Posted on 02/19/2016 1:04:30 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz promised Nevada voters he will transfer control of federally-held lands back to the states if he's elected.
"If you trust me with your vote," Cruz says in a new ad revealed Thursday. "I will fight day and night to return full control of Nevada's lands to its rightful owners, its citizens." Cruz criticizes fellow GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump for his reluctance to champion state control of federal land.
The ad begins by lamenting the fact that the federal government currently controls 85 percent of the land in Nevada, including the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on the Colorado River, Great Basin National Park, the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and Basin and Range National Monument.
Conservationists have criticized such transfer proposals in the past, calling them financially irresponsible and terrible for the environment.
"I can't help but think that if Theodore Roosevelt could see the current scam being peddled to American sportsmen he'd be fighting mad," wrote Field & Stream editorial director Anthony Licata last year.
He added: "Simply put, state treasuries cannot afford to manage these lands...These game-rich areas that currently belong to all of us will be developed or sold to large corporations, degrading critical habitat and locking out millions of sportsmen."
Such criticisms are unfounded, proponents of state control of land say, because the expense would not be more than that borne by the federal government.
Chris Edwards, director of federal and state tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Cruz's views regarding state ownership of public land is notable. There's no reason to believe state governments can't more efficiently control their own land, he told TheDCNF.
"To say that state governments could not afford to manage federal lands is nonsense. Indeed, state governments generally manage their own grazing, timber, and recreational lands to earn a positive net return for taxpayers," Edwards said.
He added: "By contrast, federal land is so poorly managed it loses money for taxpayers. So transferring land from the federal to state governments would be a win-win as land would be better managed and taxpayers would gain."
It's just as expensive for the federal government to use the National Park Service to wrangle more land under federal control, press secretary for House Committee on Natural Resources Elise Daniel said Friday.
"The Park Service is falling behind about $300 million annually on deferred maintenance and the total backlog among all land-management agencies is around $20 billion - yet the Obama Administration keeps trying to acquire more land," Daniel told TheDCNF's Andrew Follett.
Most of the candidates jockeying for the GOP presidential nomination share Cruz's sentiments.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign is promoting an ad promising Kasich will transfer land management back to Nevada from Washington, D.C., and assures Nevada's conservative voters that "John Kasich says this land should be your land."
In January, as a militia was holding up a wildlife facility in Oregon for land management purposes, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio echoed Cruz and Kasich’s sentiments during an interview with the Des Moines Register's editorial board.
"I most certainly believe that the federal government controls far too much land in the Western parts of the United States especially," he said. "The state of Nevada is an example - it's almost entirely owned by the federal government. And it goes well beyond the legitimate need of land ownership for defense purposes, for example."
The White House classified three new national monuments earlier this month, all of which are located in California's desert.
The designations of the Mojave Trails National Monument, Sand to Snow National Monument and Castle Mountains National Monument, according to the White House website, appropriate nearly 1.8 million acres of desert sand underneath the yoke of federal rule.
At least his position is better than Trump’s who doesn’t think the feds should even hand back land to the states.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/donald-trump-takes-on-federal-land-control/article/2579978
Oct 2015:Control of federal lands emerges as an issue in the GOP presidential race
"...Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are among those who have strongly endorsed the idea, but other Republican candidates also have signaled varying degrees of sympathy for conservative voters in Colorado and beyond who are frustrated by what many say are excessively restrictive federal policies on public lands in the West.
It is hardly a new cry - and experts widely dismiss the notion as economically and environmentally implausible - but it appears to be getting louder.
At least 10 states in recent years have approved legislation that tries to claim federal land or explore the possibility of doing so, helping prompt the Republican National Committee last year to draft a "resolution in support of Western states taking back public lands." Some Western Republicans, facing battles with the federal government over mining and water quality controls, have called for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency."......
The Fed shouldn't be owning 50% of the land west of the Mississippi. There's a reason it doesn't with land east of the Mississippi.
See Professor Rob Natelson's "What does the Constitution Say about Federal Land Ownership?"
Prof Natelson is a renowned constitutional scholar cited in more Scotus cases than we're able to publish here in a reasonable amount of time.
The state of Utah is currently in a serious discussion about demanding their land back. Texas is positioned to fight the Fed over a plan to seize the Red River contiguous land, Nevada is home to a big state ownership issue. Oregon has recently had a highly publicized case that at its root is about federal land ownership.
Why do people with Ivy League degrees say such dumb things?
I agree. Not just in NV, but everywhere, the land belongs to the people as in individuals, NOT da gubment.
I think with many of these issues, Trump has not had the benefit of years of Heritage Foundation people explaining the positions over and over again. His policy team, that he said he would appoint next week, may well begin to do that. I don’t think he is a de facto “liberal” on a lot of these, but just hasn’t been preached at.
Boohoo....apparently Licata, of Field and Stream is unaware of the severe restrictions imposed on federal land use by the dictatorial EPA and Dept. of the Interior. Such land does not belong to the citizens of the US but to the beaureaucrats who control it.
Where in the Constitution does it state that the federal governed in Washington DC can own and restrict access to 85% of a sovereign state?
Sell it to the highest bidder. Oh yea...that’s worked out well in the past.
I know Abbott wrote Kornze, then Cruz sent a letter with Abbott’s questions from the initial letter. Kornze wrote back
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/230985493/BLM0002557-Follow-up-Outgoing
So, what is the current status on the 90,000 acres in TX BLM is claiming?
"U.S. Senator Sen. Ted Cruz released a letter sent to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director affirming a recent letter from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, demanding more information regarding potential plans to re-purpose disputed tracts of land for federal uses. The letter is in response to the BLM's perceived attempt at taking 90,000 acres of land that Texas landowners believe belongs to them.
Sen. Cruz told BLM Director Neil Kornze that the public statement the BLM offered on its website does not address the questions raised by General Abbott. Sen. Cruz requested Kornze respond directly to the questions raised, to include new points of inquiry from the junior U.S. Senator.
Sen. Cruz responded to the BLM's public statement where it denied any expansion of federal land holdings.
"...this response does not answer General Abbott's concerns. In addition, BLM's statement does not address whether the agency takes the position that the 90,000 acres of land in question along the Red River is already BLM land, which would make the agency's "categorical denial" an act of deceptive sophistry."
Cruz then added the following request from the BLM Director.
"Please confirm that BLM does not take the position that it has rights to ownership or control of any of the 90,000 acres of land along the Red River that are at the center of this controversy or similarly situated land. If it claims any such rights, please identify with specificity the acreage, location and legal basis for claiming those rights.".....
Federal land ownership is really something that I’ve not seen brought up until recent years here in the east. I had to do some serious reading to catch up.
Anyone connected to the campaign needs to have them read Professor Natelson’s thoughts.
Being a real estate guy, you’d think Trump would understand this and love it.
I think most conservatives haven’t even though of it. We take parks and wildlife areas in stride because that’s the way we grew up and no one ever questioned it. My grandfather’s farm was nearly part of Smoky Mountain National Forest, and many old time relatives did lose land to it. Why?
I honestly think that the glitterati thought it was their right to have ‘untouched’ regions for their recreation after they’d screwed up their own areas.
I had responsibility for Army depots in Nevada, California, Texas, and Oklahoma. There are some legitimate government uses. However, those areas are just a smidgen of what the Fed has refused to turn over.
They claim it will go uncared for, but the truth is that THAT is the current fed policy.
What will really care for it is allowing it to be settled.
Nevada is an odd case in that it already looks like a nuclear test site all on its own. But who knows what an enterprising settler would do in the dry desert rocky areas. They could always surprise us.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott fired a new volley at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Friday, adding to the years-long standoff between the state and the federal agency over the ownership of roughly 90,000 acres along the Red River.
In a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, Abbott said he was requesting for a third time that the agency "cease and desist" its "federal land grab."
The ownership of the land is highly contested because of a complicated series of court rulings and government documents dating all the way back to the Louisiana Purchase. Some of those rulings draw heavily on highly specific geographic distinctions, such as the Red River's flow over time.
Much of the acreage is claimed by Texas landowners, who say they've raised crops and cattle - and paid taxes on the land - for centuries. The BLM disagrees, saying the land belongs to the federal government.
This week, the BLM hosted a series of open meetings to collect ideas about how public lands in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas - including the contested land south of the Red River - should be used for the next 15 to 20 years. The meetings represent just one step in a years-long process, but to Abbott, they indicate that the BLM isn't backing down on its ownership claims.
"As you well know, the BLM's actions prevent landowners from borrowing against the land to finance business operations or selling the land to new owners looking to cultivate their own economic freedom," Abbott wrote. "But the implications of your actions are not merely financial. In many cases, your actions threaten to take the very homes above these Texans' heads."
BLM spokesman Paul McGuire said the agency is still reviewing the contents of the letter, but added that the agency has always relied on a 1923 U.S. Supreme Court decision - one that clearly delineated the boundaries between Texas and Oklahoma and assigned the federal government ownership of the little bit of space in between - in its plans...
And in the meantime, there's no indication that Abbott will back down in the fight against what he refers to as an "unconscionable" land grab.
"The BLM has yet to identify what land the federal government newly claims as its own," Abbott wrote. "The BLM has yet to identify the legal basis for that claim. And the BLM has yet to identify the process by which Texans can protect their land and property rights. Texas will not wait for answers any longer."..
Dec 2015: : George P. Bush joins Texas landowners battling BLM over Red River properties
"AUSTIN - George P. Bush will join the fray against the federal government over disputed land along the Texas-Oklahoma border.
The General Land Office filed a motion on Tuesday to enter the lawsuit filed by landowners against the Bureau of Land Management earlier this year. Families who are fighting to keep the land claim they've paid taxes on it for decades and own the deeds to the land. The BLM has claimed the land as public by citing a 1923 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that set the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma and awarded land in between the boundary to the federal government.
In a motion joining the suit, the general land office said it owns the mineral rights of a portion of the land the BLM is taking.
"The Permanent School Fund is arguably the most solemn and important obligation of the land commissioner," Bush told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday.
He added that safeguarding it involves litigation, sometimes.
A spokesman for the BLM declined to comment on the motion, but said the "BLM remains committed to working with adjacent landowners, counties and other stakeholders through our ongoing planning process."......
The Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF) was created with a $2,000,000 appropriation by the Texas Legislature in 1854 expressly for the benefit of the public schools of Texas. The Constitution of 1876 stipulated that certain lands and all proceeds from the sale of these lands should also constitute the PSF. Additional acts later gave more public domain land and rights to the PSF.
In 1953, the U.S. Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act that relinquished to coastal states all rights of the U.S. navigable waters within state boundaries. If the state, by law, had set a larger boundary prior to or at the time of admission to the Union, or if the boundary had been approved by Congress, then the larger boundary applied.
After three years of litigation (1957-1960), the U. S. Supreme Court on May 31, 1960, affirmed Texas' historic three marine leagues (10.35 miles) seaward boundary. Texas proved its submerged lands property rights to three leagues into the Gulf of Mexico by citing historic laws and treaties dating back to 1836. All lands lying within that limit belong to the PSF. The proceeds from the sale and the mineral-related rental of these lands, including bonuses, delay rentals, and royalty payments, become the corpus of the Fund."
A lot better than anyone else is proposing, but it would still be in the hands of a government. Still, better a level of government closer to the people.
If the price for getting their land back is to vote for Ted, I bet the NV people will say, “Let them keep the land then.”
There are parcels in Nevada that could be returned each on a case by case basis.
Are you suggesting a caravan of dump trucks relocating dirt from BEEF to Laredo, Texas?
It's when he hollers the loudest.
As they say, “Sell ice to an Eskimo”.
If Israel can reclaim desert, so can we.
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.