Good evening again David! David Terry wrote to Frank Reichert...
> 33,738,380 acres in Idaho are owned by the federal government > (63.7%), 2,697,771 acres are owned by the State of Idaho > (5.1%), 16,405,142 acres are privately owned (31%), 119,283 > acres are owned by cities and counties (0.2%) > > With 63.7%, Idaho ranks fifth in percent of land owned by the > federal government. We have to be very, very careful with this issue, as I've pointed out several times. Technically, there are Constitutional and other Charter issues here that we had better work hard over the years to get into the Federal court system, or perhaps a better venue, a conclave of Western States. The Federal Courts likely could not be impartial, or would lean heavily in favour of the Federal Government's position on ownership. Harry Browne in his 2000 Campaign really bungled it badly on this issue. His nonchalantly chose to take a position of selling off, and privatizing federal land so that would fund a privatization and phase out of Social Security. At that time I pointed out that legally the Federal government could not sell the land, since it owns only a very small fraction of what it currently administers. And the key word here is 'Administers'. There are a couple of things in play here in a concurrent fashion: 1. The Constitution spells out specifically what the Federal government can own insofar as real estate is concerned, as I'm sure you are well aware. That alone ought to be enough to settle the issue, and it probably could if we had a legitimate Court system in place, which we do not. 2. The other legal issue is precedent, surrounding the meaning and interpretation of the "Equal Footing Doctrine". The Equal Footing Doctrine is even more important than the Constitutional restraints because it is couched in language that sets the conditions for entry of new states into the Federal Union of states. A little bit of history here is important too. Up until around the turn of the 20th Century, unclaimed or non-private land wasn't termed "Public Lands"; the language describing such real estate was "unappropriated lands", meaning of course that such land was destined for eventual private acquisition and appropriation. Some of that of course did take place in the Mid-West particularly, where land rushes of new settlers assumed ownership whenever territories and blocks of territories were properly surveyed. This is one reason why the Mid-West generally has a much lower percentage of so-called federally owned land, a misnomer to be sure, but used only here to give current rationale why Idaho ranks so high along with Alaska, Nevada, Utah, California, and other western States for Federal designation of ownership. Most of this was pre-statehood in the vast majority of cases. Herein also is a difference in sovereignty, which is why the Equal Footing Doctrine out to take a higher priority insofar as legal argumentation is concerned. Now, to get back to the Equal Footing Doctrine. Under terms worked out early on under the Articles of Confederation predating the later US Constitution, the original 13 States entered the Union as a block of sovereign States. The original States claimed territorial jurisdiction within their borders, including the administration of unappropriated land. At that early time, most within the government, including the new State governments were leery of any large overarching standing army, so Federal military bases were the exception rather than the rule in most cases, and not really an issue. However, the Equal Footing Doctrine specified that all new States entering the Federal Union subsequent from the original 13, would be afforded the same conditions, standards and rights as the original States upon entry. This Doctrine was not only never repudiated, but rather reaffirmed under the new government surrounding the creation of the U.S. Constitution. One of the reasons for the restrictions put into place in the Constitution regarding federal ownership of property was the States reluctance to sign on unless this important safeguard over sovereignty was spelled out in specific detail, and a part of the guarantee contained in the Bill of Rights. It was. With all of that said, now we come to an embarrassing situation, at least in a legislative sense, of bringing enough of the national legislature to even take a look at this legal inconsistency and arrogance of Federal bureaucrats. As I wrote above, all of the States on the eastern seaboard never had any problem with Federal government land grabs, since the States assumed immediate sovereignty within their given prescribed territory. Further, even in the Mid-West territories, the Federal government seemed to assume privatization at a rapid pace by surveying and opening new territories for private ownership and expansion. The result of that is that the Federal government DID largely privatize without profit a significantly great portion of what is now the Mid-Western States! As we get further out into the West, and just prior to the 20th Century, the territories didn't do so well. The very States you mentioned above, and you can add several others, including Arizona, Oregon, Washington Wyoming, Colorado and Montana to that list, the percentage and ratio of Federal government claims of ownership (which never seemed to be an issue prior to that) suddenly emerged, not under the label of "ownership" but a very different label, that of "Administering Unappropriated Land". At that time, the above western territories welcomed the Federal governments assets and infrastructure in administering these vast lands, since the population densities of the territories coming into statehood were very limited, or at least perceived as such, at that time. Well Terry, if we warp ahead forward into the 20th and 21st century, that is certainly no longer the case at all. Idaho et all certainly has the population density to adequately do a much better job of administering unappropriated lands than does the Federal government. But, as you look at the words I am using to describe all of this, you'll notice these parameters are no longer being used to describe 'Wilderness Designations', 'National Monuments', 'National Parks', 'National Forests' and so forth. The very word 'National' has suddenly (really not that suddenly, it's been an incremental thing that has been going on honestly for several decades if not almost a century now) taken on phraseology concomitant with terms usually synonymous with the word 'OWNERSHIP'! Obviously the best we can honestly hope for is that we can muster a block of western States to challenge the status quo upon Constitutional and legal precedent grounds. Again, I am not so sure we could achieve the requisite number of legislators in the nation's capital that might find any motivation to go along with any of that, as stated above, and for the same reasons. I am also uncertain that enough Constitutional minded federal Judges even exist anymore who might look at this as a purely codified Constitutional issue. However, the Western States themselves could eventually form a giant coalition and demand represenation at that level to dismantle the Federal government's Administration over much of this real estate that is at the centre of the controversy that you have raised here, and return it back to the individual States for administration. We desperately need to elect State Legislators in Idaho that have the backbone and understanding of the real issues here to make that happen here locally. Legislators who are willing to work together with other Western State legislators to form a coalition of Legislative consent regarding a major Constitutional crisis over the 'ownership' of unappropriated lands in the Western states! I am suggesting that it IS possible to do that. Not an easy task, admittedly, but neither was drafting the US Constitution an easy task, insofar as getting a majority of the 13 original States to sign on. Kindest regards, Frank _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [email protected] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
