The Bureau of Land Management is the federal government’s property manager. As such, it asserts the federal government’s ownership rights. The BLM can do anything with federal land that any private landowner can do with his or her own land, including keeping other people off of that land. The problem is that the land the BLM owns is “everybody’s” since it is “publicly owned.” This means we end up fighting over the best way to use the land and the losers in the hurly-burly of political infighting have lately been past winners, so they feel particularly wronged. The political process, which is very frustrating, sometimes corrupt, and which always produces exultant winners and embittered losers who feel their rights have been ignored or confiscated, does not necessarily lead to unity and good feelings. In the Bundy situation, political wrangling by environmentalists has led the BLM to end longstanding leases with people like cattle ranchers. Like any landlord, the federal government has the right not to renew leases when they expire, to collect agreed lease payments, and to evict someone who refuses to pay rent. Most landlords, though, rent to those who best take care of the property and who pay the highest rents. The federal government can afford not to behave so rationally if a majority or a vocal majority wishes it so. This is the problem so many are having with current BLM policy. The BLM is arguably not making best use of federal lands because of the political machinations of environmentalists. The Texas situation is more insidious. The BLM has always had the right to assert federal ownership and works to determine property boundaries. However, in the Texas case, the BLM essentially ignored the federal government’s potential claims for a very long time. Private land use and ownership boundaries have long since been established. For the BLM to come back now and confiscate land would be immoral. Instead, the property rights of those who put property to good use should be recognized. The government and even George Washington lost land to “squatters” who, finding no identifiable boundary markers, appropriated land for themselves. Courts then determined that ownership went to those who did something with the property, not to those who did nothing with it, even if their claim was legitimate on paper. humanevents/2014/04/24/experts-take-land-seizure-and-the-constitution/
Posted on: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 23:07:14 +0000