In DEC 1860 South Carolina announced that it was "seceding" from the Union. They asserted that the rights of the individual states trump those of the Federal Government.
The President Of The United States, Abraham Lincoln said "I don't think so".
Over the next 6 months 10 other states "seceded". The newly independent states then united together (how ironic) to form a new nation they called the Confederate States Of America (CSA).
On APR 12 1861 Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard fired upon the United States owned Ft Sumter in the Charleston harbor.
The President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln said "you're going to regret that".
4 years later the CSA was no more, over 900,000 "Confederate" soldiers were dead or wounded and the South lay in ruins.
The Federal Government and the very idea of the United States was victorious.
In JAN 2016 Ammon Bundy led a heavily armed paramilitary force in the seizure of the Federal property (hence the property of all the people of the United States) at Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
Bundy's mission was a simple one, he believes the Federal government has no right to own property outside of a few buildings and he also was determined to demonstrate that the Federal government was weak and ineffectual. If the Federal government failed to act, he posited, it could only prove that "Bundyism" and the well from which it sprang, going all the way back to the CSA , was legitimate and the Federal government was not.
The President of the United States, Barrack Obama, said...nothing.
The Federal government did next to nothing. It did send the FBI. The Republican head of the FBI sent a contingent to camp out some miles away who, presumably, watched events unfold on TV and the Internet like everyone else.
As a result of the silence of the Federal government (they seemed to hide in the corner and hope it would go away), and their lack of any effort to inconvenience the occupiers (no blockade, no shutting of utilities, nada) they ceded to Ammon Bundy the role of unofficial spokesperson for Americas’ Public Lands. Bundy of course does not believe in the concept itself and was free to disseminate that philosophy via the international press in daily press conferences over the next 30 days.
As a result Bundy became the voice of a national movement, a hero to millions, and an international celebrity. Ammon Bundy had cowed the Federal government by direct confrontation. In the meantime, Donald J. Trump was running for President on a promise to dismantle it from the inside.
Much to the delight of Bundy and Trump, their "liberal" detractors treated them as a joke. Focusing on posting memes and parodies and jokes while the actual government melted away.
Eventually, after a month of press conferences, the ring leaders of the Malheur occupation were arrested in a sort of Keystone Cops operation. The FBI never confronted the occupiers in force but waited until the leadership was en route to another community and arrested them. Unfortunately one of them (“Lavoy” Finicum) was killed and this gave their movement a martyr. (This FBI strategy reminded me of when I went out for PeeWee football as a kid. They would put all the kids in a ring and one in the middle would run full speed at the “wall” of players. If he came at you the idea was to block him. I turned and let him pass, and then grabbed his legs, tackling him. Needless to say, I was cut.)
Meanwhile, the Republicans were nominating Donald J Trump for President and included as a plank in their party platform a document on Public Lands that specified transferring them to the states:
That is why we support the opening of public lands and the outer continental shelf to exploration and responsible production, even if these resources will not be immediately developed. Because we believe states can best promote economic growth while protecting the environment, Congress should give authority to state regulators to manage energy resources on federally controlled public lands within their respective borders.
Also meanwhile the Democratic party was in a civil war. With one faction decrying “Elites” and “The Deep State”.
On OCT272016 the Bundy’s were found not guilty of all charges in Federal court trial of the Malheur occupation charges.
Less than 2 weeks later, on NOV08 2016, their champion Donald J Trump was elected President of the United States.
The “Elites” are gone. The “Deep State” has been eviscerated.
Unfortunately the “Elites” were behind the very idea of Public Lands.
The very idea of nature conservation was spawned by an independently wealthy aesthetic named John Muir.
Much of the land for the National Parks (I am not a fan of parks- after all, they're parks) was donated by Americas wealthy elite (Stephen Mather and John D. Rockefeller for example.) Theodore Roosevelt, the elite of the elites, the scion of a New York blue blood clan, created the National Forests (and forever became the mortal enemy of private property advocates). His patrician cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, expanded the parks and forests using his power, like his cousin before him, as President
Yes, the terrible elites are out of power now and the people have elected a populist. The "workingman's billionaire. The Public Lands will no longer be the domain of elite tree huggers. No siree, the common man will now be able to ride his machine, shoot his gun, build his camps. Freedom at last.
Now, in 2019, the people who challenged the Federal government’s right to own land at Malheur are in charge of Americas Public Lands.
Two of the greatest opponents of Public Lands are now in positions of power over those lands. Both were supporters of the Malheur occupation.
William Perry Pendley:
The former president of Mountain States Legal Foundation. MSLF under Pendley has for decades been one of the most vocal and strident advocates for privatization of Public Lands.
The MSLF has also advocated reducing the National Parks by 95% based upon many studies revealing that the typical visitor sees no more than 5% of a Park (no surprise that).
In July 2019 he was appointed by former coal lobbyist and current Secretary Of The Interior David Barnhardt (no Senate confirmation required!) to director of the Bureau Of Land Management (BLM). “The nations largest landlord”, the BLM oversees 248 million acres of Public Lands.
Mr. Pendley, a longtime conservative pundit,has written books with titles such as “Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America’s Frontier” and “War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Great Frontier.” His Twitter handle is @Sagebrush_Rebel, in reference to an anti-Washington movement demanding more access to public lands in the 1970s and 1980s. Environmentalists “don’t believe in human beings,” he declared in 2014. “The Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” he wrote in 2016. “Westerners know that only getting title to much of the land in the West will bring real change.”
…
Perhaps most concerning was Mr. Pendley’s writing during the armed standoff between scofflaw Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the BLM, in which he sympathized with Mr. Bundy and attacked federal officials for “overreaction.” In fact, Mr. Bundy’s brazen contempt for the law deserved no sympathy. Now, Mr. Pendley leads the agency that “overreacted.”
Land transfer advocate and longtime agency combatant now leads BLM
The Wyoming native has extreme anti-government views. He despises the Endangered Species Act, once writing the bedrock conservation law seeks “to kill or prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.” He has sued the federal government numerous times in the last three decades, including over ESA listings and national monument designations. He’s called the science of climate change “junk science” and blasted the Obama administration for waging a perceived “war on coal.”
“This is Sagebrush Rebellion 2020,”
...it is “hard to imagine” Pendley’s appointment isn’t a move toward eventually selling off federal lands or transferring control to the states.
In keeping with trumps government deconstruction policy of “a fox for every henhouse” Pendley was put in charge of the very agency he has spent his life’s work trying to destroy.
In his own words:
The Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold”
Referring to trump:
David fight[ing] Goliath out West.
Referring to climate change: (Tweet)
...political science or junk science, not real science
On the Antiquities Act: (Tweet)
Repeal it. It made sense in 1906, but did not make sense after 1977
Don’t revise. Repeal!
On the effort to protect the Sage Grouse:
...imposition of a Draconian and illegal rule that kills current and future economic activity.
On Fish and Wildlife studies:
...that are incestuous or self-serving (e.g., posted online by environmental groups) and for which the underlying data are never made public.”
41 percent of the authors were federal workers, and the editor, a federal bureaucrat, had authored one-third of the papers.
On the Trump administration environmental policies:
ending the War on Coal was huge for the West,
an end to the job-crushing blunt-instrument trauma of the federal Endangered Species Act.
Karen Budd-Falen:
Likely best known as Cliven Bundy’s lawyer, as a lead attorney for Mountain States Legal Foundation she represented many ranchers in disputes with the Federal government. In fact she was known as “a darling of the original Sagebrush Rebellion,” as well as “...the hired gun of choice for ranchers facing court action from federal agencies”. She is considered a leading figure in the privatization movement and, along with MSLF is closely associated with ALEC/Koch bros.
Thought to be a top candidate for BLM dismantler director under Trump she declined to apply as she was convinced that, even with a Republican Senate, she would be rejected (if she only knew no Congressional approval was an option!). She accepted an appointed position under Interior Secretary Barnhardt as deputy solicitor for parks and wildlife. She has since become Assistant Secretary for the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Parks. This in keeping with the Trump administration strategy of appointing people first to a position requiring no Senate review, then promoting them internally.
Falen has referred to BLM as “dictators”. She is the progenitor of the “county supremacist” doctrine. That county officials have greater power than Federal authorities in controlling BLM owned lands.
Critic Of Federal Public Lands Management To Join Department Of The Interior
...as a deputy solicitor, she has said she expects to work on legal issues surrounding the Endangered Species Act, the National Park Service and national monuments.
While it would appear, with these appointments, that the Trump administration is preparing to transfer or sell all Public Lands, another strategy seems possible.
In 2017 the Trump administration tried to sell off some Public Lands and met with public protest.
In 2018 things were quiet on that front.
Recently the BLM announced that it would be relocating BLM headquarters from Washington D.C and redistributing the employees over 12 Western states (this is also being done with other agencies- ie: FDA). It would appear a new strategy has been settled on: don’t sell or transfer the lands. Weaken or liquidate the management agencies and distribute EFFECTIVE power to the states (and counties). Maintain policy control from the White House and reprioritize land use based upon the Republican party platform of 2016. Another important element they are relying on is that, unlike other areas of government, when the land is gone it is gone. Environmental organizations don’t advocate for or collect donations for lands that have been converted to non conservation uses.
Since taking over BLM a few weeks ago Pendley has already removed protection from over 3 million acres.
This approach is working well in keeping public scrutiny at a minimum. The pace of reclassification is accelerating:
Trump Admin Leading ‘Brazen’ Public Land Liquidation In Alaska.
Trump Oil Boom Could Transform This Rocky Mountain Landscape Emails reveal administration officials want to shelve environmental policies to speed oil and gas development
30 million acres of public land in Alaska at risk of being developed or transferred
The quicker they dispose of/”repurpose” the land, the less pushback they get as there will be nothing to advocate for.
Soon it will all be over save the Ken Burns documentary.
UPDATE: 19SEP2019- The land transfers begin:
In the diary above I surmised that the administration had largely abandoned Land transfer in favor of a new strategy of repurposing. It now looks like both will be employed.
Interior Dept. Transfers 500 Acres Of Public Land To Pentagon For Border Wall
The Interior Department is transferring about 500 acres of public land to the Pentagon in order to construct about 70 miles of President Trump’s border wall, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The land was previously monitored by the Bureau of Land Management and will now be overseen by the U.S. Army. The 560 acre expanse includes 213 acres in New Mexico, 301 acres in Arizona and 44 acres in San Diego, California.
Trump Admin Leading ‘Brazen’ Public Land Liquidation In Alaska, Analysis Finds
If the Trump administration gets its way, approximately 28.3 million acres of federal land across Alaska could be transferred, sold or opened up to extractive development, according to a new Center for American Progress analysis of the federal government’s land management actions in the state.