See the nearby response to khalling.

The original Dept of Interior dealt with public lands and was built around the General Land Office and Indian affairs. Most of the public land was presumed open to settlement by the public, available to be claimed for private ownership as previously unowned land. The beginning of what became the progressive movement in the last part of the 19th century fundamentally changed that to a mission for permanent and expanding government ownership and control through progressively accumulating acts of Congress, without regard for the lack of Constitutional authority. That is how we got today's problems ranging from bureaucratic abuse of western ranchers where private property is not permitted, to the takings of private homes, businesses and land by the National Park Service. There was no legitimate Constitutional original purpose or authority for the National Science Foundation, which was created by Congress in the middle of the 20th century to consolidate and expand government control over science through infrastructure and funding -- in the name of "science".

Excerpt from Ayn Rand's 1946 response to an inquiry from Kelsey Guilfoil of the Chicago Tribune's Magazine of Books asking if she would be interested in writing book reviews, quoted in The Letters of Ayn Rand, Michael Berliner, editor:

"I would have liked to review Animal Farm—though I consider it a very bad book; but it has great historical significance—as an eloquent and frightening revelation of the mind of a modern socialist. (l mean, the author. The book is not anti-Communist, you know. It's merely anti-Stalin, but pro-Communist. This should have been said in reviews, but wasn't.)"

Orwell was a Fabian socialist.

An interesting 1946 letter on Animal Farm from Ayn Rand to Leonard Read (founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, publishers of The Freeman) quoted in Letters of Ayn Rand, Michael Berliner, editor:

"As an advance warning, for God's sake DON'T recommend Animal Farm. You have probably heard about it — it's a little booklet that has just come out and is being whooped up as a lesson against Communism, which it is not. I have read it. It made me sick. It is a book against Stalin, not against Communism. In fact, it is the mushiest and most maudlin preachment of Communism (I suppose the author would call it Socialism, but there is no difference), that I have seen in a long time. The moral of the book is not: 'Communism is evil,' but: 'Stalin's Communism is just as evil as Capitalism.' Don't let's help to preach that idea."

An excerpt from Leonard Peikoff's book, Objectivism:The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, contrasting Anthem with Animal Farm:

"Ayn Rand is more realistic than the panicky anti-communists of the Cold War era, who trembled before the alleged practicality of dictatorship. The best symbol of this issue is the contrast between two projections of a collectivist future: George Orwell's 1984 vs. Ayn Rand's Anthem (which was published more than a decade earlier, in 1938). Orwell regards freedom as a luxury; he believes that one can wipe out every vestige of free thought, yet still maintain an industrial civilization. Whose mind is maintaining it? Blank out. Anthem, by contrast, shows us "social cogs" who have retrogressed, both spiritually and materially, to the condition of primitives. When men lose the freedom to think, Ayn Rand understands, they lose the products of thought as well."

A person could be a communist, but even communists admit that only socialism is realistic, not communism. In the Soviet Union, the going joke was "we see communism on the horizon..."

As to the difference between socialists and communists, it is rather minor. Socialists are a bit milder in their methods, leaving eventual enslavement and murder to the communists.

Utopians generally plan for others, not for themselves. The authors of this claptrap fully expect they would be in some lofty position well above the bucolic "community members."

Cutting taxes improves life for everyone, every time it is tried - because it reduces the power of the nanny state bureaucrats. They can't sick the alphabets soup agencies on you business or farm when they can't confiscate my wealth first through taxation.

Actually Kansas is oil rich. The EPAs new rules on guarding the prairie chicken have meant compnies are abandoning oil rigs. As well, rural areas of most states have been hit hard by the recession. The middle class of these communities have shrunk. People move closer to urban areas for work.

I think we should allow communities more right to choose their own rules, so people could build open "gulches" within the US.

People who write such pap don't have the cohones to be a leader of any sort. They are at best, the Elsworth Tooheys of humanity.

The emphasis is most decidedly RED!

Why would they use tax money to sustain a project that only supports the views of some? I mean, spending it on the military is justified, but on some kind of commie big-government project? Seriously?
And I haven't even named that they are trying to make this ACTUALLY happen.
I hate how the Federal government can use people's money for anything that supports the views of the current governing group

I love the laws of Thermodynamics!

a distinction without a difference

This reads like We the Living. I expect to read of how someone died trying to crash the border.

But what do you expect from a university community, Especially in Wisconsin?

What a mess!
Politically motivated art, maybe. Science? Not a chance. Time to shut down NSF, and then keep going...

Sustainability isn't sustainable because of entropy.

Hear hear

If the whole thing weren't so utterly laughable, I would be concerned.

What I want to see is them try to actually LIVE like they say for a couple of years. Have them put their lives where their mouths are. I'd bet less than one in a hundred stays longer than a couple of months.

"In the scenario where Americans “shift our values,” people live in hippie-like communes after “youth culture” convinces the world to give up their cars and eat vegetarian."

---How do they get the food stamps too all the non-productive parasites on our current society, or the masses in NYC, Chicago, LA, Detroit, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston. I guess that is why they need to take away all the privately owned guns so they can reduce the population to sustainable levels.

"The protagonist of the story is Rosa, a “community organizer” for a United Nations youth group “Badgers for Our Future,” who presides over the only holiday celebrated in the community, Earth Day"

---How quaint. A community organizer. The masses only need to be properly conditioned. Lucky, you nailed it in your post. Just like Orwell’s “Animal Farm” – everyone is equal, it is just that some pigs are more equal than others.

"The community shares economic resources, as well as goods and services, such as “vehicles, appliances, equipment, meals, and expertise.” Material wealth is criticized, and the community lives by the slogan “rich in time; sufficient in things.”

---Who fixes this stuff when it breaks. Who creates the new machines when the old machines wears out. Or they just revert to slave labor at some point. And “expertise” will be forced to be shared? You cannot force the mind.

"Rosa celebrates a court decision that forcibly took property from wealthy individuals as a required step to place the community above the individual."

---Now this is a novel concept – state ownership of all property – I thought we had a name for that. I don’t recall it being successful as a concept or in the execution of the concept. oops, little Freudian slip there.

"Citizens of Yahara are “much less reliant on cars,” the only ones left on the roads being hybrids or electric, and the roads are full of bike lanes to “accommodate the growing masses of bike commuters.”

---Sounds just like the workers paradise in North Korea.

"The UN youth movement helped usher in this “new world order,” where population growth has declined, use of fossil fuels has largely been deserted in favor or wind and solar, and a cross-country train system has replaced air fare that has become too expensive."

---All right! Trains are back. Now we can truly have a Non-fiction version of Atlas Shrugged with real trains. When do they impose Directive 10-289?

"Americans now engage in the “pursuit of sustainable happiness,” by adopting a global Gross National Happiness (GNH) index as “its official gauge of prosperity,” replacing GDP."

---Just like liberal statists. When the misery index gets so high that it pegs the needle, create a new term that you can control to convince the masses that they are happy.

"However, pockets of “traditionalists” still threaten the “winds of great change.” The so-called traditionalists have “been slower to accept or adopt the newer norms, feel society has not necessarily gotten better with the Transition, since certain conveniences and privacies have disappeared.”

---OK, I just have to puke now. Of course all relationships are public now. You can have what ever you want, whom ever you want in any way you want and it is all OK except to those so-called traditionalist who are slow to adopt the new norms. Call me old fashioned and try and take my property or enslave me to your philosophy and I will show you the winds of change as it is discharged at 1600 feet per second in the form of 170 grains of copper-jacketed lead, with a controlled deformation tip of course. See point #2.
But I digress.
Cheers