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The revealing
story of a rancher and the national debt
Special Report
By David Morgan, The Asheville Tribune
Case
History: Hage v. United States
After years of successfully
ranching in California, Wayne & Jean Hage (she is now deceased)
purchased a large cattle ranch in Nevada, Pine Creek Ranch, in the spring
of 1978. The acreage involved is approximately 752,000 acres. However, as
it is mostly desert land, the land's ability to support cattle is far less
than might be supposed from its size.
Located in the high desert
mountains of central Nevada, the remote operation seemed an unlikely place
for a war that would rock the very foundation of federal land management
agencies. Wayne purchased the operation from the well-respected Arcularius
Brothers who sold the ranch because the regulatory pressure by the U.S.
Forest Service had become unbearable. Since Wayne had always been able to
work with the agency, he believed he could resolve problems that might
occur. Wayne soon learned the only way he could satisfy the Forest Service
was to allow them to confiscate his property.
One of the first
incidents that drew the line between Wayne and the Forest Service revolved
around a critical spring that Wayne owned. Situated close to the Forest
Service Ranger Station in Meadow Canyon, the district ranger decided they
would pipe the water from the spring, through a newly installed $50,000
water purification facility, into their cabin. Wayne learned of this after
the project was complete, and rightfully objected. He explained that if
they needed his water, they could make appropriate arrangements. They
refused to cooperate and would not acknowledge that he owned the water
even though he held two court decrees affirming his water right. Wayne
even held a field hearing where the state water engineer acknowledged
Wayne's ownership and the Forest Service's illegal confiscation. But,
still today, the Forest Service has maintained a fence around the spring
so that cattle and wildlife cannot drink, and the water is still being
piped into the ranger's cabin.
Retaliation
 Because Wayne questioned
the Forest Service's actions, the Forest Service began an unbelievable
retaliation campaign. In a 105-day period they sent Wayne 40 certified
letters and personally visited him 70 times, each time citing him in
violation of a bureaucratic regulation. Wayne had to respond in
writing and take corrective action to each one of their allegations, no
matter how trivial. In fact, most, if not all, were wild goose chases or
violations the Forest Service themselves had created.
Some of these
charges stated Wayne was not maintaining his drift fences. In order to
comply with their rules, Wayne would check and mend if necessary the
fences in question. One of these incidents involved sending a horse and
rider to the top of Table Mountain to ride the 20-mile fence line. After
doing this, the rider found only one problem. There was one staple
missing. The Forest Service had dutifully marked it with a blue
flag.
Also, among these charges were 45 accounts of trespass where
Wayne's cattle were allegedly found in the wrong location. For every one
of these, Wayne would send a crew of riders to locate the cattle and
attempt to comply with the regulations. Often, there were no cattle to be
found, leaving Wayne to wonder if there ever were. Also, on several
occasions there were eyewitnesses who watched the Forest Service employees
move Wayne's cattle into trespass areas, and then immediately cite him for
the violation.
Over the next eight years he filed three
administrative appeals, and won all three. They cost him over $150,000 in
attorney and consultant fees, not to mention the countless hours, personal
resources, and lost income also expended. Twice, his pickup was shot at
while he was close by, a not so subtle warning. His wife and children were
run off the road personally by the District Ranger.
Even
though he won every case, the agency would create new regulations that
would wear Wayne down, force him to expend his time and resources fighting
their new regulations, and eventually run him completely out of business.
The final straw came when the Forest Service confiscated at gunpoint over
100 head of his cattle. Armed with semi-automatic weapons and bulletproof
vests, 30 Forest Service riders confiscated his cattle in July of
1991.
Although they had no legal justification for their actions,
they took the cattle, handed Wayne a bill for their cost of gathering the
cattle, transported the cattle to a sale yard which refused to auction the
stolen cattle, and eventually the Forest Service held their own private
sale and kept the proceeds.
The confiscation did not go quite as
planned, however. They needed to infuriate Wayne to the point that he
would also come armed and give them the excuse to eliminate Wayne
altogether. Wayne came armed, but with a 35 millimeter camera. Just more
evidence for the case he knew he would have to file.
September 26,
1991, after being forced to sell every cow he owned in order to comply
with federal regulations, Wayne filed a landmark takings case, Hage v.
United States, for the regulatory and physical taking of his
ranch.
Criminal Desperation
A year later, the same agency filed two felony charges
against Wayne for clearing scrub brush from his legally owned
right-of-way. Although the Forest Service knew he was not in violation and
admitted this on the record later, they also knew filing criminal charges
against him might force Wayne to drop his takings suit. After loosing the
case at jury trial, Wayne prevailed before the Ninth Circuit, overturning
the felony charges against him.
(See a
complete timeline by clicking here.)
What's It
All Really About?
In a recent radio
interview on WTZY (880AM) in
Asheville, NC, Hage spoke about the true nature of the case. What he said
was that basically all of this has to do with our national
debt.
Excerpts from
WTZY interview:
"During the Civil War we accumulated
$2.8 billion worth of debt which the North owed mainly to the House of
Erlinger in London and the House of Rothchild in Paris, who had financed
both sides in the War. We couldn't pay the debt, so for the first time in
our nation's history they decided to collateralize that debt with the
mineral estate of the Western lands and Alaska. During the late 1800's we
were able to internalize that debt to where we owed it to
ourselves.
In the 1960's the general teaching of Economics 101 was
that we shouldn't worry too much about our national debt as we owed it to
ourselves, and hence it wouldn't have to be paid off. Besides all that
gold, silver, gas, oil and other mineral rights out west more than
adequately collateralize it.
But during the initiation of the
Great Society and the Vietnam War we began once again to borrow from
overseas, as we didn't want to tax ourselves enough to pay for what was
needed. We began to "externalize" our debt, a fatal mistake. Well, when we
began to externalize our debt heavily, Charles deGaulle of France said, "I
don't think you fellows can redeem your dollar debt with gold." We said,
"Oh, yes we can!" So he said that he would rather have gold and began to
raid our Treasury. When Nixon became President, he was faced with this
mess and had to close the gold window; we were running out of gold. We, in
effect, were running out of collateral.
What Nixon did next, and
what stunned a lot of folks, was to set up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and
we began to pass massive environmental laws. And for what real purpose?
All of them have had one effect collectively, whether at the Federal,
state or local level. The one thing they all do is that they effect the
transfer of private property out of the hands of private individuals and
place that property into the hands of government. Now what is that all
about?
Well, when we ran out of gold and, in order to keep the
foreign interests from cashing in their bonds and notes and imploding and
destroying the US economy, we had to show them that the resources of the
US adequately collateralized their debt. In order for it to be properly
colleralized, we had to show them that US citizens and US interests would
not be developing, drilling and mining those resources. The effect of
this was to disenfranchise American citizens of access to their resources
for the purpose of making their resources available to the international
financial interests that hold the debt of the US. Indeed, at the
present time, about 40% of all our debt is held by and owed to foreign
interests.
Look at the mines. Where I live, in Nevada, we have
major mines all around us. At one time they were all owned by US citizens.
But now the only mines here that operate are those held by those countries
that own the debt of the U.S. If you or I discovered a major gold deposit,
neither our kids nor we would ever live long enough to mine one shovelfull
of it. All the rules, regulations, and laws would drive us under. We would
have to sell out for nothing to the government or to a foreign entity, who
would find their ability to mine it would be rather easy. (Editor's
note: The recent seizure by President Clinton of over $1 trillion dollars
worth of high grade coal in Utah to establish a "park" was settled by the
US government paying the owners merely $14 million dollars for research
and development costs of the coal. See story on Page 28 of The Asheville
Tribune, print edition.)
Another little known but important
fact that should be remembered is that treasury bills and debts held by
foreign interests are secured while those held by US citizens are
not.
Little by little, our entire form of government is being
reversed. A fundamental tenant of economics is that all wealth comes
from the land; every bit of wealth originates in the land. The cornerstone
of a truly free society is the ownership of private property by the
people. In such a society the people own the means of production. In a
totalitarian society, the opposite takes place. There, the government owns
the land, the wealth, and the means of production. They, in effect, rent
the land to the people.
And what this means is that in a free
society where the people own the land, the government has to come to the
people for its operating budget - for tax dollars in order to operate. The
government has to listen to what the people have to say. That is the
essence of a free society.
In a totalitarian society where the
government owns the resources, they don't have to go to the people for
funds to operate.
Our government today owns over 40% of the resource base of the
U.S. (Shaded areas of map above.) The corporate U.S. government has
come to have its own assets and is having to listen less and less to its
citizens. And it is attempting to get more and more property under the
guise of environmentalism. If you really want to find out who is really
behind all this, follow the money of who is behind and invests heavily in
the environmental entities. It is big money, and comes from powerful
interest groups from all around the world. A couple of excellent books I
would advise you to read are Trashing the Economy and Undue Influence by
Ron Arnold if you really want to find out who the real powers are. They
can both be obtained from Stewards of the Range in Idaho; their phone
number is 208-336-5922.
Now, as I have said, that if laws
protecting private property can be weakened, the value of the property
declines. As government regulations increase, the productive capacity of
private property decreases and the value of the property itself is
reduced. Government ownership of and regulation of the lands and
resources of a nation have never in history provided for a free society,
nor for a productive one. (Editor's note: Even today in Russia,
after the recent "democratic" revolution, the government owns all of the
land. The Russian citizens cannot own land in Russia.) Taking
productive resources and lands away from citizens under the guise of
"protecting" the environment is simply a method by which the government
steals power for itself.
Karl Marx considered the elimination
of private property key to the establishment of a socialist government.
There was good reason behind this premise. If people had no value left in
their property that value must be in the hands of government. The terms
property rights and property control are synonymous. Property rights
are the ability of the individual to exercise control over his property.
It is only through the right to control the use of property that the
individual can make the property produce value or wealth. If
regulation or law transfers control over one's property to the government,
then the ability of the property to produce wealth is also transferred to
the government. Marx was right. The elimination of private property is
essential if socialism or communism is to supplant a free
society."
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