The most important question with respect to the Bundy Ranch Standoff remains unanswered. Why does the federal government own Nevada? It does not own New York or Virginia or Massachusetts.
Cliven Bundy says that the state of Nevada owns the contested land. The Bureau of Land Management clearly considers the property the federal governments; hence the 200 snipers posted on the property and the tasing of the Bundys for resisting when the feds confiscated their cattle. Who is right?
But the problem isn’t Nevada’s alone where government owns 87.7 % of the land leaving private ownership of the state at but 12.3 %. The percentage of land owned by government exceeds fifty percent in Alaska (98.5), Idaho (63.8), Oregon (52.6), and Utah (63.6). Indeed, the federal government claims to own a third of all the landmass in the United States (Inventory Report on Real Property Owned by the United States Throughout the World, published by the General Services Administration, page 10). Government owns almost half of California (47.5). Basically the federal government did not give western states all their land when they qualified for statehood. States were so excited to get coveted statehood that they went along with the conditions despite the confiscation of, for most in the West, at least a third of their land.
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If the feds claim they own the land, do they pay property taxes?
ReplyDeleteNow that's a good one. :) Seriously, maybe there could be a class action lawsuit.
DeleteIf the Feds can defend their claim on all that western land it makes me rethink any
ReplyDeletethoughts I ever had about a western bug out location. For the most part, land ownership is not in question here in the east.... at least not yet.
We are going to have a discussion on The Appalachian Redoubt at the PATCON if you are near enough to make it.
Deletehttp://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2014/02/three-months-until-2014-spring-nc.html
The federal government can't "own" land any more than a car thief can "own" the stolen car he's driving around in. There are only two kinds of property in the world--legitimately owned and as-yet-unclaimed. The only ways to legitimately acquire property are to buy it in a mutually voluntary transaction (if it's owned) or homestead it by using and securing it (if it's unclaimed). The feds do neither--they simply take what they want at gunpoint, accompanied by a flurry of paperwork and legal gibberish, and perhaps give the victim a few pennies on the dollar of what the property is actually worth. So called "federal" land is morally equivalent to abandoned or unclaimed property. The right thing to do would be for the feds to return all government land to the private sector as quickly as possible. And not by handing it over to their cronies, campaign financiers, and family members...
ReplyDeleteThe right thing to do would be for the feds to return all government land to the private sector as quickly as possible
DeleteThanks and that would be extraordinary.