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Obama’s Government Land Grabs Have Been Historic

Obama’s Government Land Grabs Have Been Historic

Three times the size of Texas.

Obama’s decision to designate a large area of land in Utah as a national monument generated a small number of headlines last week.

What many people don’t realize is that this has been going on throughout Obama’s presidency and that the amount of land and water he has claimed for the federal government is massive.

MRCTV reports:

Obama Seized Enough Land and Water in 8 Years to Cover Texas Three Times

In a move ignored by the liberal media last week, Obama unilaterally seized more than 1.3 million acres from Utah to establish the Bears Ears Monument, preserving it at the behest of conservationist groups and Native American tribes who claimed the land was sacred. Utah’s state legislature, however, opposed the unilateral land grab across party lines, with many speculating that Obama’s move is the latest in an attempt to limit efforts from incoming President Donald Trump to expand domestic energy production.

Obama also claimed 300,000 acres in Clark County, Nevada, as the Gold Butte National Monument, effectively closing the area off to future development for uranium mining, oil drilling or natural gas production.

While it’s certainly nothing new, Obama’s habit of unilaterally confiscating land has ramped up heading into the final stretch of his presidency. In the eight years he’s been in office, President Obama has seized more than 553 million acres of land and water (roughly 865,000 square miles) and placed it under federal ownership and control – enough square mileage to cover the entire state of Texas more than three times over.

Why isn’t this big news? Is it because the liberal media likes big government and knows if more people knew this they would be alarmed? Possibly. Somehow I have a feeling a Republican president would have been called out for something like this:

Wielding the Antiquities Act of 1906, Obama has seized vast swaths of land and water for the federal government a total of 29 times, claiming more than 260 million acres as federally-protected spaces in 2016 alone (including a more than 100-million-acre plot in Alaska that amounts to the size of New Mexico).

As I mentioned, this is nothing new. In fact, Michelle Malkin has been sounding the alarm bell on this very subject since as early as 2010:

How Obama is locking up our land

Have you heard of the “Great Outdoors Initiative”? Chances are, you haven’t. But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land. It’s another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life.

In April, President Obama issued a memorandum outlining his “21st century strategy for America’s great outdoors.” It was addressed to the Interior Secretary, the Agriculture Secretary, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The memo calls on the officials to conduct “listening and learning sessions” with the public to “identify the places that mean the most to Americans, and leverage the support of the Federal Government” to “protect” outdoor spaces. Eighteen of 25 planned sessions have already been held. But there’s much more to the agenda than simply “reconnecting Americans to nature.”

The federal government, as the memo boasted, is the nation’s “largest land manager.” It already owns roughly one of every three acres in the United States. This is apparently not enough. At a “listening session” in New Hampshire last week, government bureaucrats trained their sights on millions of private forest land throughout the New England region.

Read the rest here.

Going forward, we won’t have the problem of not hearing about things like this.

As they’ve already shown, the media will report everything Trump does with breathless panic.

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Comments

buckeyeminuteman | January 6, 2017 at 7:51 am

I am a big supporter of our current National Parks; but besides military installations, the current Parks, and DC the feds shouldn’t be in the property owning business. If a state wants to designate a large area within their purview let them fight it out with their own residents. Massive land grabs should be a big no-no.

    Insufficiently Sensitive in reply to buckeyeminuteman. | January 6, 2017 at 12:45 pm

    Massive land grabs should be a big no-no.

    Every square inch of these seized areas under private ownership has been paying taxes. Our leaned authors wholly ignore this facet, ignore the loss of tax income to the states and cities and counties under seizure, fail to address whether the Feds assess property taxes, and fail to note that by this effect, your local government is usurped by the politburo in Washington, with whom your vote counts for negligible.

      buckeyeminuteman in reply to Insufficiently Sensitive. | January 6, 2017 at 1:39 pm

      Private land owners do pay taxes which go to local use. Not once it is sold. Then think too that when the feds come in and force you to sell your land to them you do get income from that; which you then pay income tax on…

The Framers knew that land was power, and they consequently severely restricted the use of land that the Federal government could make. That was one of the first things attacked by “reformers”.

If we take Der Donald at his word, he won’t do much to reverse this out west. Look up his interview with Field & Stream. Pure Progressive.

    Milhouse in reply to Ragspierre. | January 6, 2017 at 8:19 am

    Where did they impose such limits, Rags? Not in the constitution.

      The unapologetic conservative in reply to Milhouse. | January 6, 2017 at 8:31 am

      Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17

        That clause contains no such restriction. Nor does any other clause in the constitution. The idea that the constitution forbids the federal government from owning land, or restricts what it can do with it, is just a stupid myth that circulates in ignorant right-wing circles who have never bothered to read the d*mn thing. These are the same people who claim treaties override the constitution, and that gold fringe on a courtroom flag means you’re in an admiralty court where you have no rights.

The President is not seizing land and making it federal, the land already is federal, what he is doing is changing the designation of the land to restrict use of the land. So land that may have been open for logging, mining, general recreation, etc. is now more restricted to just general recreation or perhaps even more restricted, i.e. no motor vehicles.

    Ragspierre in reply to Fredlike. | January 6, 2017 at 8:52 am

    I’d have to disagree. Not only land, but sea area has been added to the Federal inventory.

      Milhouse in reply to Ragspierre. | January 6, 2017 at 1:49 pm

      Nothing has been added to federal inventory. All areas that were declared national monuments, whether at land or sea, were already federal property. They had to be, or the declarations would have been impossible.

Um, “the amount of land and water he has claimed for the federal government” is precisely zero. The Antiquities Act does not give him any power to do that. Every square inch discussed in the article was already federal land.

MRCTV’s claim that “Obama unilaterally seized more than 1.3 million acres from Utah” is a lie; it was never Utah’s land in the first place. “Utah’s state legislature, however, opposed the unilateral land grab across party lines” is irrelevant, because it’s none of their ****ing business. “Obama’s habit of unilaterally confiscating land […] President Obama has seized more than 553 million acres of land and water (roughly 865,000 square miles) and placed it under federal ownership and control” is another outright, blatant, g*dd*mned lie.

And obvious lie to anyone who’s bothered to look at the Antiquities Act, which explicitly applies only to areas “that are situated upon lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States”. Private land “may be relinquished to the Government, and the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized to accept the relinquishment”, but no compulsory purchase is authorized.

    Milhouse in reply to Milhouse. | January 6, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    So we have at least six dishonest people who disapprove of anyone pointing out indisputable facts that contradict their prejudices. They’d rather stay in ignorance and go on telling falsehoods that make them feel good, than acknowledge that sometimes a good story is too good to be true.

      Henry Hawkins in reply to Milhouse. | January 6, 2017 at 4:45 pm

      Maybe people just don’t like you? That they’re down-thumbing the poster not the post? Just a thought.

        Milhouse in reply to Henry Hawkins. | January 8, 2017 at 1:32 am

        No, when I say something they happen like they don’t downvote it; so it’s the truth they hate, not just the person who brings it to them. They want to believe anything bad said about 0bama, they don’t give a d*mn whether it’s true or false, and it hurts them that some people care about the truth more than about sharing their sadistic glee.

        The truth is they don’t hate 0bama because of the bad things he did, rather they hate the things he did only because he did them. If Trump does the same things they’ll love them. We can see it already with Assange; from deadly enemy of the USA he’s suddenly become a hero, just because what he’s saying now happens to help their agenda.

Let’s have Al-Chicagi spend a few weeks in his new National Monument sans support. He could walk the trails, camp out by a fire, and eat off the land.

Of course, he wouldn’t survive one night without his mirror and binky.

uranium mining,,,why bother. Clinton sold it all off to Russia.

    Milhouse in reply to rscalzo. | January 6, 2017 at 1:50 pm

    No, she didn’t. That’s another lie that circulates among ignorant right-wing conspiracy theorists.

      Because 20% is less dishonest?

        Milhouse in reply to SDN. | January 8, 2017 at 1:23 am

        No, because the entire story is a lie. She had no control over the Russian takeover of the Canadian corporation that owns the mines in question, and she received no donations that can reasonably be related to the takeover.

      Paul in reply to Milhouse. | January 6, 2017 at 9:40 pm

      So you’re saying she didn’t enrich herself while her department oversaw and approved deals which led to Russian companies taking over a large portion of the US uranium reserves?

        Milhouse in reply to Paul. | January 8, 2017 at 1:21 am

        That’s right. Her department neither oversaw nor approved any such deals, and her foundation received no donations that can reasonably be related to such deals.

Henry Hawkins | January 6, 2017 at 1:34 pm

Obama intends to build theme parks on these federal lands. I’d love to hear from commenters some suggested names for them, like Six Flags Over Obama, or DizzyLand. Among park features: Zero security, zero contact with local residents, additional surcharge on Trump voters, Hillary Clinton strip show, and….

C’mon, LI commenters. It’s funny time.

If the fed gov owns more land in a state than the state does, then that state should be demoted to a territory.

    Milhouse in reply to showtime8. | January 6, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    Why? What possible connection do you imagine between state status and who owns how much land? There’s no good reason for either state or federal governments to own as much land as they do, but it makes no difference which one does it. The fact is that the USA owns a lot of land in the west, and when the territories formed there grew in population and became states there was no good reason why the Union should have given that land away, so it didn’t.

      Barry in reply to Milhouse. | January 6, 2017 at 2:30 pm

      “…there was no good reason why the Union should have given that land away, so it didn’t.”

      I don’t disagree with your prior assessments. However:

      “there was is no good reason why the Union should have given that land away, so it didn’t shouldn’t”

        Milhouse in reply to Barry. | January 6, 2017 at 2:50 pm

        There is a good reason why the feds have that land: they got it in the settlement of the Mexican war. Now they need a reason to get rid of it. I think there are good policy reasons why they should do so, because it’s just not a healthy situation for any government, state or federal, to own so much land for which it has no obvious use. But no legal reason exists for them to change the status quo, so they just hang onto it out of inertia.

      JusticeDelivered in reply to Milhouse. | January 6, 2017 at 2:33 pm

      I am curious, do you also think Trayvon and Mike were both 12 year old, college bound kids? Or, do you admit that both were bald faced examples of fake news with ghetto lottery agendas?

        Um, I’m not the one falling for stupid made-up stories like “0bama land grabs” or “Clinton sold our uranium”, or “the constitution forbids the feds from owning land”, so why would you think I’d fall for those ones?

        Little St Trayvon was set up as a modern equivalent of Little St Hugh, because people saw the name “Zimmerman” and thought George was a Jew. If his parents had named him Jorge Mesa we’d never have heard of Martin.

Just a way for the left to diminish state rights.