The transfer of those lands identified
The Republicans have added a Bundy-party clause to their platform.
The Republican platform committee met this week to draft the document that defines the party’s official principles and policies. Along with provisions on pornography and LGBT “conversion therapy” is an amendment calling for the indiscriminate and immediate disposal of national public lands.
The inclusion of this provision in the Republican Party’s platform reflects the growing influence of and ideological alliance between several anti-park members of the GOP and anti-government extremists, led by Cliven Bundy, who dispute the federal government’s authority over national public lands.
“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states,” reads the adopted language. “We call upon all national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the transfer of those lands identified.”
That’s what the armed robbers who stole Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last January were demanding – the transfer of federal land to the states.
The provision calls for an immediate full-scale disposal of “certain” public lands, without defining which lands it would apply to, leaving national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and national forests apparently up for grabs and vulnerable to development, privatization, or transfer to state ownership.
What could possibly go wrong?
“I have long believed that public lands are an equalizer in America, where access to public lands ensures that you don’t need to be a millionaire to enjoy the great outdoors or to introduce your children to hunting, fishing and hiking,” said Senator Martin Heinrich during a recent floor speech on ALEC-funded land seizure legislation. “This land grab idea is just as ludicrous as denying climate change, just as detached from reality, and similarly comes at the expense of our public health and protection of our public lands and resources.”
It’s just as ludicrous, but I don’t agree that it’s just as detached from reality, because that’s not the issue. The issue is one of values or goals, not one of facts. It’s not a fact that it’s good to ensure that you don’t need to be a millionaire to enjoy the great outdoors or to introduce your children to hunting, fishing and hiking; it’s a value, aka a preference, aka a moral view.
But it definitely is a value, and the Republican one is despicable.
It is a fact, however, that those public lands are one of the ways we manage to protect species that are in danger of going extinct; the value there would be to determine whether it is desirable to protect those species, but the actual protection is a fact. I don’t necessarily think it’s detached from reality, since the anti-park folks don’t share that value, though. They don’t think any species matters but Homo sapiens.
Absolutely, but as you say, you have to care about protecting species for that fact to make a difference to your policy.
This just reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the Republican party vote to abolish the environment.
Why is it assumed that the federal government is tyrannical and oppressive but a state government is better? Isn’t a state government just as likely to be worse than better?
But the state government’s tyrannical oppression will be more beholden to the would-be looters,
More profitable to Bundy.
Big government is an inefficient tyrant; the more powerful you make lower governments the more the potential for harm increases. To these sorts that’s a feature, not a bug; the majority can then easily wreck the minority via democratic means.
IIRC the Bundys didn’t want federal lands transferred to the states; they wanted federal lands transferred to themselves as “ranchers”..