Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   4/29/2014

Meet candidates; more about the BLM’s actions

Emphasizing their civic-minded service to the general public, the Tea Party Patriots are staging get-to-know-candidates events this election season. Tonight at their weekly meeting you will have a chance to hear from District Attorney candidate Larry Olsen. That’s at 6 PM at the Westside Grange, with Mr. Olsen appearing after a short business and update period. Then, mark May 6 on your calendars for a Tea Party Patriots-sponsored “all candidates” night at the Community/Senior Center, Jackson and Kimball, set to begin at 5 PM, with KBLF’s Cal Hunter moderating.

Readers may recall, regarding the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), that not so long ago Tehama and Shasta Counties were asked to give approval to the Bend Recreation Area (BRA) by the BLM, under plans formulated primarily by Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein; Republican (then-) Representative Wally Herger found the language, written by Feinstein, to be insufficiently protective of the sovereignty and rights of local governments and citizens. Many residents at the time raised objections based on personal accounts of the high-handed and arbitrary manner that the BLM treated private landowners and holders of grazing rights on federal lands.

It was widely believed that the BLM has often been a bad actor and neighbor to have to deal with on several accounts. Advocates and fans of the federal agency dismissed those of us who pointed out that there was more-than-justifiable cause to suspect that, with the BLM in charge of the BRA, the rights of existing users of those lands would always risk being vetoed by “evolving” BLM priorities and values.

Yes, the prospect of an “advisory” board, mostly locally appointed, was touted as a firewall against unreasonableness by the BLM, but it never entirely refuted the suspicion that BLM’s attitude was “What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is negotiable.” The events and confrontation in Nevada between the BLM and rancher Cliven Bundy can serve to illustrate and confirm what local BLM critics were saying.

Absent the armed standoff aspect, the media’s attention will seek other distractions from the epic failure of the Obama economic “recovery” and Obamacare; the “teaching moment” will pass. There is much to learn and it deserves more attention from this writer. Much has surfaced on the duplicitous and hypocritical history of federal land ownership; how agencies morph from simple, straightforward missions and purposes to agendas completely at odds with their own founding priorities; and how crony capitalism rears its corrupt and ugly head over “green energy” boondoggles requiring the manipulation of law, regulations and rules to facilitate solar and wind projects. I’ll get to more of that next week.

First, some quotes bear mentioning: A debate in Utah between a conservative state lawmaker, Rep. Ken Ivory, and a liberal former director of the BLM, Pat Shea, provided glaring proof of the personal and institutional arrogance of that agency. “Ivory argues the federal government used to own much of the land in states like Florida, Illinois and Nebraska and has since turned it over to private owners or the state. He believes it’s time for Western states to demand equal treatment in this matter and if Congress won’t comply, it may be time to launch a major court case. He said the land would be better managed and the profits from mining would help fund the state’s education system. Shea was dismissive of such an idea. ‘I don’t think states are capable of the complexity of managing these lands,’ he said accusing Ivory of inflaming local officials to challenge federal land managers when the chances of the state’s gaining control of these lands are remote at best.” (Matt Canham, The Salt Lake Tribune, 4/24)

Does it grate on you like it does me to read such condescension over the administration and management of public lands? He talks as if only the delivered wisdom of Washington, D.C. is capable of informing the intricacies and nuances of it all. “What’s ours is ours …” We yay-hoos in flyover wastelands, not so much.

In “Arizona Official: Cliven Bundy’s Acts Are Legal,” Joe Battaglia, writing for Newsmax, quotes Barry Weller, vice chairman of the Apache County Board of Supervisors, saying that he thinks Bundy was right in standing up to the Bureau of Land management. “The case is similar to another in Nevada, in which Wayne Hage won a protracted battle with the federal government by successfully arguing that he had the right to graze his cows within two miles of water sources he developed.

“The Bundys and Hages are standing on their water and grazing rights which, Weller said, ‘were pre-existing in territorial times, long before the government took over and these states became states and these rights are mentioned, and any federal law or policy act that comes thereafter is always stated, ‘subject to pre-existing rights.’

“The only solution to this problem, Weller said, is for the government to follow through on the transfer of public land that was promised to all newly created states at statehood but honored only to the states east of Colorado. The people who take the best care of anything are the people who own it.”