A new $1 billion per year land
acquisition trust fund (The Conservation and
Reinvestment Act of 1999) (H.R.-701 and S-25) is being
considered by Congress. The act will pave the way for
converting millions of acres of private land in
America into new National Parks, Wildlife Refuges and
state lands.
About $756 million of the total
will be split by state and federal governments and
used for purchasing rural land. At an average
nonagricultural cost of $1000 per acre, that means
about 750,000 acres of private land will be purchased
by the Federal Government every year. That is slightly
less than the size of the state of Rhode Island.
While many would agree that
Congress ought to have the authority to purchase
private property for parks and other public needs on a
case by case basis, this act goes far beyond that.
Title 1, Section 103-b of the act provides for
discretionary expenditures by the Department of
Interior "without further appropriation",
and is therefore an off-budget entitlement. Every
year, forever.
Most people are strongly in favor
of public parks and recreation areas, and might favor
this act. States like it because it provides land
purchasing monies they currently do not have. Very few
Americans realize, how-ever, that between the federal,
state and local gov-ernments over 40 percent of the
land area of the United States is already controlled
by government bureau-crats. Most of this land is in the
Western United States. While there may be some
justification in redistributing that land more
equitably, that is not what the act does.
Our founding fathers fully
understood the importance of private property for
protecting our basic freedoms and in creating a
vibrant, free market economy. Hence, they had severely
limited the federal government’s ability to own land
in Article 1, Section , Paragraph 17 of the U.S.
Constitution to that "purchased by the consent
of the Legislature of the State in which the same
shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines,
arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings..."
Our founders never intended that
the federal government own the vast tracts of land it
currently does because they knew it shifts too much
power to the government. How the federal government
came to own nearly a third of America is very complex,
but mostly revolves around being forced by Congress
when the individual states petitioned for statehood.
State and federal ownership of land
almost always hurts the local economy of rural
communities. Placing land into state or federal
ownership withdraws land from the tax base, forcing
the remaining property owners to pick up the tax
difference. Further, it usually withdraws the land
from economic production on both the purchased land
and adjacent private land. Over the past 25 years, the
federal government has systematically established
"buffer" zones around its land. Activities
on private land within these zones are limited to
those activities that are "compatible" with
the purpose of the federal land.
Increasingly, that purpose has been
total protection. Roads within federal lands are being
closed. Campgrounds and recreation infrastructure are
being shut down. All to create restoration reserves
that supposedly allow nature to heal from the wounds
inflicted by the American people.
Retired Wyoming U.S. Senator
Malcolm Wallop has seen this first hand. In testimony
on H.R. 701 before Congress, Wallop claims such buying
of land "has everything to do with acquiring
and using power over people and their resources. Land
acquisition is used, in conjunction with the whole
panoply of environmental regulations, to stop economic
activity and to destroy local communities, to deny
recreational access and to block transportation and
utility corridors. It is also used as a weapon to
threaten and control private landowners."
Whether intended or not, H.R. 701
and S. 25 fulfill the globalists agenda of limiting,
then controlling property rights. Section 10.5 of
Agenda 21, the forty-one-chapter socialist manifesto
to control all human activities, states "The
broad objective is to facilitate allocation of land to
the uses that provide the greatest sustainable
benefits and to promote the transition to a
sustainable and integrated management of land
resources." To do that the government must
control all land use activities.
The derailing of the ratification
vote of Convention on Biological Diversity on the U.S.
Senate floor in 1994 was, in part, due to the
revelation in Section 12.7.5 of the treaty’s U.N.
Global Biodiversity Assessment that, "property
rights can still be allocated to the environmental
public good, but in this case they should be
restricted to usufructual or user rights. Harvesting
quotas, emissions permits and the development rights
are examples of such rights." Usufructual
rights, it turns out, are based on the old Roman
Empire’s principal that the Caesar owns everything,
and grants limited rights to use land to whomever the
Caesar wishes.
Is it a coincidence that this is
exactly what the "ruler" of Daniel 11:39
will do when he comes into power during the end-times;
"and he shall cause them to rule over many,
and shall divide the land for gain." (KJV) V
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