BLM II: Messing with Texas

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott slammed the federal Bureau of Land Management’s claims that private property within the state now belongs to the federal government.

The BLM says the federal government owns a 90,000 acre piece of land along Texas’s Red River, despite it being maintained and cultivated by private landowners for generations and no law has been passed by Congress giving BLM ownership of the land.

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“I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations,” Abbott wrote in a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornz.

6 comments:

Texan99 said...

Hey, I wonder if this will work out any differently in Texas from the way it has in Nevada?

I like the way the U.S. S. Ct. resolved the issue a century ago, but fed regulators "have never really agreed." Agree with this, BLM.

Grim said...

It should be interesting to see how the BLM's claims work out with a state attorney general in opposition. A corollary to the realization that the President is above the law is that the whole executive branch is above the law, at least insofar as the President approves of what they are doing and refuses to stop them. Or, as Cass was pointing out today with regard to IRS bonuses, actively rewards them.

Texan99 said...

Exactly. Every election matters. Even if we elect a bad apple to the White House, if we keep electing principled people to every single position from dog-catcher to Senate Majority Leader, they can band together effectively to bind the hands of a rogue executive.

We will never live in a world in which the President can automatically be expected to abide by the law. Other people will always have to stand by to force him to behave himself. There are no self-executing laws.

E Hines said...

We will never live in a world in which the President can automatically be expected to abide by the law.

We can simplify his task, though, by reducing, drastically, the number of laws on the books. I'd start with repealing a random 30% of them and begin repealing from there.

We can simplify our own task of watching by reducing the population of folks populating the government. I'd start with a (n almost) random elimination of 50% of Cabinets, Executive Branch agencies, complete elimination of Congressional staffers, and begin culling from there.

And we don't need to elect men of principle everywhere, we just need to elect a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress--which would have the side effect of having elected majorities capable of impeaching and convicting, and thereby removing from office anyone from dog-catcher through Senate Majority Leaders to the President and Vice President. And any appointed official in between.

Every election does matter, and this would require more than a few election cycles to achieve.

As to OP, I suspect a BLM move of this type would end rather similarly to the BLM's immediately prior move.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

Fox interviewed Perry about this, and asked if he had a problem with citizens arming themselves against the BLM.

"I have a problem with the federal government putting citizens in the position of having to feel like they have to use force to deal with their own government," Perry responded. "That's the bigger issue."

I like my governor just fine, and I think Greg Abott is going to suit me as well.

ZZMike said...

Well heck, we did it with Indian lands, didn't we? Now the shoe's on OUR foot.