News/Issues
5-2014: Riverside, California: Federal Land Grab Comes to California at Vail Lake
A California-based spokesman from the BLM told Breitbart Texas that the agency has a thorough process for determining which lands it ultimately chooses to manage. “We start with a public scoping period,” the spokesman told Breitbart Texas. “We engage the public in telling us the issues they want us to address–we also address stakeholder groups like environmental groups. Those people are all engaged in the process. We then develop draft plans and environmental impact statements, which go out for public review and comment.”
4-2014: Leaked Memo – BLM Plans to Designate State Land to “Conservation Designation”
The memo was leaked by a Department of Interior official to Utah Congressman Bob Bishop.
President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.
The leaked document lists 17 sites in 11 states that could be designated as national monuments through the federal Antiquities Act. Over 380,000 acres in Colorado are designated in the memo under the heading “Prospective Conservation Designation.”
According to the memo, around 380,000 acres of BLM and private land in Colorado would be subject to a “conservation designation” under the National Monument designation of the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Vermillion Basin, northwest of Craig, and the Alpine Triangle near Ouray are listed in the memo. This designation would close the areas off to multi-use activities including, mining, hunting, grazing, oil and gas development and other recreational activities.
3-27-2014: Are Your Local Transportation Dollars Being Diverted?
In their article, “L.A. should hike sales tax to pay for street repairs, report says”, dated 3-18-2014, writers David Zahniser and Emily Alpert Reyes discuss a half cent sales tax revenue proposal for street repairs in the LA area.
According to a presentation titled, “Achieving a Lower Carbon and More Sustainable Transportation System”, by Pam O’Conner, former president for the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG – an MPO*), only 13% of gas tax dollars are going towards highways; tax money is being misappropriated for other purposes. Other modes of transportation are receiving priority. Special interest groups and nonprofit organizations are receiving transportation dollars to promote alternative modes of transportation and to approach people in rural areas to deed their land to conservation easements. The solution to the street repair problem is not a new sales tax; the solution is stopping the misappropriation of our transportation funds.
- Are your local transportation dollars being misappropriated?
- Is your *Metropolitan Planning Association (MPO) diverting transportation funds?
Contact your state representatives and demand answers.
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Sources:
1. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-la-street-repair-sales-tax-hike-20140318,0,4675985.story#axzz2x7f7ODFV
2. PowerPoint presentation by Pam O’Conner, Page 26.
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2-2014: Obama Administration Ups Rhetoric on Climate Change
President Obama has ratcheted up the regionalism aspect of sustainable Development (SD) with the announcement of the creation of seven regional “climate hubs” to help farmers and rural communities respond to the risks of climate change, including drought, invasive pests, fires and floods. The creation of the climate hubs is part of the campaign by the administration to advance climate policy through executive authority. Plans are in the works to ask Congress to set up a $1 billion “Climate Resilience Fund” in the proposed budget next month. Interestingly, as a tie in, Secretary Kerry speaking on 2-16-2014 in Jakarta to a group of students, civic leaders and Indonesian government officials asserted that,
“climate change can now be considered the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.’’
In July 2013, furthering the president’s regionalist policy initiative the Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation now incorporates broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities. Therefore, environmental stakeholder groups, including non-profits and NGOs would be tasked with policy enforcement through agitation and lawsuits.