A Profile in Determination

By the time the American Land Foundation was created in 1993, laws like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act had already been on the books for 20 years.  That meant the environmental community had a huge jump start at destroying private property in America.

However, a few individuals at the Farm Credit Bank of Texas (the Tenth District of the Farm Credit System) decided they’d had enough and were going to do something to fight back.  They decided to create the Farm Credit Property Rights Foundation (later changed to American Land Foundation), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping landowners protect their private property and liberty by fighting the government and the environmentalists.  They decided to go head-to-head with them.

The idea worked so well that one day the CEO of the District Bank that created the Foundation got a call from Bob Armstrong at the U.S. Department of Interior who demanded the entire district board come to Washington to meet with George Frampton, the Undersecretary of the Interior, the number two man under Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.  They wanted to know why the Bank was so involved in protecting private property and what it would take to get us to back off our mission.

The meeting abruptly ended when Mike Dail, chairman of the Foundation, told Mr. Frampton there was nothing he could offer that would make the Foundation stop its work.  Frampton stood up, told his minion staffers to wrap things up, and stormed out of the room.  Garry Mauro, who attended the meeting and was at the time the current Land Commissioner for the Texas General Land Office, came over to Mike and invited him to fly back to Texas that afternoon with President Bill Clinton on Air Force One.

Mauro wasn’t quite ready for Dail’s terse response and he too left in a huff mumbling a few choice expletives (or was that Mike?) as he jumped in his waiting limo that rushed him to Air Force One and the president.

Needless to say, by the time we had gotten back to Texas word had spread of our meeting and Mike’s response to the president’s invitation to fly on Air Force One.  Mike made sure the president and everyone at the Department of Interior knew that we at the American Land Foundation could not be bought at any price. We were created for one purpose – to protect the private property rights of all Americans. 

Over the past 15 years, we have accomplished many things.  One of the first major projects we completed was a documentary film called “Who Owns the Land, When the Environment Collides with the Constitution.”  Soon thereafter we produced a sequel called “Standing Ground – People, Property, and Power.”  We distributed for free over 6,500 copies of both videos that were shown on PBS and multiple satellite stations.  Today, they are still being used in college classrooms to show the detrimental effects of the environmental movement on private property.

Quickly after those two films, we created a national Task Force for Private Property bringing together over two dozen property rights organizations, think tanks, constitutional lawyers and prominent property rights leaders to create national legal and political strategies for property rights. 

To implement those strategies, we created our own distribution center and national alert system called Liberty Matters.  Together with Stewards of the Range, we made our voice heard on Capitol Hill stopping legislation with phone calls, faxes, and emails.  To this day, no other organization has had the success we have had in Washington at protecting private property.

In 1999, we filed a novel lawsuit called GDF Realty v. Bruce Babbitt that challenged the “Take” provision of the Endangered Species Act.  We used the argument that the Act violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution because six miniscule insects found only on our plaintiff’s property were of no commercial value, never traded in interstate commerce, and were wholly found on his private property.  Those microscopic insects (cave bugs) have prevented Fred Purcell from using his land for 20 years.  He’s lost most of his 2,100 acres to foreclosure and is now “negotiating” with Travis County, the City of Austin, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to use 22 of his 70 remaining acres.

They say timing is everything.  We took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and were denied without any explanation, but it was the very same week they ruled against Suzette Kelo in Kelo v. New London where they said eminent domain can be used by the government to condemn private property and convey it to another private entity merely because the new owner would bring in more tax revenue to the government.  One year later, President Bush nominated two fairly conservative justices to the Supreme Court that we believe might have at least heard our case and maybe even ruled in our favor.

Since then we have created PropertyRights.org, a website dedicated to information, regulations, rules, court cases, research, news stories, and legislation affecting private property.  It has it’s own search engine where anyone can locate thousands of documents that only pertain to private property, environmental issues and legislation.

We create LandGuard, the first and only pre-paid legal program for landowners to protect their private property.  LandGuard formed a national network of private property rights and constitutional lawyers to assist landowner/members.  At its peak, there were members in 38 states.  Since then, we have farmed the program out to LegalPlans, USA in Houston.

Together with Stewards of the Range, we created a program called “Taking Liberty,” a narrated program found on its own website at www.TakingLiberty.us and sold on DVD that contains maps, data, and information documenting how much of America is owned and controlled by federal, state, and local governments.  It has terrific explanations of how the environmental movement is destroying private property and the free enterprise system it inspires.  The program was last updated in 2007.

Over the years, we have tried every conventional method of protecting private property that anyone could imagine.  From the court house to the state legislatures to Washington, we’ve been there, done that.  But, the most exciting and promising effort we have now undertaken is something Fred Kelly Grant devised almost 20 years ago and has successfully been implementing it in two counties in Idaho and California.

It’s called “Coordination” and that one word has tremendous meaning.  We have coined the phrase CALL America (Coordinating America’s Local Leaders) to market and teach this new concept and it’s working.

Together with Stewards of the Range, we have spread the coordination strategy nationwide into 16 areas with as many other regions in various stages of completion.  This effort is proving to be the most successful method of protecting private property that we have ever been involved with.  We believe that in the next few short years, enough communities will be implementing this strategy that we will see the return of our free enterprise system one community at a time.

These efforts through coordination are the best, and last, hope we have at protecting private property in America today.  The American Land Foundation has never given up hope and we have some of the greatest members and supporters in the nation because of it.

Without the incredible help of the individual associations of the Tenth Farm Credit District, we would not be where we are today.  We’ve also been very fortunate to obtain private grants from the Scarborough-Linebery Foundation of Midland, Texas and The Armstrong Foundation of Natchez, Mississippi.  And, of course, our individual members who have never given up on our work, we are eternally grateful.

At the American Land Foundation we have always pursued the truth and, with determination, have held true to our principles allowing us the privilege of staying in the fight for private property.