Service, etc. These bureaucrats don’t know a thing about managing land, as evidenced by how much of it burns to a crisp under their watchful eyes.
The reason why these ranches are sold is because no one in the ranching family had any idea how much the ranch was worth — until the old man died and then some real estate type comes in and makes an offer that is over the moon. Then suddenly, the IRS is there in a flash, demanding estate taxes, which the next generation simply cannot afford to pay.
I’ll give you an example: The rule of thumb here in Nevada is that it takes about a 300-cow outfit (minimum) to support a family. That’ll clear about $30K most years as a cow-calf operation.
I’ve seen 300-cow ranches that had no real estate speculator attention go for between $1 to $2 million. That’s about that they’re worth if you’re actually ranching.
As soon as the city slicker real estate types come in, a ranch like that which might have some history, or be in a particularly nice location for hunting, etc — it is worth $20 million in the blink of an eye. No one in ranching can afford to buy a $20 mil outfit to run 300 head. No one.
So to prevent it from being broken up, they sell it to one of these “conservation outfits” (who are always there with a check and a smile) and these communists turn around and hand the land over to the Feds, who then run it into the ground.
A conspiracy of thugs and morons, that what this is. I don’t agree with many of Rep. Paul’s other statements, but our vaunted “private enterprise is better than government” GOP doesn’t say a single word about this travesty happening all over the west.