{"id":117,"date":"2005-11-11T16:53:38","date_gmt":"2005-11-11T22:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/loco\/stealing-home\/"},"modified":"2005-11-11T17:22:23","modified_gmt":"2005-11-11T23:22:23","slug":"stealing-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/stealing-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Stealing Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Would Sell Land Promised <\/p>\n

to D.C.<\/a> By Juliet Eilperin and Debbi Wilgoren, Washington Post Staff Writers<\/p>\n

Tucked<\/em> inside a huge budget <\/p>\n

bill<\/strong> headed for an upcoming House vote is a provision that could spur the federal government to sell off millions of <\/p>\n

acres of public land<\/strong> to mining interests, marking a major shift in the nation’s mining policy. … <\/p>\n

Congress has barred <\/p>\n

the government from selling land outright to mining companies since 1994, on the grounds that they should lease public land the same way <\/p>\n

oil and gas firms do to extract the minerals below. But House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.)<\/strong> <\/p>\n

said the measure would cut the deficit and promote private ownership. “In some states primarily owned by the federal government, <\/p>\n

it’s important that more of that land become private property<\/strong>,” Pombo said. “These environmental groups want <\/p>\n

the federal government to own everything.”<\/strong> [brayed the jackass – mjh]<\/p>\n

Pombo’s proposal is stuck in 1872<\/a> by John Leshy<\/p>\n

Not <\/p>\n

satisfied with … liberalization of the discredited 1872 [mining] law, Pombo would also let private interests buy federal lands for <\/p>\n

purposes that have nothing to do with mining, such as building ski resorts, gaming casinos and strip malls on areas owned by the American <\/p>\n

public.<\/p>\n

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that “the federal mining law surely was not intended to be a general real estate <\/p>\n

law.” Pombo’s bill would change all that ….<\/p>\n

[I]nvaluable sites, like wilderness study areas and national forest <\/p>\n

roadless areas, are plainly left vulnerable to eventual privatization<\/strong> under this provision. Hikers, hunters and livestock <\/p>\n

grazers could find locked gates blocking their passage through previously public lands \u2014 with the U.S. government nearly powerless to do <\/p>\n

anything about it.<\/p>\n

Pombo is trying to sneak<\/em> his bill through Congress, hiding<\/em> it in a budget <\/p>\n

debate<\/strong> that has been dominated by higher profile controversies. He pushed<\/em> the bill through committee under the <\/p>\n

pretense<\/em> of raising federal revenue, without mentioning<\/em> that the public, the owner of these lands, will be the big loser.<\/p>\n

Hard-rock mining is the only extractive industry that pays no royalties on the resources it removes from public lands.<\/p>\n

Establishing a modest 8 percent royalty, which is at the lower end of what coal, oil and gas companies already pay for federal <\/p>\n

resources, would yield twice as much revenue as Pombo expects from his land grab.<\/p>\n

Politics – Pombo hopes to help mining – sacbee.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Environmental Working Group … this week issued a new online report, available at www.ewg.org<\/a>, <\/p>\n

that purports to detail the public land opportunities opened by Pombo’s bill. The report concludes that about 17,000 acres in El Dorado <\/p>\n

County, 13,000 acres in Mariposa County and 11,000 acres in Tuolumne County – all currently claimed for mining – could be sold in the <\/p>\n

short term.<\/p>\n

“Pombo does not like federal lands, so this is consistent with his general philosophy,” said John Leshy, the Interior <\/p>\n

Department’s former top lawyer.<\/p>\n

Now a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, Leshy likened the <\/p>\n

proposal to “a real estate deal that has nothing to do with mining.” He further termed it “a huge change in national policy,” moving the <\/p>\n

government toward disposal and away from retention of public lands.<\/p>\n

The idea under debate revisits a public lands controversy that <\/p>\n

flared during the early 1990s but then went largely underground until recently. Under an 1872 mining law, companies and individuals can <\/p>\n

“patent” – or purchase – public land for $2.50 or $5 an acre.<\/p>\n

Stung by deals in which the federal government sold off <\/p>\n

valuable land for a song, officials imposed a moratorium on mining patents in 1994.<\/strong> …<\/p>\n

[His lunacy (mjh)] … helped <\/p>\n

keep a spotlight on the 44-year-old Pombo, who in recent months has drawn both high praise [?!] and sharp criticism for his broader <\/p>\n

environmental agenda.
\n—–<\/p>\n

Pombo also placed the Bush Administration’s bid to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil <\/p>\n

drilling within the budget bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Would Sell Land Promised to D.C. By Juliet Eilperin and Debbi Wilgoren, Washington Post Staff Writers Tucked inside a huge budget bill headed for an upcoming House vote is a provision that could spur the federal government to sell off millions of acres of public land to mining interests, marking a major shift in … Continue reading Stealing Home<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}