Protesting Too Much: Lex Anteinternet: The return of a perennial bad idea, the transfer o...

 

I've commented several times on this year's legislative efforts regarding the Federal lands in the state, with a comment on the Wyoming bill being here:

Lex Anteinternet: The return of a perennial bad idea, the transfer o...: Every few years Wyoming and the other western states get the idea that the Federal government ought to hand over the Federal domain to the ...

I may have commented on it here (I don't recall) but I wrote my local state senator and my local representative on this, knowing that my rep was one of the sponsors of the bill.  I noted in that, that I would take backing such bills into future consideration next time I vote, as I feel many people will.

My rep wrote back, to his credit, but complained a bit that I seems to think there was some conspiracy to take away the Federal lands.  Given as the original bill proposed to do just that, I found that objection to my opposition a bit strained. After all, it was a topic in last year's statewide elections and then it showed up in the legislature.  Why wouldn't I be suspicious.

Following on that, it occurs to me that  there were "take" bills of various types in the Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and Utah legislators, all in the present session.

Hmm. . . . .

I hadn't thought of any of this in conspiratorial terms, but now I really do wonder a bit.

In recent years, one thing that Wyoming's legislature has seen is some pretty stout effort to bring it into regional efforts that are of a strongly libertarian bent. These haven't worked, but they have been well financed.  I have to wonder about these bills now, and if they are indeed part of a wider effort.

The irony to them, of course, is that the philosophical and legal basis for such "take" concepts are so extremely poor.  You can't "take back" something you never owned, and never had a legal right to, and the ideal that the Federal government poorly manages this asset and we will do better is strained in an era when it seems that various state agencies are always stretched for funds.

Well, anyhow, folks backing such bills best be careful.  This state isn't really capital "C" conservative so much as it is "leave me the heck alone" and use of the public lands by common people is a part of the local culture.  Recent efforts here which have attempted to bring in what's going on in national politics haven't been successful, and there's a reason for that.  If fisherman, hunters, hikers, ATV users, etc., figure that somebody is outstretching a grasping hand, they may be inclined to cut it off.