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Liberty Matters Alert | Aug 3, 2010 | Fred Kelly Grant --

All Americans who love their country should take heed immediately!

There is pending for a vote in the United States Senate a bill, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, which can change the face of America and the form of our government forever.

Landowners’ right to own and use their private property is endangered by this bill.

Congress is about to allow federal employees to spend $900 million a year for the next forty years to buy up private property for government control.  Congress will never review this appropriation for another 40 years.

The House of Representatives has already passed HR 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act of 2010.  In order to accomplish the biggest land grab in our History, Congress joined together vital energy reforms, funding relief for victims of the Gulf disaster, and lifting the cap on damages from oil spills.  Once again, all these issues of vital interests in the Gulf of Mexico right now were put in with land control measures in order to avoid resistance from conservatives who deplore government ownership of land.

The bill will be voted on in the Senate this week if Senator Reid can possibly arrange it.  He believes it important to get it passed, even if the bill has to go to conference where he can get the worst of both House and Senate bills into one that will easily pass on a Conference Report.  It is important that he get the bill passed prior to the August recess, and that means this week.

The bill will destroy the tax base for small towns, cities and counties; and it will, under guise of Gulf relief , expand the Endangered Species Act into a Species Protection Act whether the species is endangered or not.

The land base of private property that supplies property taxes to support local towns’ police forces, fire fighters, emergency medical teams, emergency equipment, churches and schools will disappear under the flooding of BILLIONS (not MILLIONS) OF DOLLARS to federal and state bureaucrats to grab private property, by condemnation if necessary.

That $900 MILLION never has to be appropriated by any future session of Congress.  Never again can Congress limit this bill through the appropriations process. So, the Agencies have a free hand to spend, spend, and grab land after parcel of land, regardless of what state of hardship the rest of the nation faces.

Amending the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act

So, exactly what does the House passed bill do?   First, after stating all the wonderful things for society can be accomplished, it simply amends the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965.  That Act has been bearable because it provided in 16 USC 4601-5 that all money authorized would be kept in the fund and not spent “until appropriated by the Congress to carry out the purposes of this part.”

This provision gave the people a chance to each year review what land grabs the government was trying to make and speak up in opposition.

But, the House has just amended 16 USC 4601-5 to remove that protection.   Section 403 (a) of HR 3534 provides:

The text of section 3 [16 USC 4601] is amended to read as follows:

“Of moneys covered in the fund, $900,000,000 shall be available each fiscal year for expenditure for the purposes of this act without further appropriation.”

The House Bill has thrilled groups like the Outdoor Industry Organization that says that this permanently funds the program under which Congress can “purchase land, waterways, wetlands, and other resource lands, and to provide matching grant assistance for state and community open space and recreation projects.”

That thrill chills the hearts of Americans who know that private property ownership was the single most important protection our Founders sought.  This bill makes it possible for the government to take with money what it can’t regulate out of existence.

Don’t be deceived if proponents of the bill say “well, sales will only be to willing sellers,” because 16 USC 4601-4 does not provide that protection.  The money in the fund is designed to be used to “provide funds for the Federal acquisition and development of certain lands and other areas.”  Nothing in that language guarantees the presence of a “willing seller.”

16 USC 4601-4 also provides that the land and water conservation fund is designed to provide American citizens “such quality and quantity of outdoor recreation resources as may be available and are necessary and desirable for individual active participation in . . .recreation and to strengthen the health and vitality of the citizens of the United States”

The emphasized words are the language of eminent domain.  The section has set up the “need and desirability” necessary to establish the public need that goes with eminent domain.

Does this all sound only too familiar?  It should.  Remember Don Young’s CARA bill a few years back?  CARA was the bill that would have committed billions of dollars for purchase through condemnation of private land, all in the name of outdoor recreation.  Referring to himself as the “Alpha Dog” he cried out “We can’t be stopped now” after his CARA bill passed the House, American Stewards of Liberty joined with other private property rights organizations throughout the country to lead a mammoth outpouring of opposition from the American people.  All focus of opposition was placed on the key United States Senators, and CARA was defeated.

This shows how none of us can ever rest on our laurels.  Each year, CARA in some form, has crept back into Congress slipping under that great curtain that rings the Senate floor.  Each year we have to remind our Senators that they represent their citizens who have had enough government control of land.

The availability of $900 million a year for condemning private property to be put into a non-taxable government ownership may well be the last nail in the coffin of  many small towns and counties throughout the nation that survive only on ad valorem property taxes.

Expands the Endangered Species Act

One more element of this bill that is terribly frightening is the section discussing activities to be funded regarding species to be given added protection outside the bounds of the Endangered Species Act.

Every time the Congress sees an opportunity to elevate the control over property in behalf of species protection, it slips the control into whatever bill it thinks will pass.

Hidden away in Section 238 of HR 3534 is titled “Wildlife Sustainability.”  To a casual reader, a member of Congress could explain that the section is designed to provide care and protection to the wildlife suffering in the Gulf, after all this Bill is being rushed because some relief for the damages in the Gulf is stuffed in here.  But, if one bothers to read the language, the section he or she will find that it broadens the terms of the Endangered Species Act just as the dreaded CARA did years ago.

The bill requires federal management agencies to manage the lands so as to “achieve, to the maximum extent possible, the survival and health” of the population of “native species or desired nonnative species.” No mention of any requirement that the species be threatened or endangered, just “native” or “desired nonnative.”

Let’s take “nonnative species” and look at the definition;  the term is defined as “those wild species of plants or animals that are not indigenous to a planning area but are valued for their contribution to species diversity or their social, cultural, or economic value.”  Tell me, what federal “biologist or botanist” would not testify under oath that any indigenous species would be valued because they diversified the species where they did not exist before?  Of course the same question put to a group of third graders would yield the same answer. Of course, if they weren’t there before and you move them there, diversity has been created and the new species has contributed to it.  Give us all a break. The American people are just not as simple minded as Congress believes.

So, the bill will give protection to an indigenous species “just because” and the protection will be to the “maximum extent possible.”   In Logan County, Kansas the county commissioners are fighting a gallant legal battle to prevent an injunction that would prevent poisoning of prairie dogs that will destroy the entire farm economy of that part of Kansas.  Why the fight?  Because a landowner who cooperated with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for placement of endangered species black footed ferrets on his property claims that the poisoning of prairie dogs endangers the health of the ferrets.  Under the Endangered Species Act, as it currently stands, Logan County and its farmers have a fighting chance.  If this bill becomes law, they lose and the short-sighted land owner and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service win.  Under this bill, the feds must use all their efforts “to the maximum extent possible” to protect the survival and health of the species introduced into the county for the first time.

The definition of “native species” means any plant or animal which happened to be indigenous to the land.   Remember that this is “any” species, not just threatened or endangered.  For every management area the federal land management agency is required to certify that “any activity…carried on within the planning area does not increase the likelihood of extirpation [to pull up by the roots, to abolish] of the population” of the native or nonnative species of plant or animal.

That means that grazing will automatically be put back on the firing line on every BLM and Forest Service allotment.  All the rabid anti-grazing organizations in the land will open their litigation war chests, funded partially by attorney fee-awards from sympathetic federal judges who will then take on the farmers and ranchers.

The pro-active requirement is that the agencies “manage lands…in order to achieve to the maximum extent possible, the survival and health” of the native and nonnative species, not “endangered or threatened species” but simply native and nonnative species.  This gives the federal managers the green light to curtail every authorized action on the federal lands: wood-cutting, grazing, hiking, off road motorized use, hunting, fishing, timber thinning, berry picking, all and everything that humans do on the public lands.

This bill expands the Endangered Species Act to the broadest possible impact, and never even mentions the Endangered Species Act or that the bill is broadening its impact.

Senate Must Block this Bill

Every parcel of private land in America is on the sales block unless the United States Senate blocks the Land and Water Conservation bill that just passed the House of Representatives.

To say the bill is dangerous to our American way of life is to put it too softly.  CARA was a baby bill compared to this.  That time, it was Republican leadership, through Don Young of Alaska, who led the charge to isolate and take private property.  Now, it is the Democrat leadership, which shows us only that Congress must be watched closely no matter who or which party is in control.  As Sir Edward Gladstone said “Eternal Vigilance is the price of Liberty.”  And “eternally vigilant” we will be.

We defeated CARA in the Senate.  Now, we must defeat the current version in the Senate.

YOU MUST CALL, FAX, AND EMAIL YOUR SENATOR TODAY TO SAY “DO NOT VOTE FOR THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND BILL.”

After you have done that, CALL, FAX, AND EMAIL EVERY REPUBLICAN SENATOR AND SAY “STAND UP FOR US AND BLOCK THE VOTE ON THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND BILL.  DON’T LET THE DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP GET TO THE 60 VOTES NEEDED TO CUT OFF FILIBUSTER”.

Two very important things to remember:  You won’t be able to identify the bill number, because there is no way of knowing how and where the crafty Senator Reid will place the House bill to disguise it from the public and even, if you can believe it, unsuspecting Senators.  So, warn the Senators you contact to watch for the Land and Water Conservation Bill in whatever shape it comes up for vote.

Second, this may be your last chance to fight to preserve the American way of life----to preserve the right to own and control property that is so fundamental to the Republic we honor each day.  $900 MILLION A YEAR FOR 40 YEARS CAN WIPE OUT PRIVATE PROPERTY IN OUR NATION.

Paul Revere sounded the alarm and Americans responded.  Today the Call would be “the Land Grabbers are coming, sound the word.”  Now, you must respond as did those first Americans.   CALL, FAX AND EMAIL YOUR SENATOR AND EVERY REPUBLICAN SENATOR TODAY.

American Stewards of Liberty
Copyright 2010
PO Box 1190 Taylor, TX 76574
asl@americanstewards.us
www.AmericanStewards.us