jb, please keep those bidders in this country...too many acres are already under the control of other nations like China or entities like the U.N. Even better, return them to the states in which they sit and let the states take care of it. :)

Thanks,ewv--we will send the info on to the community leader who is in charge!

Or just to die. There 's too many of us

In fact, I had thought about Clinton's usurpation of the Utah coal. I worked in a coal and heavy hydrocarbon chemistry group back then.

Contact the Pacific Legal Foundation in California. They are a recognized "public interest" law firm specializing in defending private property rights in cases like what you describe.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a major source of pressure for government control. They operate as a real estate front for the Federal government, flipping land to agencies like the National Park Service and the US Fish & Wildlife Service, exploit insider connections to set priorities for government acquisition, and are thoroughly entrenched in government controls in all states and many foreign countries. TNC lobbied for and got state preservationist laws restricting private property in all the states and even planted its own personnel in state agencies to run them. Do NOT donate to TNC.

You couldn't. Civil Service employees operate under enormous legal protections, which is how so many leftist ideologue activists become entrenched inside the bureaucracy.

You may have been thinking of National Monuments, which the president has the authority to decree for any Federal lands (including the entrapment of private inholdings). That power is a corruption and abuse of the Antiquities Act of 1906 which was originally sold as preserving small historic sites such as Indian artifacts on Federal land in the west, but which has been exploited ever since to lock up massive amounts of land.

Clinton did that at the end of his administration -- along with pardoning terrorists, etc. --at the almost 2 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, cutting off massive deposits of coal in a controversy still being fought in the courts. There is a real danger that Obama will repeat this pattern before his term of office is over -- including collaborations with wealthy "private" viros and their pressure groups buying land as a "gift" to the government in order to impose Federal control. Once a National Monument is established, it is politically easier to turn it into a National Park.

A new National Park requires Congressional approval, but once they have it, the President, his Interior Secretary, and the National Park Service bureaucracy have enormous arbitrary powers including eminent domain.

Restore the Potomac wetlands, yes, but state parks are still government run parks with eminent domain authority to get the land and taxes to support them.

Yes, Robbie, there are a few examples out there, even a little one like the one our tiny little beach community was involved in. the county decided it wanted to make our community's private beach into a public access and so cut down all kinds of foliage (against their own laws) to make a parking lot in the sand. They also moved the cement blockades. We rented a backhoe, put the blockades back in place and stood there waiting for trouble to develop. The police showed up, with a K-9 unit (!), but we were just standing there on our own property, so they did nothing. It was all caused by a county councilman who decided that the county owned 7% of the 100foot beach and therefore had the right to do anything it wanted without anyone's permission... It's been a battle ever since, with lawyers going to court and no judge bothering to look at the deeds and paperwork that govern the land.

Objectivism's view in politics is very clear. The only proper role of government is to secure individual rights and not to violate them. Government owned parks doesn't meet that standard -- that activity has nothing to do with securing rights.

The Nature Conservatory and other organizations are providing for wilderness areas buy buying land that is for sale. This is the way that I think parks should be created. If someone wants to buy a big chunk o'land and dedicate it to regulated public use and put together a trust to control it down the years...that is something that provides for the desire of people to camp in nature once a year - but in this case, the hunk of nature is not owned by any government.

So, Yes on the public parks idea but No on the Federal parks idea. (I have learned more about federal parks and land use on this list than in any other venue.) On the State parks...I am not so decided. I think it depends on 'how the State got the land'. Could a private party give the state a park under the condition that it would administer it? That might be a fair deal.

I do not hold that the Indians are the actual owners of the land. The current Indians are not the original inhabitants - they took the land from predecessors, just as our European ancestors migrated into Europe and conquered land there.

Jan
(But if you ever donate to the Nature Conservatory, they will hound you longer than an alumni association.)

Tear down everything Mr. "You Didn't Build That" has built.

Actually, we almost exterminated them - I think pretty late in the game ~ 1890 or so. They lost so many people that they had to purchase wool yarn from Pennsylvania (which is how I came across the data - I was trying to track the origin of 3-ply yarn. Three ply yarn is termed 'Navaho ply' by us white folk; apparently the Navajo call it 'white man ply'.).

Jan

I don't wanna take a turn. I really like your list!

Jan

Good points and good history. The equal footing of a State such as Nevada has been said to be subverted by agreements, in this case the Enabling Act for Nevada in 1864 that was approved by Congress and the Territorial Government in effect at the time of the Act. The enabling act indeed has language leaving the public lands with the federal government and after Territorial Status. The key thing to know is that an action by the Territorial Government is not binding on the subsequent State. Look to the enabling act for Oklahoma where the Territorial government attempted to stipulate that the State capitol would be Guthrie, Oklahoma. We know how that turned out.

The reason that Territorial Acts are not binding on the subsequent State is just that: The Equal Footing Doctrine. Nevada passed its NRS Statutes 321 series acknowledging this power and jurisdiction and laying claim to the public lands. You are correct that politics, primarily sell out politics of those favoring federal hegemony and largesse undermined the 321 statutes by leaving it to the discretion of the Attorney General. In Nevada, the Attorney General is an elected position and the battle has been on to ensure the statists have always controlled that seat. But ownership is there for the taking, if the State showed enough backbone.

As for a State constitution empowering a State to create parks, no need, that is one of the many powers left to the State, hence the many numerous State Parks in many States. The wisdom of such collectivism is another matter of debate, but at least when at the State level, it is closer to the People affected.

There is also another Constitutional Doctrine regarding the abdication of Constitutionally separated delegated powers. The separation of powers both horizontal and vertical cannot be abrogated between branches of government and between the States and the federal government. i.e., the consent of State legislatures to the ceding of land to the federal government within their borders is unconstitutional and null and void from the get go.

The solution of course is in the wisdom of our Constitution - if it were to be followed. When not followed, in every arena and endeavor it creates a mess, a milieu of corruption, influence, coercion, bribery, and all to the general degradation of the life, liberty, and happiness of We the People.

I stand corrected.

Is there any state constitution that empowered a state to create parks? The tenth amendment leaving powers to the states not explicitly granted in the Constitution to the Federal government, but that does not make it proper for state government to be statist and collectivist. A big factor that prevented reforms in the 1980s of Federal land was the infighting within the sagebrush rebellion over whether the Federal land should revert to the states or to private ownership in states like Nevada.

The 'equal footing' of the newer states in the west was subverted by agreements, as a condition of statehood, to turn over all the unowned territorial land to the Federal government. At that time it was still expected that the policy of settlement and claiming of unowned land would continue, but with the process administered by the Federal government instead of the territories as they became states. That changed dramatically with the onset of the early progressive movement in the last part of the 19th century when the Federal government reversed the policy of settlement to entrench permanent Federal control over the unowned land.

As for the National Parks, they were initially carved out of 'public' lands in the west, then taken from private land, often by eminent domain. The state legislatures have routinely consented to the ceding of land in the states to Federal control under Article 1, section 8, paragraph 17 (even though there is no Constitutional authority for National Parks there or anywhere else). The National Park Service was created by Congress as an Executive agency in 1916 under the progressives. By the 1920s and 30s thousands of people in entire communities were being displaced, along with seizing the timber lands, in the east at the Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Parks. They have continued that policy ever since, which has only been politically slowed by public resistance.

The problem of Federal land in western states like Nevada is only a part of the more general problem of losing private property rights everywhere, including the threat of Federal eminent domain and regulatory takings of private property driven by the viro movement.

A thing of beauty becomes less so if you cannot raise crops, drink water or feed yourself. There are many reasons to sustain the growth of population through natural resource management. Everything the government does, and that includes National Parks, can be done better and more efficiently, and probably cost less by private enterprise. Remember just a little while ago, how Obama closed National Parks and monuments for no legitimate reason? The government has way too much power in every aspect of its endeavors. It's an octopus invading every aspect of our lives with its tentacles, and we are its sustenance.

The Indians were tribalist collectivists with no concept of private property rights. Their control over land they mostly wandered through was a primitive form of political control, not ownership. They had no land rights to "respect". They weren't fighting over property rights, they engaged in constant senseless wars between tribes.

You can't 'steal' something from someone who has no concept of ownership, only tribalist control, and there is no 'right' to maintain collectivist control anywhere. Anyone had a right to settle the unowned land and establish a more individualist form of government. Unowned land in the wilderness was properly claimed by individuals settling and using the land.

In the early history of the settlers, much of the problems in claiming land were obstructions from "grants" of land from royalty in England giving their cronies the privilege to control vast areas they had no moral right to, and who then tried to impose a form of feudalism and quitrents to be paid by settlers. It lasted for a very long time in some places, but was eventually broken up, even though the system of taxes on land continued. There was a lot of government corruption and statism (including theocracy in the earliest period), causing controversy and resistance from the people in the evolution of the American colonies which isn't normally taught in school history.

Remember that the earliest centuries of settling the American continent were pre-Enlightenment, but it was still a more advanced stage of civilization and personal individualism than the primitive tribalism of the Indians.

National Parks are established by acts of Congress, not executive order.

The National Park Service has taken millions of acres of private property by eminent domain and constantly lusts for more.

This is illustrated by the travesty imposed by the National Park Service in the Cuyahoga Valley in Ohio, which was the subject of an older Jessica Savitch PBS Frontlines documentary "For the Good of All" that you can watch at the American Land Rights website http://www.landrights.org/VideoGoodOfAll... The travesty at Cuyahoga is unique only in that it was caught on film by documentarians. It illustrates the mentality of the bureaucrats very well.

Govt. should only own land required for those legitimate functions that protect rights. NPs would then exist to the extent that private enterprises deemed it profitable to purchase the land and open it to the public.

This is a topic that I have paid a lot of attention to. Living in the State of Nevada that is purported to be 87% "owned" by the federal government, this has been a big issue affecting the quality of life for citizens.

The issue is very simple, the history of how it has all been usurped is long and complex. But in short Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 outlines under what terms the federal government can own land within a State. Post Office lots, arsenals, forts, dockyards to serve the federal government's limited duties. Embedded in the Constitution in the Property, Supremacy, and General Welfare Clauses - those much abused excuses for rampant, unlimited federal expansion - is the Equal Footing Doctrine. This Doctrine is simple. Any new State admitted to the Union does so on an Equal Footing with the original 13.

Did the federal government own land within the original 13? No, the colonies preceded the federal government, so all that was owned within the early States was sites for those exact enumerated purposes - forts, dockyards, arsenals, post office lots, etc. And requiring cession from the State wherein the property may lay.

So, we come to the Territories acquired by purchase under Treaty. Louisiana Purchase, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, etc. The language in the treaties specifically state that the lands will be held in trust, as was held in the original Northwest and Southwest Ordinances, until such time that these territories be admitted to the Union as States on an Equal Footing as the original 13. The feds have no such power to retain "ownership" of public lands within a State.

Now, what if the federal government should create a National Park before such region be admitted as a State? One might be tempted to argue, as in the case of Yellowstone created before Wyoming was admitted as a State, that the Park could stand as a Park. However, there is no enumeration in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 empowering the federal government to create National Parks.

That is the purview of the States, for which the Tenth Amendment reserves all other matters not specifically delegated to the feds. While we may enjoy the Parks and Monuments and may wish to maintain them as such (or not), this is a State matter alone. So, the 87% of Nevada that has been purloined by the federal government is actually State public lands for the benefit of Nevada citizens and others. And this through privatization of various rights and titles - or State Parks. Anything less renders the citizens of the State of Nevada as second class citizens to those of other non-public land States.