Utah demands land surrendered from Fedgov by Dec 31

[lozina]

No, it isn't. Read the analysis I linked above. The State of Utah fully recognizes federal ownership of the public lands. The State believes that it has a right to compel the feds to sell the lands to private buyers and wants to wrest legal control of the lands from the feds in order to expedite a sell off of the lands with 95% of the proceeds being returned to the feds.

No, from what I linked it is the demand to complete the fed's promise to 'extinguish' the lands to the state

 

[zinfamous]

Louisiana, purchased by the Feds in that little thing called the Louisiana Purchase, owns almost 95% of the land within its borders. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Federal Government existed at the time of that the Federal Government made that purchase and subsequent splitting up of said purchase into individual states.

:hmm:

I bolded the eastern states part of your comment.

 

[lozina]

I understand that you want to pillage the natural wonders of America to the benefit of a few billionaires

Sure, that's a nice extreme you paint. Or we could go to the other extreme where we are still living in caves and have an average life expectancy of 18.

 

[IronWing]

Sure, that's a nice extreme you paint. Or we could go to the other extreme where we are still living in caves and have an average life expectancy of 18.

Or you could take some time to learn about the actual situation instead of arguing inane points from a position of near total ignorance.

 

[bshole]

Sure, that's a nice extreme you paint. Or we could go to the other extreme where we are still living in caves and have an average life expectancy of 18.

It is reality. The plan is to completely RAVAGE and STRIP MINE broad swaths of pristine land and privatize the rest (closing off ALL public access). This is no secret. Fuck Utah, fuck Utah very much.

The bill’s backers say they want to use federal public lands to generate revenue for the state. So far, the U.S. government has not ceded an acre. “If Utah is successful in its quest, the real losers will be the public,” says David Garbett, a staff lawyer with the nonprofit Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “The only way the Utah Legislature can generate money from the public lands is to ramp up development and hold a fire sale to clear inventory. That means that the places the public has come to know and love will be sold to the highest bidder and barricaded with ‘No Trespassing’ signs.” Similar bills are proliferating in other Western states where most of the land is managed by a federal agency. During 2012–2013, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico passed either bills or resolutions inspired by Utah’s TPLA. Proponents of public-lands transfer in the West believe they have a case based on arcane stipulations in the enabling acts that brought their states into the union. Under the acts, however, state governments agreed to “forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands” within their borders, ceding those lands to federal control. The legality of this disclaimer has never been successfully challenged.

Weisheit had been warning that the Cliffs plateau, in an era of new drilling technologies and bipartisan calls for domestic energy independence, faces an unprecedented scheme for development of its oil shale and tar-sands deposits, which are estimated to contain three times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. “Utah wants to be the Saudi Arabia of America and strip-mine every last barrel,” Weisheit said.

http://prospect.org/article/land-was-your-land

 

[lozina]

Or you could take some time to learn about the actual situation instead of arguing inane points from a position of near total ignorance.

Yes that must be it. I don't subscribe to your extreme left environmentalist propaganda so therefore I am ignorant.

 

[lozina]

It is reality. The plan is to completely RAVAGE and STRIP MINE broad swaths of pristine land and privatize the rest (closing off ALL public access). This is no secret. Fuck Utah, fuck Utah very much.

http://prospect.org/article/land-was-your-land

The Federal Government does such a better job keeping the land pristine for you. Nuclear bomb testing grounds, nuclear power waste dump sites, all forms of conventional ordnance testing ranges. And of course when they see fit they too allow resource extraction of all forms

 

[zinfamous]

Yes that must be it. I don't subscribe to your extreme left environmentalist propaganda so therefore I am ignorant.

While you are completely happy to swallow the rather obvious propaganda of the industrialists?

You aren't as independent of a thinker as you assume you are.

 

[brycejones]

Yes that must be it. I don't subscribe to your extreme left environmentalist propaganda so therefore I am ignorant.

Interesting that you think caring about the environment is a left/right political position. Drill baby drill and all that for you?

 

[lozina]

While you are completely happy to swallow the rather obvious propaganda of the industrialists?

You aren't as independent of a thinker as you assume you are.

Interesting that you think caring about the environment is a left/right political position. Drill baby drill and all that for you?

Haha, I knew that comment would bring you lefties scurrying out - the proverbial cheese in the trap

But anyway, it is cute that you guys actually believe the federal government is more interested or has better capacity to protect those lands than the state government. It's completely groundless.

The important difference is, it's the people who live within the boundaries of the state the land is in who has the say, not some beaurocrats 2 thousand miles away

 

[IronWing]

Yes that must be it. I don't subscribe to your extreme left environmentalist propaganda so therefore I am ignorant.

I post an analysis from the frickin' Federalist Society and I'm spreading extreme left propaganda? Your own statements concerning public lands demonstrate your ignorance.

 

[piasabird]

How come most of the federal lands are in western states. Why doesn't the president take half of new York city and make it a park.

 

[piasabird]

The federal govt should have to pay property tax for the federal land.

 

[ElFenix]

Article III of the Utah Constitution:


That means lands not given over to the state of Utah by the federal government when it was formed. Not only is the guy trying to take land that never belonged to Utah, he's attempting to violate Utah's constitution as well.

Lawsuit will be immediately thrown out as frivolous.

No. The lawsuit and legislation passed in 2012 effective Dec 31 2014 asks the Federal government to extinguish its rights over the land. There is nothing unconstitutional about asking the Federal government to do so. In fact, it is in support of Utah's constitution. Utah is asking the Federal government to extinguish its claim. Utah is in no way unilaterally seizing the land. That would be unconstitutional.

what lawsuit? there's no lawsuit mentioned in the article, only a supposition by the OP.

 

[lozina]

what lawsuit? there's no lawsuit mentioned in the article, only a supposition by the OP.

Correct, the lawsuit is a supposition not by me though

 

[ElFenix]

Correct, the lawsuit is a supposition not by me though

you didn't write this?

What is probably going to happen is the deadline will pass without any changes and then the state might file some lawsuits....

 

[lozina]

you didn't write this?

Yes, from the articles I've been reading. I am not a fortune teller.

 

[IronWing]

How come most of the federal lands are in western states. Why doesn't the president take half of new York city and make it a park.

On the eastern seaboard the lands were never public domain except where states specifically yielded land to the feds. Further west, climate and water scarcity is the biggest factor. Most of the midwest went out of federal ownership under the various homestead acts. Homesteading in the arid west was far less successful so the land stayed federal.

The feds would have to buy New York City to do that. The feds did buy the land for most (maybe all?) of the eastern national parks as the the land wasn't federally owned when the idea of national parks came into vogue. In the west, since the land involved was already public domain, the feds (Congress for parks and the Pres for monuments) simply had to declare certain lands to be parks. Same with Indian reservations mostly, some reservation lands had to be bought before a reservation could be created but most was original public domain.


Edit for an additional point: with the exception of certain Spanish land grants, all lands acquired by the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase came into U.S. ownership as public domain lands. So for the state of Utah, every last inch was federally owned when the U.S. acquired it. Lands were then disposed through homesteading, mining patents, railroad grants, state school grants and maybe some sales. I'm not sure how previous settlements (New Orleans, for example) were addressed under the Louisiana Purchase.

 

[Jhhnn]

Haha, I knew that comment would bring you lefties scurrying out - the proverbial cheese in the trap

But anyway, it is cute that you guys actually believe the federal government is more interested or has better capacity to protect those lands than the state government. It's completely groundless.

The important difference is, it's the people who live within the boundaries of the state the land is in who has the say, not some beaurocrats 2 thousand miles away

Hogwash. The federal govt has applied enormous resources to the management & preservation of public lands for over 100 years.

It's not like State govts have anything other than dismal records when it comes to sustainable exploitation of resources, either. Witness the results of strip mining in the eastern US, all through the coal country of Appalachia. Witness the state of eastern waterways prior to the EPA. Witness Chesapeake bay.

Once land is sold to private parties, particularly for the purposes of resource extraction, control passes entirely to corporate interests, Wall Street. And it's not like residents of one state or another necessarily gave a damn about what their actions did to people either downstream or down wind, either.

The whole effort is being made for two reasons. First, to transfer control to more easily corrupted & influenced State actors & secondly as a sop to Tenther sentiments. Those sentiments have been deliberately cultivated for decades by the parties who seek to benefit.

They seek to bring back the headsets that helped spawn the Civil War where people didn't think of themselves so much as Americans as they thought of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers. It's also that sentiment that allowed the perpetuation of Jim Crow.

 

[fskimospy]

what lawsuit? there's no lawsuit mentioned in the article, only a supposition by the OP.

Fair point, although even a demand by the legislature would kind of be unconstitutional, considering they are required to forego any claim to it. I guess if they're just asking the feds to reconsider that's one thing though.

Seriously though, reading the comments on that article is terrifying. The sheer level of nuttiness...

 

[Vic]

How come most of the federal lands are in western states. Why doesn't the president take half of new York city and make it a park.

The original 13 states have owned their lands since before the federal government existed.
The western states were divided out of lands that the federal government already held title to (much of it acquired with the help of the US Army).
The feds have already transferred a great deal of these lands to state and private ownership, through land grants (which created almost every state university), homesteads, and donation acts. However, rampant abuse and fraud of the homestead acts lead to their curtailment and eventual demise.

 

[Vic]

The federal govt should have to pay property tax for the federal land.

There is no way for state and local governments to assess property taxes on the federal lands because the federal government is sovereign and holds allodial title to them.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial

 

[brycejones]

Haha, I knew that comment would bring you lefties scurrying out - the proverbial cheese in the trap

But anyway, it is cute that you guys actually believe the federal government is more interested or has better capacity to protect those lands than the state government. It's completely groundless.

The important difference is, it's the people who live within the boundaries of the state the land is in who has the say, not some beaurocrats 2 thousand miles away

Again, that you see environmentalism as a left/right thing is nutty. Regardless of political viewpoint we all live in the same environment. But based on your comment I guess it was just a lame attempt at trolling since you can't really be that stupid.

 

[lozina]

Again, that you see environmentalism as a left/right thing is nutty. Regardless of political viewpoint we all live in the same environment. But based on your comment I guess it was just a lame attempt at trolling since you can't really be that stupid.

It's only as stupid as the idea that the moment a state such as Utah gets control of the land in its own borders it turns it all into a giant strip mine.

 

[Fern]

Another point: How many truly great national parks are there east of the Rockies? How about West of Rockies.

Its not that they were no great places in the Eastern US, it is that they were all destroyed by development, this is what states like Utah would like to do with all of this great federal land.

No, not all land in the East was destroyed by development.

I live in the midst of national park land here in the mountains of North Carolina.

There are plenty of protected lands in the S.E., some federally protected and others protected by the state.

Fern