Congress moves to give away national lands, discounting billions in revenue

[Bernardo de La Paz]

Source: Guardian

In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land. In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.

At stake are areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests and Federal Wildlife Refuges, which contribute to an estimated $646bn in economic stimulus from recreation on federal lands and 6.1m jobs. Transferring these lands to the states, critics fear, could decimate those numbers by eliminating mixed-use requirements, limiting public access and turning over large portions for energy or property development.

According to the Outdoor Alliance, US public land is the government’s second largest source of income after taxes. In addition to economic stimulus in outdoor activities, federal land also creates revenue through oil and gas production, logging and other industrial uses. According to the BLM, in 2016, it made $2bn in royalty revenue from federal leases.

Ignoring those figures, the new language for the House budget, authored by Utah Republican representative Rob Bishop, who has a history of fighting to transfer public land to the states, says that federal land is effectively worthless. Transferring public land to “state, local government or tribal entity shall not be considered as providing new budget authority, decreasing revenues, increasing mandatory spending or increasing outlays.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/19/bureau-land-management-federal-lease

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Giving away our children's inheritance for quick megacorp profits.
Brought to you by the Pave-the-Earth gang (Republicans and Dominionists).

[HockeyMom]

1. Big Yellow Taxi

http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=13

[xxqqqzme]

2. I feared this

move more than any other on November 9th, 2016.

[Tikki]

3. I know a person, runs a business that speaks of running off to the wilderness and....

beauty of the landscape and yet, thoroughly backs fracking and has participated in allowing said fracking.

Those people are hypocrites of the major, major variety.

Tikki

[tclambert]

4. I wonder if fracking in Yellowstone could hasten the eruption of the super-volcano.

You know that magma is percolating under there and has measurably raised the land in parts of the park. Plus, fracking, or rather disposal of wastewater produced as a side-effect of fracking, causes earthquakes. Put the two together and maybe the super-volcano pops a few thousand years early.

[Angry Dragon]

14. they really do not care

[Percy Cholmondeley]

25. You're right

None of us would have ever seen the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, or any of the natural wonders if it hadn't been for T. Roosevelt ("that damned cowboy", the other republicans called him). No, it would belong to the Kochs and the amway tycoon and his education-secretary wife and the like. And now it probably will. Today's republicans only have a duty to the 1%. The public good is something they don't even think about. They just talk about it. Like patriotism. It's something they can hide behind. When the state legislatures get their hands on it, it will be gone. Cheap. Bye-Bye, America. Thanks, Kris Kobach, mainly, for stealing the last few election cycles.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

26. Nothing matters but that the wealth of the nation be stolen from the many and handed to the few.

This is what you asked for, Trump supporters. Next time, go fuckyourselves, and leave the rest of us out of it.

[Mc Mike]

5. That's odd, coz that's what those ignorant dirtbag criminals in the bundy brigade wanted.

It's also what the nazi birch pig Koch brothers wanted. Very strange.

[KT2000]

7. +1

this coup was for the Koch brothers. They have already done the ground work for everything they want. They will decide when trump is impeached so they can install their guy Pence.
I bet Pence tells trump how pretty he is every day.

[Mc Mike]

9. Funny how the Koch pigs' fortune was made helping Stalin.

Now their puppet piss boy dRumpf is sucking up to Putin.

But the repug party spends all the rest of its time in between those two points calling all real Americans "commies" and "pinkos".

Oh, and ''traitors".

[Angry Dragon]

15. The New and Improved John Birch Society

[Mc Mike]

35. The moral is when they're hysterically screaming and crying about something,

hurling charges, getting really angry and worked up,

they don't really mean any of it. They just like to get mad and weepy, and yell and whine at the rest of the world.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. It's a resource grab for the GOP and their campaign contributors

absolutely outrageous ... these are the Christians, so called, besmirching
all that God created to line their own pockets.

[mopinko]

8. those states will be sorry, fast.

here in illinois i am betting they will give away a big chunk of the shawnee national forest.
there are already holes in it, little towns that were carved out when it was created. the state allowed fracking here because the coal is played out, but there are still gas seams.
the area around shawnee is already koch territory, or someone like them.
the forest is perfect plunder.

the reason they approved fracking was jobs. but tourism is the only other game in town and they are about to strangle the golden goose.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

10. Here we go - looting and pillaging public assets - on a scale unlike anything ever seen before. -

DT comes in handy for distracting the media and the public while the congress and their puppetmasters rob the candystore...

[hamsterjill]

11. My heart breaks for the wildlife.

Republicans have no regard for most humans, must less anything that breathes and is not human.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. America did not vote for this RADICALISM

I understand land management, tweaks to the rules, experiments in harvest and
renewal, public-private partnerships

This is like throwing the whole thing in the dumpster

Trump has made a mockery of everything he touched ... the Republican primaries,
the Republican Party, Populism, now the cabinet secretaries who stand against
everything they manage, the Arts, the election system ... there is no end to it

[Stonepounder]

13. Another win for stopping climate change.

A super-volcano erupting would have almost the same climate impact as a nuclear winter.

[jeffreyi]

16. This needs to be spread far and wide

Atrocity. Get it out there. Donate to the good environmental and public lands groups.

[diva77]

17. PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES IN DC & SENATORS!!!

This is not getting any attention at all!!! I just called my Representative's office -- the person who answered the phone was unaware of this latest under-the-radar rules change, but immediately looked up the Guardian article and said he would alert my congressperson.

“70% of the headwaters of our streams and rivers in the West are on public lands”

[mtngirl47]

31. CALL EVERY DAY!

I pick out one thing and call both Senators and my Congressman EVERY day!

Right now the phones are really busy--which is good! I just keep trying. Lighting up the phones keeps them on their toes.

[lillypaddle]

18. WTF are these asshats doing???

Can they DO that????

[angrychair]

19. I just isn't as simple as that

It's not as simple as adding a line to a budget and 'poof' all national forests and parks disappear.

There are dozens of laws that govern federal land that cannot be undone by a single line in a House budget.m
NOTHING in DC is that simple (or it would have been done already).

[diva77]

20. no, but they've made it significantly easier

bills proposing land transfer will now have an easy route to passage, as they won’t need to be backed by any financial justification.

[angrychair]

22. I get that

And I'm not in a spot where I can do the background research in order to give specifics reasons with links but my point is that a single line in a budget does not allow House to give Yellowstone National Park to the state of Wyoming or piecemeal out tracts of it to the highest bidder.
There are specific laws to prevent just that. There are a host of National Parks and preservation laws that Congress, in December of 2014 compiled under Title 54 of the United States Code.

A single line in a budget does not make Title 54 go away.

[logosoco]

21. Short sighted greedy bastards!

Sorry for the language, but repubs bring out the hate in me!!!!!!!
Arghhhh!!!!
And while I am already in it for language...FUCK EVERYONE WHO VOTED REPUBLICAN!!!!!!!

[Megahurtz]

23. OMG

[stuffmatters]

24. Koch Bros et alios...Wisconsin on steroids

[Eleanors38]

27. Been warning of this for some time, extension of "sage brush rebellion,"

The main opposition to the hand over of fed lands to corps has been a coalition of outdoors people. Yes, Martha, that includes Hunting organizations which have to fight also anti-hunting groups and some environmental groups who want to restrict hunting. Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Petersen's Hunting, even Gray's Sporting Journal have been editorializing for some time against the oncoming Koch-fueled divestiture. Good to remember: Less than 20% of gun-owners hunt, so the anti corporate-raid-on-public-lands is opposed by groups besieged on numerous sides. This is the result of years of festering splits in the environmental "movement" over degrees of public use, and conservation vs preservation (i.e., no hunting or other "consumptive" uses).

Oddly, the other main force in government who is leary of this corporate GOP plan is tRump.

[vlyons]

28. I can't begin to express how thoroughlt yjos pisses me off.

Greedy bastards

[cstanleytech]

29. Want to bet +98% most americans wont see an acre of this land and rather it will be

given and sold to a hell of corporations and private equity companies who more likely than not owned or part owned by the varies Congressmen and Senators?

[bucolic_frolic]

30. Raping God's creation to line their pockets

Meanwhile, are they doing anything morally upstanding?
Are they tackling pornography, incest, homeless kids and families,
racial oppression, toxic water and cancerous consumables?

Nah! Gimme money

[Feeling the Bern]

32. A lot of these national parks and monuments are in red states, like mine in Arizona

They voted for this. . .give it to them. Let the Grand Canyon become a fucking parking lot.

Wyoming always votes Republican. Let's rip Yellowstone and Grand Teton to pieces.
Same with Utah and Moab
Same with Idaho and Snake River Canyon

I have so little sympathy anymore.

George Carlin was right. Imagine this planet in 50 years. It's going to be one steaming ball of gaseous shit.

[pnwmom]

34. And a lot aren't. I sure as hell don't want to lose any in WA, OR, CA

or in any other state.

30% of the land in the US is Federal land -- and it's the second biggest source of money for the US after taxes.

Where do you think they'll make up for the lost earnings from the land?

Thoughtless people are the ones that got us here. So next time think before you spout off.

[Initech]

33. I just... nothing these fuckers do surprises me anymore.

[Coventina]

36. Are there lawsuits that can be filed to stop this?

Suing on behalf of the American people?