Our current AZ state legislature must be the worst and most stupid in its history. They are now passing another bill that will need millions to defend and is bound to fail. They would destroy the beauty of our state to sell it out to a few greedy developers and mining companies. We can’t hold on to our state buildings or manage our state parks, but we want another 25 million acres to control.
Western states are waging another sage brush rebellion against the feds with formal demands that the federal government turn over millions of acres of public lands or pay the states taxes on them.
Arizona could claim as much as 25 million acres -- all federal land in the state except military bases, Indian reservations, national parks and some wilderness areas. If the federal government fails to comply by the end of 2014, the states say they will begin sending property-tax bills to Washington, D.C.
http://www.azcentral.com/...
The original sagebrush rebellion started in the mid 70’s led by Senator Orrin Hatch, with support from candidate for president, Ronald Reagan, proving that stupid ideas never go away. As soon as people forget, they stage a comeback.
Ronald Reagan declared himself a sagebrush rebel in an August 1980 campaign speech in Salt Lake City, Reagan told the crowd, "I happen to be one who cheers and supports the Sagebrush Rebellion. Count me in as a rebel."
The spark that turned these complaints into a "rebellion" was the enactment in 1976 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which sought to establish a system of land management by the BLM, recognizing that most of the BLM holdings would not be turned into private hands. While FLPMA required BLM to plan land use accommodating all users, specifically naming ranching, grazing, and mining, it also introduced formal processes to consider preservation of the land from ranching, grazing and mining. Western land users regarded the act as a bureaucratic power grab at best, or the imposition of a totalitarian socialist regime at the radical worst.
This legislation doesn’t have a chance in hell of standing up in the courts and will cost millions to defend, but it revs up the Teavangislists who have run rampage over the state of AZ lately. It seems they have all moved here to foment their stupid ideas in one broad base. I feel like AZ has become the proving ground for stupid.
Legal experts from the University of Idaho and Arizona State University said the states' demands of the federal government lack legal merit, partly because the states were allowed to join the union on the condition that the federal government would control some land.
Richard Seamon, a law professor at the University of Idaho, said the attempt to seize the land isn't unconstitutional -- it just wouldn't work.
Legal experts say the movement is based on a misreading of federal law and the U.S. Constitution and will almost certainly fail to survive court challenges. Conservation groups and other critics say the takeover would threaten iconic landscapes now protected by federal rules. States, those critics say, are ill-prepared to oversee so much land, with the roads, recreation areas and management needs that go along with it.
http://www.azcentral.com/...
The legislators backing the bill are saying that regulation has stopped logging in our National Forests and mining industries from being able to gain access to uranium ore outside of the Grand Canyon.
"In the last 30 years, the radical environmental policies of these federal agencies have ground those industries to a halt -- right into the ground -- and almost killed them," said state Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, the sponsor of the land-takeover measure, Senate Bill 1332.
Damn those radical environmentalists trying to protect the land from abusive industry practices that have left scars all over the state. Just visit Morenci or Bisbee to see what the mining companies have to offer us. A legacy of pollution and ruination.
And of course, it is another rotten idea brought to us from ALEC. Our legislators don’t write legislation. Most of them belong to ALEC, they attend the meetings, pick up their copies of legislation written for them and then work very hard during their short session to pass as much of it as they can.
In Arizona, Melvin's measure calls for the transfer of lands to the state from the federal government. He brought the bill to Arizona after hearing about it late last year from the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that often provides state lawmakers with model legislation, written by its own staff.
We can’t manage our
state buildings or our
state parks but we are supposed to trust this handful of idiots to manage 23 million acres for us. No thank you.
"In an era of apparent fiscal responsibility, why would the state seek billions of dollars of liability and management responsibility to assume ownership over the (25 million) acres or so of parks, forests and public lands in Arizona?" said Matt Skroch, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition. "It is ill-conceived, it is irresponsible and it makes absolutely no sense."
The new rebellion has about as much chance of succeeding as the old one. It was miners, ranchers and other land users who didn’t support it for fear of losing federal subsides and grazing and mining royalties. It ignores the value of letting public lands exist in their protected state and the money that that brings the state in tourism.
"This Legislature would take what's special about Arizona and destroy it," said Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon chapter. "I think most people believe our national forests are there to protect the watershed, provide habitat for wildlife, places for recreation. People come here because it's beautiful, and it's beautiful because we have public lands, not because of the cookie-cutter subdivisions on the outskirts of Phoenix."
I have lost my ability to get around very well because of physical problems, but I am going to start talking to everyone in my neighborhood and everywhere I go and try to get them to vote if they don’t already. AZ has been taken over by stupid people, outside interests and immigrants from the north and east who don’t understand the true values of the people who have lived here all their lives. We must put a stop to the stupidity, before we lose all that we value.