These cases of militia like / Republican state representative lobbying for the Western States to take over taxpayer funded and federally maintained lands — are becoming all too frequent and all too disturbing as to the probable outcomes of such lethal stunts. “Don’t tread on my protected lands and squander our collective resources.”
And, it’s not just the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s; it’s also Western States’ Representatives — forming lobbyist groups and trotting the message out there to ranchers and county representatives; stoking the fervor and fear.
In the end, we’ll end up the United States of privatized resources and no more publicly owned and shared lands, but, we’ll be looking down the long barrel at plenty of mining, oil drilling, deforestation, drought producing and manufactured meat facilities.
The New York Times looks at Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory's efforts to secure state control over millions of acres of Western public lands currently managed by the feds.
Ivory Leads Push to Take over Federal Land
Written by Golden Webb on 11 January 2016. Posted in Today At Utah Policy http://utahpolicy.com/index.php/features/today-at-utah-policy/8178-ivory-leads-push-to-take-over-federal-land
Report Jack Healy and Kirk Johnson:
Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah, has been roaming the West with an alluring pitch to cattle ranchers, farmers and conservatives upset with how Washington controls the wide-open public spaces out here: This land is your land, he says, and not the federal government’s.
*Graph of Land Grab Legislators — thanks to commenter “Vexed Weasel”
Ivory, a bespectacled business lawyer from suburban Salt Lake City, does not fit the profile of a sun-scoured sagebrush rebel. But he is part of a growing Republican-led movement pushing the federal government to hand over to the states millions of acres of Western public lands — as well as their rich stores of coal, timber and grazing grass.
“It’s like having your hands on the lever of a modern-day Louisiana Purchase,” said Ivory, who founded the American Lands Council {insert lobbyist group} and until recently was its president. The Utah-based group is funded mostly by donations from county governments but has received support from Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire Koch brothers.
The idea, which would radically reshape the West, is one that resonates with the armed group of ranchers and anti-government activists who seized control of a wildlife refuge in Oregon more than a week ago.
Greedy politicians like Ken Ivory (Ivory Homes, Utah — v. successful and reaally connected) and seedier grifters’ like Clyve Bundy and his sons, who with their co-horts, use force to extort and terrorize communities and threaten the sanctity of federally protected ancient Ancestral Ruins of Pueblo Indian -in the Blanding Utah incident. Many other Tribes’ have been offended and disturbed as well by these Malicia (Hater) ATV-hactivists.
Trevor Hughes, USA Today — May 10, 2014
BLANDING, Utah -- More than 200 people rode ATVs through a long-off-limits canyon in southern Utah on Saturday to protest the ongoing federal closure and demand more local control over land-use decisions. The ride drew promises of potential prosecution. Although the federal Bureau of Land Management's plainclothes rangers documented the ride through Recapture Canyon, they deliberately avoided any confrontation.
Five Face Charges in Wake of Recapture Canyon Protest Ride
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/10/08/five-face-charges-wake-recapture-canyon-protest-ride-157245
According to the BLM, the canyon was closed to preserve archaeological resources that were being damaged, including rock art, cliff dwellings and graves dating back 2,000 years. According to Lyman, who organized the protest, the closure was an example of federal muscle defeating local interests.
“The protest wasn’t about Recapture Canyon or ATVs,” he said. “It was about the BLM making arbitrary rules.”
The iconic land of southern Utah—sandstone cliffs, deep canyons and vast desert vistas—is a checkerboard of jurisdictions that includes federal, state and tribal land. In San Juan County, which sits in the southeast corner of the state and borders Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, only eight percent of the total 8,000 square miles is privately owned.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/10/08/five-face-charges-wake-recapture-canyon-protest-ride-157245
And then, we had to face the facts, we’re dealing with:
Two digit IQ’s and Huge Entitlement Issues
If wishes were fishes — apparently, it’s all in how you spin it and how many holes in the net the judge may provide…
SALT LAKE CITY — A 10-day jail sentence for San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman for an illegal ATV protest ride in a restricted canyon turns another page but doesn't close the book on the ongoing tension between southern Utah residents and the federal land managers.
"It will make people on both sides of the issue angry," U.S. District Judge David Nuffer said Friday before sentencing Lyman and co-defendant Monte Wells, who received five days in jail.
The judge also ordered both men to serve 36 months of probation. He prohibited them from advocating or encouraging activities that would violate federal land use laws. He earlier required Lyman and Wells to share in paying $96,000 to repair damage the ride caused in Recapture Canyon near Blanding.
Nuffer reasoned that a long sentence would "inflame" people who want to change federal land use policy, while no jail time would do the same for those who favor land protection.
At the same time, he cautioned against buying into a growing "mythology" that the federal government was out to get Lyman. Calling the case a "tragedy," he cast blame for the prolonged polarization over land issues on both sides.
"We’re all people," Nuffer said. "Can we reduce the bitterness and the battle and the conflict?"
The Bureau of Land Management closed Recapture Canyon to off-road vehicle use in 2007, citing damage to cultural artifacts in the area, but it let other authorized uses continue on some sections, such as use by the San Juan County Water Conservancy District. Many locals objected to the closure, asserting it was arbitrary and unnecessary, and thwarted a review process mandated by federal law.
Lyman conceded in court papers that he made a "mistake" in organizing and leading the May 2104 ride to express frustration over federal land management practices. But he didn't say that in court Friday.
"This was not an anti-government rally. I love the federal government," Lyman told the judge.
Lyman
His name says it all —
US | Fri Jan 8, 2016 7:37am EST
Oregon occupation leader rejects sheriff's bid to end standoff
MALHEUR NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ore. | By Jonathan Allen and Jim Urquhart
{excerpt from article}
FEDERAL LAND HOLDINGS SOUGHT
The Bundys say they want the federal government to turn over its land holdings in the area to local authorities and that they will leave after they have accomplished their goal.
Federal law enforcement agents and local police have so far kept away from the occupied site, maintaining little visible presence outside the park in a bid to avoid the deadly violence that erupted during conflicts with militants in Idaho and Texas in the 1990s.
But local officials have repeatedly asked the occupiers to go home, saying that even residents who support their views object to the illegal seizure of federal property.
"In reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States," Ward said in a statement earlier this week.
(Writing by Scott Malone and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
These ‘events’ are becoming all too common in the Western States ruled by Conservatives who in turn are controlled by corporate greed. Americans for Prosperity have the average American’s ideals and nuts in a vice and they gleefully egg on and pay to play with the mouth breathers
like the Bundy’s and the State Representatives who will sell off treasures that belong to the whole of our population for pennies on the dollar —
thinking that by supporting the tea party that they too will be part of that elitist one percent.
Makes one misty for the likes of Jed Clampett. An honest man who fell into a pot of oil on his very own land.
He didn’t rob the rest of the Nation’s Citizens and he didn’t ‘pal around with domestic terrorists’...