I don't know about you, but enough is enough
3.3 Million? No, it isn't part of the bailout. It is however the amount of acres now off the market for purchase by private investors.
read this article
I like parks as much as the next bird watching, pooping in a bag, conservationist but damn. Granted there may not have been a lot or interest in purchasing this land by private investors, I don't know, but it sure scares me when the man starts gobbling up tracks of land this large.
Let me do the rough math for you.
1 sq Mile = 640 acres
3.3M/640 acres = 5156.25 sq. Miles
That almost the size of Connecticut = 5,543 sq Miles
read this article
I like parks as much as the next bird watching, pooping in a bag, conservationist but damn. Granted there may not have been a lot or interest in purchasing this land by private investors, I don't know, but it sure scares me when the man starts gobbling up tracks of land this large.
Let me do the rough math for you.
1 sq Mile = 640 acres
3.3M/640 acres = 5156.25 sq. Miles
That almost the size of Connecticut = 5,543 sq Miles
It's collateral for the FED's $1 trillion plus printing extravaganza (sorry, meant quantitative easing).
I remember reading several years ago that Nixon did a similar thing back in the 70s (I think it was part of secret deal to not create too much fallout from de-linking the dollar to gold). Any of you savy infowarriors should be able to find references to it. I think it was tied to "enviromental preservation" or some other herring.
Call me a kook - you won't be the first.
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Parks and wildlife preseves are important and should exist as long as they are at the state level and controlled and managed by the state's citizens. but but but some important tracks cross state lines. then the individual states should collaborate. federal land grabs are just that. restricting use of THE most important resource to free people. once these areas are designated "insert benign ecofriendly nomenclature here" areas, nothing can be done to reverse the decision. more importantly it is now under strict control of the executive branch managed by "czars" beholden to no one but the pres. sounds a lot like Longshank's magistrates to me.
it gets worse. designated sites cant possibly stand alone as islands surrounded by privately used land. what if some asshole of corporationy-corporation wants to mine their rightfully owned minerals or drill for oil on adjacent land? sorry, youre in the buffer zone. you get to "own" the land (sometimes) and pay taxes on the land but are strictly limited in your use of it. buffer zones are most often not concretely defined and can extend as far as the controlling magistrate dictates at any point in time. this is a tried and true method for conquering free people. hey, we did it to the indians and now its being done to us. rounding us up into modern reservations or as i like to call them cities where we can be tagged, monitored, controlled, and eventually culled and shipped to market.
aint life grand
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heres a map that shows federal land holdings by percentage. who owns the west indeed? yikes
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/291-federal-lands-in-the-us/
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As a citizen of the West (with more than half my life spent in Western states), it's generally not that big of a deal. Most of the land is desert or mountains.
On the map site, I saw this comment "Following the Louisiana purchase, the federal government considered itself the sole owner of previously “unimproved” and unclaimed western lands that it purchased or otherwise acquired; so the states were de facto and de jure wholly owned by the federal government, which over time used various incentives to get people to move there . . . or not." Aside from some mining towns discovered back in the 1890s or around then, there's not much of a reason to move out to a lot of these areas. Everyone was welcome to the land through the homestead act (not sure if it's been repealed yet), but there often isn't enough water to support people, crops, or livestock (and if there is, then it's easy and cheap to lease the federal lands for grazing).
Take Nevada. It's 84% fed owned. But so what? It's mostly worthless desert and mountains.
After hiking the highest peak in Nevada, I had a car break down in the deseret, and was towed (more than an hour) to Tonopah Nevada (which bills itself the stargazing capital of America). here's the sat. map of that area. You see splotches of color, but zoom in, and it turns back into brown wasteland.
After spending some quality time in that area, I say let the feds keep it. No one else wants it, anyway.
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I agree. A lot of it is the western equivalent of swampland. C'mon Aaron, didn't you see Vegas Vacation? Alright, MOST people didn't see Vegas Vacation, but Cousin Eddie's plot is about right.
That said, I agree with Buzz that a lot of fed lands is collateral for all those 30-year T-bills which may come home to roost sometime soon.
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worthless desert and mountains - tell that to the hopi, apachi, yahqui, etc. one mans worthless wasteland is anothers paradise (see the mormons). ugly people find love all the time. there is worth in everything. worthlessness is a myth created by the mind that does not see.
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Come to Tonapah first. Then see if you feel the same way.
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I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin'
-Lowell George, Little Feat
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And covered beautifully by Linda Ronstadt.
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