Posted on 04/08/2010 1:14:54 PM PDT by OR Patriot
Supervisors vote to reopen routes hit by BLM closure.
There already have been fights with Washington over health care, gun laws, the Tenth Amendment and other issues. Now a new perspective to America's rebellion against the power of the federal bureaucracy has been added with a vote by supervisors in one California county to reopen county roads that had been shut down by the Bureau of Land Management.
According to a report from the Blueribbon Coalition, which advocates for public use of public property in the region, the vote came yesterday at a meeting of the San Benito County board of supervisors.
By a 4-0 vote, the board ordered reopened about 25 miles of county roads that are within an area closed off to the public by the BLM in a 2008 decision.
Don Amador, western representative for the BlueRibbon Coalition, said the board "earned a place in the history books for taking a stand against a federal bureaucracy that has proposed a closure of historic proportions in their county."
He said the county officials made clear that they "take seriously their constitutional role as a champion of the people."
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Way to regain your constitutional rights of State Sovereignty!
We need to start campaigning for the return of federal lands to the states and counties.
The federal government doesn’t need to be in the park business. Thats a local function. Park lands, monument lands, forest lands, BLM lands, should all be handed over to the states along with whatever staff is employed maintaining them. Its up to the state, then, what they do with them.
If it was up to me, I would then privatize BLM lands outright.
Kudos to the county board, but the real interesting part of the story is about the State of Utah exercising eminent domain to kick the feds off public property over which the feds have unconstitutionally exerted control. The feds operate as if every piece of land belongs to the federal government and that the States and individuals only occupy the land with federal approval. The land belongs to the people or the respective States - not the feds.
Never thought about it, BUT YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!
States need to take their land back. It belongs to the people of the State, not the Feds.
You know this goes back to what kids are taught in schools today. Federal government big, federal government in charge. Nothing can be further from the intent of our founders.
Frankly I’m sick of it. My state may not be perfect but IT’S MY DAMN STATE and if I don’t like it, I can move to another one right? I think finally people have concluded the fed is out of control and we are beginning to see leadership who will say NO to the feds.
Failed to mention that I recently learned that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is supposed to be paying the State of Georgia for the National Forests in Georgia in lieu of the lost taxes.
And they never have.
I wonder if EVERY State with Federal Forests, Parks, etc, is supposed to be getting Federal Funds for their Federal property.
Could make for some interesting research.
How long do you think it'll take Obama's west-coast cells to locate a roundheeled Ninth Circus judge to slap down these county supervisors and read them the riot act, the way Leon Panetta did in 1966 or '67 when he was ordered by LBJ to integrate Louisiana schools?
What's good for the rednecks is good for the hicks.
Or as the centralizing, statist massifiers might taunt, "How do you like me now?" </song>
It would be interesting to see when the federal government got into the sticky-fingered habit of retaining title in large tracts of territory after the territory was incorporated in a new State.
What was federal land-ownership like before the Civil War: Did the feds retain control of, say, 80% of the land in Mississippi or Wisconsin after they joined the Union? When did they start doing that, and on what pretense? And more to the point, cui bono? The railroads', I'll bet.
A little scholarship would be helpful here.
Wonder what would happen if a lot of people just went in and squatted??? Kinda funny and exciting to think about, I suggest they would do nothing, as they do nothing at borders to keep illegals out, so I say go get your land.
In the Midwest, state parks are a zoo to cage and monitor the human animal.
“How long do you think it’ll take Obama’s west-coast cells to locate a roundheeled Ninth Circus judge to slap down these county supervisors and read them the riot act,”
Doesn’t matter. Start a thousand brushfires around the country and the fascist feds don’t have the manpower, money or smarts to police it all.
That’s why I urge patriots to take back their local governments. Local governments can pass ordinances, make rulings unfavorable to the feds and generally cause complete chaos to the fascist machine.
Note, the California Streets and Highways Code §§ 940-941.2 places the general supervision, management, and control of county roads and highways - including closing such roads and removing and preventing encroachment of such roads and highways in the jurisdiction of the County.
The Original Text Of The Mining Act of 1866 States: “The right-of-way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public purposes, is hereby granted.”
Many local roads were established long before the Forest Reserves (National Forests); the Taylor Grazing Act and FLPMA terminated the offer. The Congress and the agencies have generally acquiesced to State law in determinining what constitutes an acceptance of the federal offer to grant the right of way.
I have been involved in fighting these federal land issues on the local level for more than twenty years. After the First Sagebrush rebellion, there was the Federal Lands Conference (Jim Catron, Karen Budd -Falon, Fred Kelly Grant), then the Win Back The West (Dick Carver, Wayne Hage, Don Amador, Stewards of the Range.) Dick took a bulldozer and forcefully opened a road back in the Shovel Brigade days. Currently, Grant has a group of counties throughout the west that are communicating and woorking together to assert influence through “coordination.”
In earlier movements to assert local leverage over land management decisions, we were always confronted with federal statements that federal law pre-empted local law. Since then, there have been a variety of court cases confirming a local jurisdiction and role concerning these lands. Such cases include CALIFORNIA COASTAL COMM’N v. GRANITE ROCK CO., 480 U.S. 572 (1987); Fort Leavenworth R. Co. v. Lowe, 114 U.S. 525; Utah Power & Light Co. v. United States, 243 U.S. 389, 404; Omaechevarria v. Idaho, 246
U.S. 343; STATE OF COLORADO v. TOLL, 268 U.S. 228 (1925); Kelvey v. United States, 260 U.S. 353, 359; Robbins v. United States (C. C. A.) 284 F. 39. Recently, the State of California won a case asserting its rights under coordination in the federal Roadless designations.
This link leads to a copy of a resolution passed by our CA county in 2008 http://users.sisqtel.net/armstrng/coordination.htm It is a recitation of all the laws and regulations that have provisions in them concerning the County’s role in federal land management and other areas of joint jurisdiction. For instance, the Planning Rule applicable to the Forest Service, requires that they coordinate with County government to bring their plans into consitency with local ones.
Currently, the Obama administration is holding listening sessions to amend the federal land Planning Rule. We pretty much know they want to elminate the deference to elected County government currently provided in the law and reduce its input back to the same status as any other private party or special interest group. Another federal strategy is to coerce Counties into “Cooperating Agency” status which is a contract to fund full scientific participation in the Interdisciplinary Team when developing the NEPA document - prohibitively expensive. This effort is really joining the Counties together in their actions to assert local control.
Fred Kelly Grant gives workshops on how coordination works. See American Stewards of Liberty http://standingground.us/sg_sept_09/sg0908_standingground.html
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