-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Powerful Lawmakers Try to Silence Property Owners Wes Vernon Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2001 WASHINGTON - The skids were greased. The script was prepared for a "hearing” on the "land-grabbing” (to quote the American Land rights Association) Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA). The bottom line for small property owners was that their views were not welcome. Powerful congressmen saw to it that the witness list was stacked, or so the opponents feared. But through the efforts of a handful of people who themselves knew a few inside-the-Beltway tricks, the small property-owners’ message got through. Not enough to balance the scales for "equal time” for "both sides,” but enough to cause one powerful lawmaker to get red in the face and another to nearly have a heart attack. As reported last week by NewsMax.com, CARA would ladle out $45 billion worth of pork over 15 years, which would be used by federal, state or local authorities, in cooperation with left-wing interests, to grab more land from small private property owners for some perceived "environmentalist” good. The committee came to order in a tense atmosphere June 20. The highly charged hearing of the House Resources Committee was ignored by the mainstream media. To them, heartland property owners were from "flyover country,” and thus apparently not "newsworthy.” The committee session made such a small dent in public awareness that details are just now coming into circulation. Representatives of the many angry "Sagebrush Rebellion” farmers, ranchers and homeowners in that vast red "Bush country” area on last fall’s electoral map told NewsMax.com on Monday that the three-hour hearing allowed the opposition only one out of about 10 witnesses to testify on CARA. More than 100 opponents had asked to appear. Most of these CARA critics never received the courtesy of an answer. They were convinced the purpose of no acknowledgement was to give the committee deniability — to be able to say no CARA opponent was actually turned down. However, a very few of these prospective witnesses did receive letters rejecting their requests to testify, an apparent slip at the committee’s office. 'Token Opponent' Fights Back "They figured they had to have one token opponent,” said Mike Hardiman, lobbyist for the American Land Rights Association (ALRA). So the committee went to Patricia Callahan, a lobbyist for the American Association of Small Property Owners (AASPO). "They thought she would be a patsy,” he added. First, because she is well liked around Capitol Hill. Secondly, because her organization deals mainly with urban property owners such as small landlords squeezed by rent control laws. "So they thought they had their token opponent.” "They didn’t think she knew anything about CARA,” said R.J. Smith, senior environmental scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). "But they were in for a surprise.” "Government programs should encourage small property owners, not stifle them, and certainly not compete with them,” Callahan said in her prepared remarks. AASPO opposed CARA, she said, because "it is the next step in an already flawed federal land policy.” She then proceeded to give the lawmakers a lesson in constitutional property rights. "Private ownership of real property is a fundamental principle on which our country was founded. Ownership of land is connected with freedom itself.” Callahan then quoted Thomas Jefferson, who said in 1816, "The true foundation of republican form of government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property in their management.” An Issue for Everyone, Urban and Rural This is not strictly a rural issue, Callahan said. Rather, the AASPO president defined the dispute over CARA as "an urban issue, a woman’s issue, a minority issue, and an immigrant issue.” An immigrant AASPO official, a woman who is from Switzerland, had repeatedly told Callahan that America "is the only country where ordinary people can hope to own real estate.” Urban landlords are watching the CARA debate precisely because they know the attack on property rights is not confined to country folks, the witness reminded the congressmen. Rent control has forced many of them to abandon their properties without actually being told to give them up. This resembles the manner in which rural landowners have been told they can hold onto their property - so long as they don’t mind the feds cutting off their water supply or denying access to roads, leading to plummeting property values. The urban connection was further cited by way of this example: How would a pipeline reach our cities if parts of the route were to be placed off limits by designating land as wilderness? That ended Callahan’s prepared remarks. She added some comments slipped to her by CEI’s Smith. He knew he himself would not be allowed to testify. He had tripped up Committee Chairman Jim Hansen, R-Utah, at a previous hearing on a similar issue. So Smith fed some additional material to Callahan. That part of the testimony mentioned that this very same committee only 10 days earlier had conducted hearings into the situation in the Klamath Basin of Oregon and California, where farmers who had lived off their land for generations suddenly had their water and their livelihood cut off because the feds had decided that the water could better be used to help a few species of fish. Smith deemed it reasonable to ask how this very committee could be so insensitive to property rights in supporting CARA, especially with the Klamath Falls scandal so fresh on its own record. Though Rep. Hansen has bragged of being "the biggest defender of private property,” Smith and Hardiman believe his CARA hearing was "a sham.” Sponsor Young and Tauzin 'Apoplectic' As described to NewsMax.com by some of those who attended the session, the prime sponsors of CARA, Reps. Don Young, R-Alaska, and Billy Tauzin, R-La., were "apoplectic” as a result of Callahan’s testimony. Young was so upset that, according to Smith, "his wife had to take him out of the hearing room” because "he’s had heart problems.” Tauzin - whose official House Web site pops up in French - apparently thought Callahan would make an ideal target. But she shot right back at his adversarial questions. As the questioning progressed, Tauzin’s face turned red. When it became clear that Callahan was nobody’s fool and was able to knock a home run at every one of his questions, the Louisiana lawmaker’s voice gradually went up several notches. In the end, he would interrupt her answers and end up answering his own questions with his own spin. >From the committee’s perspective, something went wrong. This witness was not following the script. As noted in the previous NewsMax article, CARA later, on July 25, passed the committee with all Democrats voting yes and Republicans split in two. The next stop, theoretically, is the House floor. But the GOP House leadership hopes it stays bottled up forever. Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., reportedly feels the Republicans cannot afford the national intra-party bloodletting on the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House debate on C-SPAN, as happened last year when CARA last came to the floor. And there is, to be sure, a fierce argument on CARA within the conservative pro-GOP coalition. NRA's Curious Support NewsMax.com has learned of frustration on the part of property owners who are dismayed that the National Rifle Association has thrown its support behind the measure. One possible explanation: Rep. Don Young is on the NRA's board of directors. J. Zane Walley of the Paragon Foundation has issued a "Paragon Action Alert” urging property owners to contact the NRA and urge that it take another look at the issue. Walley and others are startled that a group of rugged individualists such as the NRA would accept this legislation. Attempts to get comments from Chairman Hansen and Rep. Tauzin were unsuccessful. With Congress out of session, lawmaker comments are not easily obtained. NewsMax will make further efforts to seek comment. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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