From the Gulfstream waters to the redwood forests, this land was made for Exxon-Mobil.
Bob Beauprez, the Republican Party's nominee for the governorship of Colorado,
made clear last week that he wants the state to grab national parks, forests and other public lands from federal control. In his first debate with Democratic incumbent John Hickenlooper Friday, he said "This is a fight we have to wage." Claire Moser of the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress
writes:
In a video taken by American Bridge, Beauprez, who is challenging incumbent Governor John Hickenlooper (D), claimed that all public land in the state was “supposed to be Colorado’s” and that “if this were private land and the federal government was a tenant, we would cancel their lease.” [...]
Although most Western voters deeply value their public lands, Beauprez is one of several candidates supporting such proposals this election season. As ThinkProgress reported last week, there are a number of right-wing politicians across the country who have been advancing proposals to transfer of control of public lands to states, or to sell them off to the highest bidder for drilling, mining and logging.
Such ideas are not new. Nor are they
constitutional. In the 1970s, Colorado was one of several Western states where right-wing politicians backed the so-called
Sagebrush Rebellion, an effort by big polluters funded initially by beer baron Joseph Coors to get states to take over federal lands with the notion of eventually selling millions of acres to private buyers. The effort didn't succeed, but it has continued to echo over the decades in campaigns like the Orwellian-named Wise Use Movement. One of the leading proponents of note was James G. Watt, first head of the rightist Mountain States Legal Foundation—also funded by Coors. He later served as the crooked Secretary of Interior under Ronald Reagan, who said during his 1980 presidential campaign: "I am a Sagebrush Rebel."
Partly as a result of Watt's terrible but short tenure at Interior, the Sagebrush Rebellion weakened but was reincarnated as Wise Use. That group's founder, timber-industry spokesman Ron Arnold, said (obviously without having consulted a PR adviser): "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely."
In April this year, some 50 political leaders from nine states, including the House speakers in Idaho and Utah, met in Salt Lake City to discuss how they might go about gaining state control over federal lands rich in coal, oil, gas, oil shale and minerals. So Beauprez is not alone in his quest.
Although the federal government has long provided compensation to the states for the relatively unspoiled land it holds, it pays large amounts to states and localities for lost property taxes and royalties for the resources extracted from those lands. So cheaply does it charge companies for extracting minerals and fossil fuels from public land that it amounts to subsidies.
While there are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about certain aspects of federal management of public lands, the latest version of the Sagebrush Rebellion, as spouted by Beauprez and others of like mind, has nothing to do with wise use or civic responsibility, but rather a twisted view of states' rights and a big $mile for extractive industries.