GOP Platform Committee Wants Feds To Turn Fed Lands Over To States ASAP

[DonViejo]

Source: Talking Points Memo

In a nail-biting vote Monday, the committee tasked with writing the Republican Party's 2016 platform voted to include language calling on Congress to return federal lands to the states immediately. The amendment was so close that instead of being recorded by voice vote, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) asked members of the platform committee to stand to show their support.

The amendment has new resonance this year after dozens of anti-government protestors took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in January to protest federal control of lands. Many affiliated with that takeover had argued the federal government had no business managing federal lands. In 2014, a ragtag group of vigilantes (some of whom also participated in the Oregon standoff) went out to assist rancher Cliven Bundy as he sought to defy BLM officials who were rounding up his cattle, which he had illegally been grazing on federal lands.

The issue of how much land the federal government should control has bled into mainstream Republican politics. A 2012 Utah law actually called for the feds to immediately return lands to the state. Nothing has actually happened since the law passed.

The final draft of the GOP's Party Platform will still have to be voted on at the GOP convention.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-platform-committee-wants-feds-to-turn-fed-lands-over-to-the-states

[emulatorloo]

1. We're all Ammo Bundy now.

with our highly edited little Constitutions.

[muntrv]

2. The GOP hearts Vanilla ISIS.

[muntrv]

3. If the GOP votes for this, let's send them the same gifts that were sent to Vanilla Isis.

[maxsolomon]

4. Fuck That

Take a trip into a Natl Forest versus a State Forest in WA. Both have been raped by Timber Companies, but the State Forests are 100% toothpicks.

GOP-controlled States would throw Conservation overboard at the 1st crisis. Never ever ever ever trust a GOP-led State Legislature to do the right thing.

[L. Coyote]

5. It never, ever belonged to states in the first place! Using the word "return" spins the issue.

And they want to do this because there are trillions of dollars to be stolen from the American people, you know, all those not white people.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Exactly! Except for the original 13, the U.S. Congress decided states' borders.

Even most of the original 13 had their original territorial claims modified.

And those borders DO NOT include federal land.

[greymattermom]

6. what about fires?

Who plans to pay for that?

[tanyev]

12. Obviously all expenses would remain the responsibility of the federal government

and all profits would belong to the solid Republican districts in each state. Obviously.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

7. Those Federal lands belong to all of us.

Some people don’t like public land. They say it should be “taken back” by private owners. They fail to note that federal open space in the West was always public land. After the Native Americans, it belonged to the federal government. Following a 40-year frenzy of free giveaways under the Homestead Act, colored by colossal fraud, Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Teddy Roosevelt set aside some of the remaining federal land as national forests.

Proposals to transfer land from federal stewardship to state or county governments are thinly disguised attempts to facilitate private ownership or unfettered development by extraction industries.

The principal organization pushing for liquidation of federal public land is the American Legislative Exchange Council, receiving 98 percent of its funding from large corporations like Exxon Mobil, according to the Center for Media and Democracy.

Those who prefer more private land and freer reins on development have a lot of America to choose from. Even in my rural county in Oregon, where more than half the land is public, the private land that remains would accommodate many times today’s total population under current zoning.

Nationwide, two-thirds of all the land is private. If the grand open and public spaces of Wyoming or Oregon are not your cup of tea, then maybe the private expanses of Illinois, New Jersey, or any one of 38 states with nominal public land would be a better fit.

The national forests, along with other federal property, are the birthright and heritage of every American, now and yet to come.

Those who want to dismantle this extraordinary estate and take it for their own fail to recognize that this land serves us all. They fail to recognize that when they talk about taking our federal land away, they’re talking about taking my land away from me, and away from every single one of us

[bucolic_frolic]

8. +10,000

Asset grab for corporations lobbying Congress

They're against pornography? THIS is the real obscenity

[alfredo]

13. The Koch bros want to mine uranium near Grand Canyon

Are their fingerprints on this?

[jpak]

9. I will buy all national parks and forests for a dollar

and post them no trespassing.

yup

[63splitwindow]

10. Return? Implies prior possession.

Since annexation or purchase or whatever it has been federal land hasn't it?

Imagine federal parks and monuments in the hands of local officials. They belong to ALL citizens of the United States, and rightfully so.

[uawchild]

11. Good lord....

Sure, lets destroy the national commons. What's up next, mining the Grand Canyon?

[alfredo]

14. The Kochs want to.

[DemoTex]

16. And on-line porn is a public health crisis ...

But gun violence is not.

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GOP Platform Committee headed for Cleveland
(Twin Cities Daily photo)