Liberty
Matters News Service
June 10, 2008
Epic Victory for Hage Family
After 17 years in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Wayne and Jean Hage's takings case has been decided – and it is a great victory for private property rights in America!
The Hages claimed that the federal government (U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management) had taken their western ranch, a combination of private base property and federal grazing allotments, through physical and regulatory takings. It is a landmark case because it is the first of its kind to achieve clarity as to what property rights ranchers own on federal grazing allotments and clarifies that if certain property rights are taken through grazing and environmental regulations, the government must pay just compensation.
The court decided that the Hages owned the water rights, ditch rights of ways, and the range improvements on the federal lands. It also found that although the government has the right to authorize and cancel grazing permits, it does not have the right to prevent the ranchers from accessing their water rights on federal lands. The court ruled that a regulatory and physical taking occurred and, therefore, the government owes the estates of Wayne and Jean Hage just compensation, interest for the 17 years, and attorney's fees.
Stewards of the Range, a membership driven, non-profit organization, assisted the Hage case with funding. “Without the Stewards members, this landmark decision would not be written in case law,” stated Margaret Byfield, executive director of Stewards. “The critical precedent and deterrent is now set that when land management agencies attempt to regulate away private property, they risk invoking a taking for which they must pay just compensation under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.”
Congratulations to American Property Owners!
Stewards of the Range website
Click Here to Read the Press Release
S 3036, A Bill to Bankrupt America
Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Ct), John Warner (R-VA), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), concocted a doozy of a bill that was supposed to reduce greenhouse gases environmentalists and other liberal leftists claim are responsible for the mythical global warming. The bill, America’s Climate Security Act (S3036), would have regulated carbons by auctioning allowances to certain businesses; cap and trade, is the term used to describe the process. That results, according to the Wall Street Journal, in “an upfront tax before the trade half of cap and trade even begins. It also means a gigantic revenue windfall for Congress.” Boxer offered amendments that mandate total carbon reductions of 66% by 2050, (Obama and Clinton both want 80%) plus earmarking the allowances. Under the Boxer plan, $802 billion would go to help hapless citizens who will be forced to pay through the nose for higher gas and energy bills. Gas prices could reach $8 a gallon and electricity could shoot up 150% warn the bill’s opponents. The bill also contained $190 billion for training “green-collar jobs” after S 3036 had destroyed carbon-emitting industries. Texas companies would be forced to cut 335,000 jobs to pay for additional costs of “cap and trade,” and California would lose even more workers. Keith McCoy, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said, “[w]e’re bankrupting our economy for very little gain [if S 3036 passes]. “The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says Lieberman-Warner would effectively raise taxes on Americans by more than $1 trillion over the next ten years.” Sen. George Voinovich R-OH. Said Lieberman-Warner “could result in the most massive bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of Americans since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service.” The bill could push even more U.S. manufacturers to foreign countries where the environmental regulations are more friendly, further weakening the U.S. economy. Even the Environmental Protection Agency, a proponent of cap and trade, estimates S 3036 would reduce the GDP between $1 trillion and $2.8 trillion by 2050. So why are the liberals in Congress so eager to kill the goose that laid the golden egg? They see Lieberman-Warner-Boxer as a mechanism to seize more control. As WSJ puts it; “They would lay claim to a vast new chunk of the private economy and enhance their own political power.” The bill was defeated last Friday, however, when the Democrats failed to raise the necessary 60 votes to invoke cloture, which would have ended the Republican-led filibuster. The vote was 48-36, with Republicans: Snowe and Collins (ME), Smith (OR), Martinez (FL), Sununu (NH), Dole (NC), and co-sponsor Warner (VA) joining the Democrats. Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain sent a letter saying he would have voted for cloture.
Detractors say anti-pollution bill before Senate could lead to $8 gas
The New Totalitarianism
Czech President Vaclav Klaus has been one of the few voices of reason regarding the global warming hoax. He was the only head of state to openly challenge the global warming hysteria at the September 2007, UN Climate Change Conference in New York City. President Klaus recently gave an address at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to introduce his book, “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” that has now been published in English. Klaus began his address by saying that he had spent most of his life living under a communist regime “which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also nature. To command ‘wind and rain’ is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood,” he said. He does not envision a return of the communists, but something very similar is in the works. “I see the current danger in environmentalism and especially in its strongest version, climate alarmism…[L]ike Marxism, it will tell us how we can live, what we can drive, what temperature we can set our thermostats. In the past it was in the name of the masses, this time in the name of the planet,” he said. We are perilously close to that disaster at this moment. Democrat presidential candidate, now nominee, Barack Obama, told an Oregon audience: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times...and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.” Klaus told the audience that his central concern was captured in the subtitle of the book: “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?’ He responded by saying “my answer is, it is our freedom, and our prosperity.” Klaus said that even though valid arguments against the global warming mania have been offered, they have been ignored. He said; “We are now at the stage where mere facts, reason, and truth are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda” President Klaus correctly names politicians and bureaucrats who use the climate hysteria to build their careers on the backs of citizens “regardless the costs, truth and rationality.” This nation is teetering on the brink of the very situation Klaus describes. Washington politicians have allowed this debate to reach epic proportions that have now translated into Americans paying more at the gas pump and more at the grocery store. If the Lieberman-Warner bill mentioned in this News Service ever becomes law, this country could deteriorate into third-world conditions; all in the name of environmentalism (and stupidity).
Climate alarmists pose real threat to freedom
California Prop 99 – Read the Fine Print
California voters approved Proposition 99, a measure to prohibit state and local government from acquiring an owner-occupied residence to turn it over to another entity, but it does not change the use of eminent domain for businesses. The measure beat out another eminent domain reform, Proposition 98, by 62.5% to 39%. Prominent public officials who supported Prop 99 include: Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and a host of other liberal California politicians. Prop 99 was also endorsed by the Gray Panthers, California League of Conservation Voters, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Trust for Public Land. Last April, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, supporter of Prop 98, filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, charging the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties and the California Redevelopment Association, had laundered campaign funds and illegally used taxpayer money to support Prop 99. Tim Sandefur, property rights analyst for the Pacific Legal Foundation, didn’t have anything good to say about Prop 99. “The fact is that Prop 99 would not protect anyone in California from eminent domain abuse. It would not apply at all to small businesses. It would not protect people living in apartments. It would not protect farms, or churches. It would only protect ‘owner occupied residences.’ And, in fact, it would not even protect them because the small print in the initiative eliminates such protections in almost every case of eminent domain abuse.” Small wonder that Feinstein, Boxer, and Pelosi supported it.
California Proposition 99 (2008)