1. The federal government did not "seize" this land as you so slyly imply (but you know better, I can tell). Your state and the others CAME INTO THE UNION with federal ownership even higher than it is now. And simple percentage comparisons are completely meaningless.
2. The land belongs to all of us. You should be glad people are willing to travel to see it and spend good money in your state doing so (something that won't happen if your acolytes of unregulated free enterprise cover it with feedlots or factory farms, or strip-mine the hell out of it).
3. You get the land, you ruin the water for everyone else. The water, used under existing law a thousand or more miles from where it falls as rain, is subject to a federal allocation scheme and interstate compacts that cannot be put at risk by the short-sighted "boom" mentality that will be in the driver's seat if your states get the federal land. And no, it's not your water, because it falls on our land.
4. Your citizens already have representation in the Congress way beyond that of the citizens of more populous states.
5. In short, the percentage of all state land in the West which is owned by the Feds (and, therefore, incapable of being put to productive use or forming part of the local and state government tax base) is not only higher but FAR higher in the West than in any other area of the country.
Now that's one of the "big lies" we hear most often. It is mendacious for four reasons:
(a) Lots of it is used for productive purposes (grazing, timber, water supply) at artificially low, politically-protected rates that a New Yorker or even a Texan would love to pay.
(b) A lot of the rest is too ecologically fragile to be put to any fixed use other than conservation and outdoor recreation. (And yes, that's for the federal government to decide, it's the people's land.)
(c) Are you telling me that ski basins in National Forests, restaurants in towns adjacent to large federal tracts, car rental shops in the larger cities, etc. pay no local property tax, and generate no sales tax?
(d) On a land area to population ratio, your state and the others far surpass almost all the rest of the country. That's not an argument for federal intrusion or seizure, whichever bogus name you want to call it, but it puts your special pleading in the appropriate light.
6. I'll admit it, I basically think y'all are greedy elitists. |
