[By Larry Wilcox]
The contrarian might say that Bullying by Bureaucrats is becoming a time honored form of harassment it would seem. Just drive up the coast of California and see all the ranchers’ signs by the freeways claiming the injustices by our government because their water rights were turned off and their 100 year old fruit and nut trees are dying along with their estate. Ask a miner who has been enjoying his placer gold mine for years about the land grabbing and the Fed’s subtle and overt tools that run from heavy daily fines to complete fenced off access guarded by Feds with fully automatic weapons. These past weeks Californians, while sleeping, lost over 4000 miles of roads closed in one fell swoop creating a de-facto wilderness area. Last night in the middle of the night, a Bulldozer came into the Mojave Desert and tore up miles and miles of roads.
Twenty million acres are up for closure per the Montana alert. The famous Wayne Hage's story of fighting multiple Federal Agencies for 17 years till his death and winning a long standing lawsuit with compensatory payments to his living family members is a story of ONE in Ten Thousand Americans who stood the test of time for principles, property rights, water rights and Freedom. Wayne Hage was fined, threatened, and even his cattle were rustled and sold at auctions while his water supplies were cutoff. Wayne Hage was a cowboy with a lot of "try in his heart" and it is a sad testimony that Wayne died, as did his Idaho Congresswoman Wife, before he could see his winning court
case against the U.S. Government. He was a testament to walking the talk of We the People.
Some people offer up from their lawn chair that Land Grabbing is alive and well and Public Lands have been targeted to become Federal and International lands with the help of the UN and UNESCO. UNESCO controls 47 of the National Parks in the USA and has quietly conducted an intensive research on water rights and the fear of inter and intra state wars regarding such diminishing water rights. UNESCO's study is veiled as a water management study of water and the inability for the human race to have "sustainability" with the shrinking availability of water. According to web sites like (www.libertynewsonline.com and www.morphcity.com) this is a calculated plan to de-populate the rural areas and take over all water rights by using the Endangered Species Act in synch with a program with the UN and related "legal treaties" called Project 21.
Property rights and the freedom to use public lands for such are thought to be part of our Constitution and referred to as our inalienable rights. However, if one looks at the recent map of the Wildlands Project, one sees that the herding of humans from the rural areas to the cities will help with "sustainability issues". Deep Ecology and their 8 Point Platform believe that all life, (human and non-human) have equal value and the resource consumption of the human is immoral. One former Nevada politician said, the heavy hand of government tyranny is taking up property as fast as it can under the guise of the environment and the Wildlands Project. The extinction of public lands is now a reality as congressmen and women are moving this along so fast that public hearings on these issues are
not always done, simply voted on. I recently asked a contrarian, when was the last time he reviewed any of this material or talked to his congressman about his perceptions. He said that is why he elects a Congressman and NO, he had not bothered to go beyond his cathartic complaint. Maybe he will check them out, tomorrow. Have you ever looked at the Federal Register or gone to nepanation.com to get updates on your Mojave mining project and he said no ….too confusing.
If you are a rancher you will be told that you are over grazing and your livestock will be removed from these public BLM lands and your lease cancelled for such. In a year or two you might prove to them that the grass is taller than ever and you were not and are not over grazing. Next it will be that the grass that is indeed taller is now the wrong kind of grass. You will then complain about the road that you used to drive to access your farming equipment yet the Forest Service has closed that road on your 60 year old private ranch and its leases. The BLM or Forest Service will then tell you that on their map that is not a road, and so they did not close a road, they just closed access to an area that is going to become a National "recreation" area and humans will not have access to such. If you moved your mother cows from the winter ridge to the summer pasture and any cows strayed during that cattle drive that will be used to fine you on a daily basis to put you out of business.
If you have lived in the Great Shasta Lake areas of El Dorado County, California and have been legally and properly mining with pre 1914 Water Rights you may find yourself shut down one day and given a $900,000 Fine by one regulatory agency with the others standing by to fine you to extinction.
Project 60 in Idaho is alarming Joe Citizen as Idaho is planning or perhaps by this date, allowing China to buy 50 square miles of prime Idaho property and pay NO taxes. Next, the U.S. government may wordsmith these documents by setting up preferred leases for foreign debtors and countries. We do not see any blue helmets in our cities yet but the elimination of National Sovereignty has growing symptoms suggesting the transition to global governance. The playing field is no longer fair as most of the NGOs working with the UN and World Bank are the environmental groups. They are co-writing many of these transitional policies and rules.
The Federal guidelines for the infamous Faith Based Initiative helps these NGOs even more as they have no capital gains and other tax benefits per the sec[t]ions 106 and 107 added to the Initiative. Nature Conservancy purchased lands that other cannot purchase and saved over $700 million last year in what some are calling more land grabs. Remember, taking Federal Money through an initiative means that you must adhere to strict Federal Guidelines and if you ever fall out of favor, it could mean endless lawsuits, audits and character assassinations.
If you are a miner, and have joined the regulatory MSHA, (Miners Safety and Health Association) fines may begin at $40,000 and up per ticketed item. A ticketed item may be a missing first-aid book or the exhaust on your generator and each item stacks up in money owed to the Feds or law suits. If you use small scale dredges you will be represented in the media with old pictures of old mining techniques which help with the negative marketing of mining. The new systems prove to be
very endearing to the environment but many do not have the budget to get their education to the world or fight the staff of 27 Environmental attorneys.
This ongoing coercion perception has even some police organizations upset as they do not always agree with the tickets and harassment the Forest Service and other groups are dictating and issuing. In Northern California, and Southern Oregon some of the Sheriffs have formed a group of Sheriffs for the Constitution and telling the Federal Agencies that they are overstepping their bounds of authority. The Sheriffs do not support these fines and tickets to harass the public and may not service such frivolous acts. The Sheriff of Plumas County said "I'll be damned if we are going to criminalize law abiding citizens who are doing nothing more than accessing public lands". The US Forest service are pulling guns, and giving tickets for abandoned equipment that has been left for one hour. The whole thing is out of synch with freedom and public access. This may be a looming lawsuit between agencies and cities as the conflict and finger pointing gains velocity and the nonprofit organization, Public Lands for the People, PLP applauds these actions based upon civil liberties. Jerry Hobbs of PLP states that people should Google the Wildlands Project Map where about 50% of the Country will be Wilderness and 40% buffer zones with no human access. Jerry Hobbs of PLP and Chuck Cushman of ALRA believe that we are losing thousands of jobs, thousands of opportunities to make a living, and thousands of private properties as the government deports rural America to the big City for sustained growth. Stack em and Pack em for the transformation to human zones! Hobbs and his PLP have been funding lawsuits and winning many of them for the past 20
years against the groups that are according to PLP acting in bad faith of the Mining Laws of the 1800s. As the Environmental Groups continue to market and advertise and brand overtly and subliminally I wondered how well the complaints were going with the guy in the lawn chair. I rang him up, and he asked if we could talk some other day as he had just finished laboring on the back 40 and was enjoying a beer today as he dangled his fishing pole in one hand trying to bob a Royal Coachman fly over a stream with his cell phone in his other hand. Just not good timing, so we politely agreed to the infamous…..tomorrow.
In Montana the Montanans for Multiple Use and the Clean Water Restoration Act are trying to make sweeping claims to water and land today. In their Montana Bill Watch web site they talk about the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) which is just one bill in the 150 bill package which covers 26 million acres and this will lock you out. S22 will add dozens of the new National Heritage Areas (UNESCO) and Wilderness Areas that will eventually be a land use control network strangling hundreds of thousands of local people and rural America according to the website, Montanans for Multiple Use. They go on to quote Sam Adams - "It does not require a majority to prevail but rather an irate, tireless, minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Perhaps this is why Ted Turner is buying up as much water rights in Montana and elsewhere. I called some people up in Montana, and they did not recognize any of these HR things or bills. They were busy trying to make a living and it was not easy these days according to them, government was slacking.
The state of Washington is now dealing with the UN and the convention on "Biological Diversity" and it was the Discerning Times goal to stop the ratification of these treaties according to Congressional Record S13790 according to a group called Sovereignty International. It is the goal of the Biological Diversity group (a history of law suits they have over the Tortoise and other wildlife) to protect the unprotected Wildlands of Washington State which they are claiming are roadless sites. Claiming they are roadless sites seems like a minor statement but is a key legal tactic and defining that they did not close access because there were no roads. The hikers, the ranchers, the explorers and miners all know there are roads everywhere but the Biological Diversity Groups want their own definition of a road and roadless and their own maps and to put this into Federal Recreation Areas so the road issue cannot be used in court as part of the debate. The sooner one defines and maps ROADS and TRAILS the better so we can all "get er done" with some more law suits. Ray Elcker of the National Federation of Wildlife, was quoted as saying their policy has always been aimed at ending grazing and agricultural water use on public land. Elcker went on to say.....How do you win?...One at a time until he goes out of business, he dies or you wait him out, but you win. You take back all runoff and all water rights. The chess game is making business a felony or so damn expensive to operate that you eventually cripple them or he goes broke or dies like Wayne Hage. It is time to read the Hage novel, Storm over Rangeland. Margaret Byfield who heads Stewards of the Range, an educational group based in Texas, works on these problem and government property-rights issues nationwide as the detail in the law can balance on definitions. Chuck Cushman’s, director of the American Land Rights Association
in Battle Ground, Washington said that he didn't know if his property rights organization would even exist if not for Wayne Hage, as few people have made more of a difference in the history of the West than Wayne Hage. His effort to protect the rights of ranchers and other private property owners paved the way for many to save their future. Often private land owners are told that the Government will buy from them or "willing sellers" but the art of obfuscation continues. I suppose if they turned your water off, fenced off your rights to grazing land for your income cattle or sheep, that you might soon become a "willing seller". If people would Google Agenda 21 for Dummies they would begin to see what is happening. When you ask both sides about conflict resolution and coping skills and solutions you begin to see various versions of Emotional IQ.
The 1866 Mining Law- HR 365, gave Citizens the rights of way with foot trails, roads or highways and in 1976 the (FLPMA) Federal Land Policy and Management Act RS 2477 grandfathered all the old "roads" from 1866. Today they are closing these roads and saying these are not "recognized roads" designated by the Forest Service. The perception of cannibalism in the country with the mine field of laws and righteous finger pointers is turning the country on itself. The story of access to public lands in the past 30 years can be summed up in one word: CLOSED. In California alone since 1996 the BLM set asides have increased by 360% through a series of court orders as the public sits in their lawn chair helpless watching the rights melt away. The designation process is done with little or no public input. Once the designation is complete the public has little or no recourse except to wallow in the misery of contrarian complaints. American Citizens access to public lands has
steadily decreased since 1976 from 470 million acres to 247 million acres today according to NEPA Nation a public land press in the interest of full disclosure. The next Godzilla land grab is the WEMO (West Mojave Plan) which was in a September 13, 2011 notice buried in an 80,000 page annual federal publication. The Rim of the Valley is another land grab where 170,000 private properties and 500,000 acres will be deemed a National Park. Chuck Cushman of ALRA states this is the federalization of Angeles, San Bernardino and Los Padres National Forests with the threat of eminent domain and aggressive regulation. Terms like land grab, Agenda 21, de-population and sustainability projects may not have been the original intention one wants to believe but the checks and balances in the system of Environmental Groups and these sporadic property rights groups are no longer an even playing field. One rancher said…."there is a bully in town".
Water and Land Assets are now in demand. How will we grow our food without water one asks[?] Dow Chemical and Monsanto who were the some of the original producers of Agent Orange who are no longer legally liable for that damage, are about to provide new 2,4D herbicide resistant GMO crops. You must log into the USDA site by April 27th and post your comments about the new Agent Orange Crops. 2,4D Herbicide is the 7th largest source of Dioxin and your probably do not want your kids eating those foods.
On January 12, 2012, Secretary Salazar, the Interior Department exercised "eminent public lands domain" and took away the rights of Americans to their constitutionally protected property. On this date, Americans were banned from exercising their
rights to access their public lands to explore and develop publicly-owned minerals on one million acres even if their families had been there for years. Jobs and income were now sacrificed as was the 5th Amendment. The 5th Amendment states that "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law". If the government can take your public lands and your historic mining claims without due process then it can take your rights away too.
Acclaimed legal scholar Phillip Howard observed in his book, The Death of Common Sense - "Coercion by government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now a common attribute. But it was not imposed to advance some group's selfish purpose....the idea of a rule detailing everything has had the effect of a reversing the rule of law. We now have a government of laws against men."
It is my humble opinion that we now have a very complex multi leveled matrix of Laws and it may be at the tipping point that many average citizens may be Peter Principled with respect to this legal complexity and as a result, often step on the wrong land mine attracting law suits from multiple regulatory agencies. The other problem is citizens are not wise to wordsmiths and the public notices are misconstrued with legalese and veiled verbiage. Perhaps, in many cases, the average Joe Citizen is continuing to relax in willful denial.
When it comes to the strategy of lobbyist getting laws and mandates in place and then strategically moving or herding Joe Citizen to the next step of compliance most citizens are lost and revert to this habitual denial and focus on the remaining choice,
surviving. In technology you want to become the standard and then force everyone to follow and you collect a royalty. CDs, DVDs, MPEG 4 were some of the so called strategically placed standards. This is what lobbyists are doing in the background with laws, setting standards so you have to follow them.
When you have a population base who does not research the sites that post key updates and potential new laws then you have more of the same post law problems which are encumbered with shoulda, woulda, coulda type complaints that are now irreversible. And last, when you have a population base that does not vote or does not understand the power of a vote, and complains with fear, that you have a government that is capable of becoming a powerful bulldozer, and that fear may come true with reckless abandon. If the UN and government have agreed on this Agenda 21, and are using the Endangered Species Act and Regulatory to herd people out of the "non-human zones" per the Wildlands Map and want to control the water then we probably will see a flur[r]y of Laws that are soon to be no longer domestic but in fact International Law. Conspiracy or fact? Rhetoric or altruism?
We The People……need to cowboy up like Wayne Hage and walk the talk! Did you vote? Did you go and look at the website NepaNation.com? Do you understand the laws? Did you complete the due diligence like a responsible Citizen? Do you have water and property rights as a Citizen[?] Soon we may be asked to define property and define Citizen? People are now losing their land rights and their water rights. As they lose their jobs and income one begins to wonder how important is each species. As seniors and children go to bed hungry at night, one
wonders why compromise cannot be part of the Tortoise clubs perspective. If you deprive the human from sustainability you might have brewing some volatile cultural differences between the environmental bureaucrats and Joe Citizen. It has been stated that the Department of Interior in their Appropriations Bill have already buried the language in two paragraphs that they will then smugly reiterate to the contrarian that they "published it" for all to see and react. This practice is like the BLM posting something in a multi thousand page document and stating that it is published but you must drive to their offices to pick it up and read it and you must react in no longer than 30 days. The paradox is the bureaucrats are being paid by Joe Citizen yet, they have learned the expertise of obfuscation and wordsmithing which they use on their taxpayer…..or should I say employer? Obviously the taxpayer warrants no respect anymore and is treated accordingly. One muses - He does not vote, nor does he read anything…..so just get it past him before he whines which will last a week or two only.
On a positive note, did you ever wonder what it would be like to have transparency without willful denial[?] Did you ever wonder why people cannot just work things out with coping skills, and conflict resolution skills that lead to wise compromise? Did you ever think that lawmakers have assumed we do not care and that we are a non-participating citizenship? The checks and balances of the government rely on the Feds, the States and the People. The habit and model of how our government works alone or with limited participation today may in fact be the problem. So, is the systemic carcinogen the government or the laissez-faire attitude of We The People?
http://www.nepanation.com
http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_30857.php
www.morphcity.com
www.AmericanStewards.us
Research BLM; Dept of Interior; PLP; ALRA; NPL NEWS, Western Mining Alliance, BLM Wyoming RMP, Pick and Shovel Gazette; Wetlands and BioDiversity, Project 21, UNESCO and Water Management; The Las Vegas Journal – a Tortoise tale; Wayne Hage, Gold Prospectors Association of America; NPL News; Wildlands Map Project; DTNA; For the Good of All; NEPA Nation; National Heritage Site; Montanans for Multiple Use; Bill Watch Montana Legislature; Discerning the times; The Nevada Journal ; National Association of Rural Landowners; Mining Law; Spanish Land Grants; Stewards of the Range; Judge Loren Smith on Hage; Range Magazine; Pine Creek Ranch; Las Vegas Sun articles; Reno Gazette and Journal; Women in Mining; Kern County; Death Valley, morphcity.com, libertynewsonline.com,
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