Free Republic

Background: There are forces that create major shifts, and in the last years there has been a lot of talk about how "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_happy That is what I am seeing in the real estate sector. Does anybody have any solid sources on the topic that puts things together (an analytical piece that shows where policy changes are driving what is happening), concerning who actually owns the real estate in the US? It appears, but I have no solid sources, that real estate is getting bought up by commercial investors, and often is longer for...

Officials say they need the land to meet state-mandated affordable housing targets.. In a case drawing national attention, Cranbury Township is moving forward with its plans to seize part of a historic 175-year-old family farm to build affordable housing, despite fierce push-back and an active lawsuit. The Middlesex County township recently hired a company to appraise 12 acres of the Henry family farm, according to NJ.com, which is the first step toward possibly condemning the land through eminent domain. Local officials have maintained that they need the land to meet state-mandated affordable housing targets. The Henry family — which has...

Utah is planning on taking water away from farmers and ranchers right now”.. They are currently writing new legislation that is going to put new regulations on farmers and ranchers water use — We need your help. We need to save the farmers and ranchers” “The verbiage in the bill is that they are going to require them to use less water, water that has been already granted to them from generations past, or they're going to require them to use more water saving technologies. But who is going to pay for that? It sure as hell isn't going to...

The Maude family has maintained a grazing allotment with the U.S. Forest Service Buffalo Gap National Grasslands since the inception of the agency. Charles and Heather Maude have carried on the practices implemented by generations before them, including irrigating the river bottom to grow a feed crop. After the USFS alerted them that a small segment of land might be fenced incorrectly for ownership, they were indicted for theft of federal property. Those charges have been dropped, but a solution to the original issue has not yet been determined. ... Charles and Heather Maude no longer face the threat of...

If you watched Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I'd heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn't believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It's unbelievable. Or maybe it's not, given all we're learning about the last four years. ... Trump Admin is reversing Biden-era failures in 100 days! The U.S. Gov has dropped charges against the Maude family, victims of...

Karl Marx: “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.” Recent Breitbart headline: “Zohran Mamdanin Pushes for ‘Abolition of Private Property’” Well, of course, the commies are already here; Marxism dominates the Democratic Party now, so Mamdani’s call for the abolition of private property is not surprising in the least. But that’s just my conclusion. Let me share with you some quotes from Karl Marx, and then you can decide if, or to what extent, his communist theory has infiltrated and/or taken over the Democratic Party. All the quotes below are from Marx....

A resurfaced clip of Zohran Mamdani explaining how when he runs out of money—because he’s decided to quit his job—he’ll just live off his parents is going viral: ... He’s got absolutely no qualms about producing nothing, being unemployed, and living off of someone else—which is to say he’s just your average socialist/communist. Recall that Karl Marx lived off of handouts from Freidrich Engels, and was once so broke that he left his wife to pawn his last pair of pants instead of just getting a job to support his family (walking around in his skivvies for who knows who...

The far left’s disgraceful response to September 11—it has temporized about terror, embraced moral equivalence between the Islamist fanatics who killed thousands of innocent Americans and the military actions of the democratically elected U.S. government, and even blamed the U.S. for the atrocity—shows that its hatred of democratic capitalism and, more broadly, Western civilization itself remains fierce more than a decade after the collapse of socialism. The intensity of this hatred will come as no surprise, however, to anyone who has paid attention to the praise that the academic left and its sympathizers in the liberal media have been showering ...

Shock waves are still rippling through the country over the NYC Democrat mayoral primary win of “socialist” (really, communist) Muslim radical candidate, Zohran Mamdani. His rise to the top of the party has been fueled in part by his promise to freeze rents in the city. Because, you know, there’s a… HOUSING CRISIS!!! In neighboring New Jersey, authorities are in the process of seizing a beloved local farm owned by the same family for 175 years. My colleague Sarah Anderson covered that horror story: Back in April, Andy received a letter from the Cranbury Township Committee. It stated that if...

Ranchers say their hands are tied as reintroduced wolves—listed as endangered—are feasting on cattle instead of hunting elk and deer.. Descendants of rewilded wolves are taking a heavy toll on cattle in Northern California and Oregon, killing calves and full-grown animals and putting stress on cow-calf operations and ranchers’ pocketbooks. Because wolves are listed as an endangered species under state and federal law, ranchers are hamstrung: They can’t shoot or harass these protected predators. The penalty for killing a wolf is steep; federal law carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, unless a rancher...

Wolves in California are costing ranchers millions of dollars far beyond just the price of cattle killed, .. A Wyoming rancher says the secondary costs of predation are well-known here. ... As California’s wolf population expands, the predators there are costing ranchers millions — not just in value of the cattle killed, but through collateral effects as well ... one wolf can cause $69,000 to $162,000 in “direct and indirect losses from lower pregnancy rates in cows and decreased weight gain in calves,” .. Those results should come as no surprise to Wyoming ranchers, Jim Magagna, executive vice president of...

The cut and baled land and the untouched land in this photo represent where survey markers indicate property boundaries exist between Maude private property and USFS property. Charles Maude and Heather Maude were indicted separately for theft of federal property, and each must retain their own attorney — doubling their legal costs. Courtesy photo Screen Shot 2025-04-10 at 10.57.18 AM The Western South Dakota couple indicted for theft of federal property will not go to trial in April. A new court date of July 22, 2025, has been established for Charles and Heather Maude of Caputa, in federal district court...

Today, Congressman Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., and Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s, R-Colo., legislation to delist the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List and ensure that action is not subject to judicial review passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee. The Pet and Livestock Protection Act will restore authority back to state lawmakers and state wildlife officials to control the gray wolf population. H.R. 845 will now head to the full House of Representatives for a vote. “The damage to pets, livestock and wildlife from an unmanaged wolf population can no longer be ignored. The gray wolf has exceeded federal and...

Four Missouri hunters who stepped diagonally from one parcel of federal land in Wyoming to another did not illegally trespass on the airspace of adjacent private property, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, firmly protects public access to millions of acres of land in the court’s six-state jurisdiction and substantially strengthens the rights of “corner-crossers” throughout the West. The case is rooted in a quirk of the region, where vast swaths of terrain have been divided since the 19th century...

Gavin Newsom & his allies just forced 12 historic family farms & dairies out of Point Reyes National Seashore in California. They claim it’s about saving the environment — but the truth couldn't be more different. Here is the true story — and it's heartbreaking. 2/ For over 100 years, ranchers and dairy farmers have worked the land at Point Reyes. They built Marin’s organic food movement & supplied fresh milk to Californians. Now they’re being forced out — by environmental groups, the federal government, and Newsom’s political allies. ... 3/ When Congress created Point Reyes National Seashore in 1962,...

There is a private property rights battle brewing in rural parts of southeastern Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma and portions of the Dakotas, Nebraska and five Tribal Nations. The U.S. Department of Energy has plans to establish the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors or NIETCs, in these areas and the corridors span five to 15 miles in width. If approved, in New Mexico about 2 million acres of mostly private property would be transferred to the control of the federal government potentially via eminent domain. In Colorado, farmers, ranchers and rural residents stand to lose control of 325,000 acres in...

DEI: LA Mayor Karen Bass is hiring an ‘outside consultant’ to rebuild the Pacific Palisades in a more equitable and environmentally sustainable way. She intends to award the contract without authorization from the property owners. ... CORRUPTION: California updated the law to allow Mayors like Karen Bass to take contributions from contractors and consultants to the city if they are award via competitive bid starting on Jan 1, 2025. This exemption is significant because it means that vendors winning contracts through competitive bids can still donate to political campaigns of officials overseeing the contract process—potentially leaving room for continued influence...

An idyllic stillness swallowed Home Ranch on Friday, as there was little to disturb the oldest dairy ranch on the Point Reyes National Seashore. California quail fluttered their wings and scattered in the brush beside a dirt road leading into the historic complex containing several barns, a silver silo and a farmhouse with green window trims that predates San Francisco’s cable cars.

Here we go...again.. Here we go again. The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has imposed a sweeping ban on poultry and dairy cattle exhibitions, this time citing fears of H5N1 avian influenza. If this feels like déjà vu, that’s because we’ve seen this playbook before. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government shut down businesses it arbitrarily deemed “nonessential,” crippling livelihoods and communities under the guise of public safety. Now, they are targeting farmers, youth organizations, and small-scale agricultural exhibitors. ... This isn’t just about bird flu—it’s about a growing pattern of overreach where freedom is sacrificed for an...

Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee met with the Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday to discuss potential reductions of the state’s wolf program.. As Colorado looks for ways to cut nearly $1 billion from its budget, some legislators are pondering whether pausing wolf reintroduction efforts could save the state $2.1 million per year. It was one of many options the Joint Budget Committee weighed during a budget hearing with the state’s Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday, Dec. 11. Funding for wolves After Colorado voters passed Proposition 114 in 2020 to reintroduce wolves in Colorado, the state’s wildlife agency has received...