“Forcing the federal government to release all lands back to the states...”
Consider that to release “all lands back to the states” implies that the states owned those lands before and that in many cases that is not true. Many states were formed from territories, said territories having been owned by the United States. When the such States were formed and admitted to the Union, the United States retained ownership of at least some land within the boundaries of the new States.
You have to look at the deeals ea that were made and what they say. Do you think we’d be doing this if we didn’t think there was a chance? My God, you people say you want this to happen, and then when people step up and actually do something, you deride them for that. Unbelievable.
But they weren’t supposed to “own” it forever. They were supposed to cede it back to the states at some point.
Which they did not.
I’m going to have to do some research to find the specifics, but I know that the original constitution limited the federal gov’t to land for military installations & gov’t bldgs. It was never intended for the feds to own vast tracts of land. Once a territory was made into a state, the gov’t was supposed to transfer authority.
Our western states are at an extreme disadvantage, since the gov’t has locked up so much land that can not be used for taxes. It’s time for the same rules to apply out west that applied to the east.