The U.S. Government Owns Over 623 Million Acres. Why Does It Need More?

The U.S. Government Owns Over 623 Million Acres. Why Does It Need More? (Heritage).

Insatiable ­– that would seem to be the word that best describes the appetite of some in Congress and their friends in the environmental community.

Congress has added over 450 pages to the defense authorization bill to designate wilderness, create new parks, designate Wild and Scenic Rivers and fund National Heritage areas – things that have nothing to do with national defense.

The federal government owns over 623 million acres. To put that in perspective, it is larger than France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands combined.

Yet for some, even this enormous helping of green pork is not enough. Several members of the House of Representatives are pushing for far more, seeking to gift the environmental community with a reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The LWCF was enacted in 1965 to take offshore energy development revenues and use them to buy private land and turn it into public parks.

After five decades of funding, the LWCF will expire in 2015. When one examines the scale and scope of federal lands and federal environmental designations, it is clear there is no longer any need to have a dedicated fund to feed the insatiable appetite of Washington.

Between the four largest landholding agencies (the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Parks Service) the federal government owns over 623 million acres. To put that in perspective, it is larger than France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands combined.

The National Park Service – the smallest of the four major federal landholders – has in its portfolio:
$2,750,000,000 annual budget
84,000,000 acres of land
4,502,644 acres of oceans, lakes, reservoirs
85,049 miles of perennial rivers and streams
68,561 archeological sites
27,000 historic structures
2,461 national historic landmarks
582 national natural landmarks
401 national parks
49 national heritage areas

Unsurprisingly, the Department of Interior, under which the NPS falls, has a huge maintenance backlog of between $13.5 billion and $20 billion for the land it already owns. In other words, NPS can’t manage what it already has.

So the question is: Do we really need a permanent pot of money to continually expand the federal footprint? If you are unsure as to the answer, below is more information about the immense holdings of other federal agencies. And, one should bear in mind that this does not include nearly 200 million acres of state owned lands.

More importantly, this does not contemplate the federal environmental regulatory net cast over tens of millions of acres of private lands through laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act’s wetlands regulation.

The coalition promoting the LWCF states that “…the program has been chronically underfunded leading to a number of missed opportunities for investing in important areas. Now, a broad-based coalition of conservation, recreation, environment, business, historic and cultural organizations as well as many others are working together to secure full and dedicated funding of the LWCF. At the congressionally authorized level of $900 million annually…”

At time when we have $18 trillion in debt and 623 million acres already under federal control, having a special $900 million annual fund dedicated to purchasing yet more land is unnecessary.

We need less, not more, federal land. If there is any particular area lawmakers decide must be set aside, Congress can appropriate money for that purpose, just as it appropriates money for the military, veterans and other concerns more important than growing the vast federal estate.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund is done. It is time to stick a fork in it.

Read the full story here: The post The Government Owns Over 623 Million Acres. Why Does It Need More? appeared first on Daily Signal.

Lagarde: IMF is ready to provide assistance to Ukraine.

Lagarde: IMF is ready to provide assistance to Ukraine. (Taz).

The International Monetary Fund is ready to provide financial assistance to Ukraine, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in reply to an Itar-Tass question on Sunday.

On the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Sydney Lagarde said if the Ukrainian authorities applied for help, economic or financial, the IMF would be ready to provide it. But the International Monetary Fund needed someone in Ukraine to discuss these issues.Hmmm....Lets confiscate the pension saving to 'redistribute' the wealth?

EPA overrides U.S. Congress, 'donates' Wyoming town to Indian tribes

EPA overrides U.S. Congress, 'donates' Wyoming town to Indian tribes. HT: DailyCaller.HT: AlwaysOnWatch.

Have you heard the story of the residents of Riverton, Wyo.? One day they were Wyomingans, the next they were members of the Wind River tribes — after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the town part of the Wind River Indian Reservation, undoing a 1905 law passed by Congress and angering state officials.

The surprise decision was made by officials of the EPA, the Department of Interior, and Department of Justice early last month, and has invoked the ire of Gov. Matt Mead, who has vowed not to honor the agency’s decision and is preparing to fight in court.

“My deep concern is about an administrative agency of the federal government altering a state’s boundary and going against over 100 years of history and law,” Mead said in a statement. “This should be a concern to all citizens because, if the EPA can unilaterally take land away from a state, where will it stop?”   Hmmmm......'Redistribution of wealth'.Read the full story here.

Are We Being Compromised by Barack Obama's Murky Past?

Origin of the Picture unknown, found on Google images

Are We Being Compromised by Barack Obama's Murky Past?HT: AmericanThinker.

Since he first became a presidential candidate, President Obama must have spent millions of dollars in legal expenses to combat dozens of so-called "birther" challenges seeking the original documents pertaining to his birth. 
As president, he famously issued an electronic document on the White House website in 2011; the document purported to be his long-form birth certificate, though it is apparently a forgery. In addition, he has taken great pains to hide the paper trail of passport records, college transcripts, and other data -- all of which a prospective employer might require of a job applicant.

The public's right to know is but a minor consideration. Our overriding concern should be what unfriendly foreign intelligence adversaries, particularly Russian, may have obtained on our president's background.

Among all the foreign intelligence agencies, Russian intelligence (SVR) has a long history and has made a science of studying the backgrounds of American presidents. Therefore, we must assume that since Russian intelligence is particularly skilled and a persistent practitioner of this art, it is possible to the point of certainty that, using all their resources and "black-bag" tactics, they have long had the biographical background data that President Obama and his team of lawyers have been so diligent in concealing from the American public.

The Russians most likely would have started collecting data during Obama's university years, when he professed radical Marxist views. They were certainly focusing on him by the time of his celebrated speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

By that time, Russian intelligence had easy access to the true facts concerning Obama's birth, parentage, and childhood; his mentor (communist Frank Marshall Davis); and his college performance, as well as who provided his finances. They also would have obtained the information on his passport history and his complete political career and associates.

It is recognized that among all the intelligence agencies, Russian intelligence is the most skillful in looking for information and points of leverage -- which are then exploited cleverly and "gently" by Russian statecraft.

By now, the Russians have most likely have told Obama discreetly that they have such information. How would they use it? As one old Soviet KGB operator said, "Kompromat is the most powerful tool of espionage."

Following this thought process, take the issue of how strongly the Russians objected to our ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans for NATO Europe to defend against an Iranian nuclear missile threat. Now ponder why President Obama told Russian President Medvedev in the fall of 2012 that he would have "more flexibility" to deal with the BMD issue in his second term which he has now basically canceled. Coincidence?

The current world situation is presenting many complicating challenges to current and future U.S. objectives. With the Obama administration presiding over the hollowing out of our military forces and prepared to further weaken our strategic nuclear posture, our adversaries are being emboldened to challenge us in a number of areas. The Middle East is in a continued state of turmoil, with no end in sight. Iran continues to ignore U.N. sanctions and proceeds with its drive to achieve nuclear weapon capability. It dismisses the possibility of a U.S. military strike.

In the Pacific, we have to deal with an erratic, unpredictable nuclear-armed North Korea, who has been making outrageous threats to the U.S. and our allies. China continues flexing its military muscle, trying to enforce its illegal claims in the South and East China Seas.

Closer to home, according to Ambassador Roger Noriega, we have an operational Iranian missile base in Venezuela which can threaten a number of our cities. 

We also are witnessing Russia reviving Soviet Cold war tactics in areas of our strategic interest. Clearly, we are headed into an exceptionally crucial and dangerous round of geo-strategic confrontations which could have a profound impact on our future objectives and way of life.

These challenges cannot be ignored. We are led by a man who does not believe in American exceptionalism or our capitalist foundation. His lead-from-behind strategy has forfeited the initiative to our adversaries. Under such circumstances, we cannot afford to be in a position where our leadership is subject to compromise.

James A. Lyons, U.S. Navy retired Admiral, was commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.

Bill Ayers confirms what Obama has denied. Weatherman domestic terrorist finally spills the beans.

Bill Ayers confirms what Obama has denied. Weatherman domestic terrorist finally spills the beans.By Aaron Klein for WND.

Weatherman domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is now confirming what the White House has previously denied – that he held a fundraiser in his living room for Barack Obama.That 1995 meeting was said to have launched Obama’s political career.

In an October 2008 interview on MSNBC host Chris Matthews’ show, Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, categorically denied the fundraiser was ever held.

Matthews asked Gibbs: “Did [Ayers] have a fundraiser for [Obama], or not?”

Gibbs, who would become the White House spokesman, replied: “No, he did not have a fundraiser for our candidate as he said ten seconds ago.”

However, in an interview last week with the Daily Beast, Ayers recalled that fundraiser.

Stated Ayers of his relationship with Obama: “We were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was ‘a guy around the neighborhood,’ that was true.”

Does this explain infamous Ayers living-room meeting?

Is the socialist-oriented New Party the missing link at the center of that now infamous 1995 Obama fundraiser in Ayers living room in Chicago?
It was at that meeting that New Party member Alice Palmer announced she wanted Obama as her successor as state senator since she was stepping down to run for Congress.
WND has found that in the July 1996 edition of the New Party’s newsletter, the New Party news, the controversial party announced “the Illinois New Party capped off a month-long house party drive in Chicago.”
Further review of New Party literature from 1995 and 1996 finds that so-called house parties were regularly utilized by the New Party to introduce candidates to leading party activists as well as to raise money and recruit new members.
It is known that single-payer activist Quentin Young, who advised Obama on healthcare when the politician was a state senator, was present at the parlor meeting at the Ayers’ residence.
WND reported that Young was listed by the New Party as an early party founder and builder.

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” Young was quoted as saying. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”

Chicago-based blogger Maria Warren was also present. She wrote that she remembered watching Obama give a “standard, innocuous little talk” in the Ayers’ home.
“They were launching him,” Warren wrote, “introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”
It would make sense that the New Party sponsored the get-together in Ayers’ living room for Palmer’s announcement.
Palmer was the New Party’s signed candidate for office. The New Party, which had partnered closely with ACORN, was mobilizing support for Palmer among its constituents and the larger Chicago progressive community.
New Party founder and Marxist activist Carl Davidson recalled screening Palmer and signing her up to the party.
Wrote Davidson:
In the next two elections in the city … the New Party has taken a slightly different approach. It organized a citywide candidates forum and invited a number of progressive candidates. Of those responding, two were of special interest, Alice Palmer and Willie Delgado … Both Palmer and Delgado attended the [New Party] forum and were thoroughly questioned by 70 or so New Party members. At the close, both publicly signed a “contract” with the New Party … Two weeks later, the New Party formally endorsed them and is now mobilizing support.
How was the New Party mobilizing the stated support for Palmer at the time, an effort that Palmer wanted transferred to Obama?
WND reported the New Party had such a close relationship with ACORN that at one point the two shared an office address, fax lines and email addresses.
ACORN led the New Party’s mobilization and voter drive efforts. In progressive circles at the time, the New Party was considered the de facto political wing of ACORN, a group with which Obama long maintained a close relationship.
Ayers and Dohrn, meanwhile, traveled in the same political circles as New Party leaders, making it even more likely the duo could have hosted a New Party house meeting. The duo were key supporters of Palmer.
In 1994 Dohrn and Bill Ayers were listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, which was co-chaired by New Party founder Davidson.
WND found that Chicago activists Joe Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner were also listed as New Party leaders.
Iosbaker is a University of Illinois-Chicago office worker and a union steward for his SEIU local. His home was raided by the FBI in September 2010 reportedly as part of a terror probe investigating material support for jihadist groups.
Together with other activists raided in the same probe, Iosbaker and Weiner are founders of the so-called Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which protested the FBI raids.
Another founder of the committee whose home was part of the same raid is Hatem Abudayyeh, the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.
WND was first to report that Obama, while serving as a paid director of the far-left nonprofit Chicago Woods Fund, provided two grants to the AAAN. 
Obama served at the Woods Fund alongside Ayers.
AAAN was founded by a longtime Obama associate, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, is president of the Arab American Action Network.
The New Party, meanwhile, is coming under increased scrutiny after new information emerged further indicating Obama was a member of the party in the 1990s.
The New Party was a 1990s party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
In 2008, Obama’s campaign denied the president was ever a member amid reports, including from WND, citing the New Party’s own literature listing Obama as a member.
Information uncovered in recent weeks, including Obama’s signed contract with the New Party, further establishes the president’s membership with the controversial organization.

Socialist goals
The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral “fusion,” which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party disbanded in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.
The socialist-oriented goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.
Among the New Party’s stated objectives were “full employment, a shorter work week and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth; and like programs to ensure gender equity.”
The New Party stated it also sought “the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets [and] community-controlled alternative financial institutions.”
Many of the New Party’s founding members were Democratic Socialists of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA.
Last month, WND reported on a 1996 print advertisement in a local Chicago newspaper that shows Obama was the speaker at an event sponsored and presented by the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA.
WND first reported on the event in 2010.

Obama listed as New Party member

In 2009, WND reported on newspaper evidence from the New Party’s own literature listing several new members of the New Party, including Obama.
Earlier this month, Kurtz, writing at National Review Online, reported Obama signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.
In 2008, Obama’s Fight the Smears campaign website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois Senate, as stating: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.”
Fight the Smears conceded the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined.Hmmm......Matthew 7:16 ~ "But by their fruit you will know them. Do they gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?"Read the full story here.

Video - 1998 ‘Redistribution’ Speech: Obama Saw Welfare Recipients As ‘Majority Coalition’.

Obama is also heard lamenting Americans’ distrust of “government action”; identifying his political opponents - that is, Republicans - as “the bad guys”; declaring his support for labor unions and community organizers; endorsing the public financing of political campaigns; and staking out liberal positions on gun control, government-run health care and welfare reform. Many of those positions, he conceded, had “no chance of seeing the light of day in Springfield” - the Illinois state capital - “or in Washington.” It’s unclear if NBC News had a complete recorded copy including Obama’s unedited remarks. “I think that what we’re gonna have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all,” he told an audience that reportedly consisted of some 400 people. “There has been a systematic - I don’t think it’s too strong to call it a propaganda campaign - against the possibility of government action and its efficacy,” he said. “And I think some of it has been deserved. The Chicago Housing Authority has not been a model of good policymaking. And neither, necessarily, has been the Chicago public schools.” “What that means, then is that as we try to resuscitate this notion that we’re all in this thing together - ‘leave nobody behind’ - we do have to be innovative in thinking.’What are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live?’” he said. It was at this point that Obama launched into his now-famous line about constructing government systems that redistribute wealth. The full recording reveals that Obama saw welfare recipients and the working poor in Chicago as a “majority coalition” who could be leveraged politically. “What I think will re-engage people in politics is if we’re doing significant, serious policy work around what I will label the ‘working poor,’” he said, “although my definition of the working poor is not simply folks making minimum wage, but it’s also families of four who are making $30,000 a year.” “They are struggling. And to the extent that we are doing research figuring out what kinds of government action would successfully make their lives better, we are then putting together a potential majority coalition to move those agendas forward.”Read the full story here.

"CHANGE & Redistributing wealth" America Lost 129,000 Millionaires in 2011.

"CHANGE and Redistributing wealth" America Lost 129,000 Millionaires in 2011.(CNBC).America’s millionaire population declined last year for the first time since the financial crisis, according to a new report. The population of U.S. millionaire households (households with investible assets of $1 million or more) fell to 5,134,000 from 5,263,000 in 2011, according to The Boston Consulting Group’s Global Wealth study. Total private wealth in North America fell by 0.9 percent, to $38 trillion.
The ultra-rich were the largest losers in dollar terms. Households in North America with investible assets of more than $100 million saw their wealth decline 2.4 percent. Their population declined slightly to 2,928 from 2,989. The main reason for all this wealth loss? Stocks. With the wealthy today increasingly dependent on stocks for wealth, last year’s stalled stock market shrunk the population of millionaires and nicked the fortunes of existing millionaires. According to BCG, the amount of wealth held in equities declined 3.6 percent last year. Globally, the picture looked a little brighter. Virtually all of the growth in global millionaires came from emerging markets last year. While the United States lost nearly 130,000 millionaires, the rest of the world added 175,000 millionaires. (Hellooooo?They don't use stock markets?)There are now 12.6 million millionaire households globally, according to BCG. The country with the highest “millionaire density” - proportion of population who are millionaires - was Singapore. More than 17 percent of Singapore’s households are millionaires. While 2011 saw declines in U.S. millionaires, the future looks brighter, BCG said. They expect wealth held by millionaires globally to grow at around six percent a year in Asia-Pacific. “We are in a two-speed world,” said the report. “All of the growth is being driven by developing markets.”Hmmmm.....Obama: "All the Choices We've Made Have Been the Right Ones".Read the full story here.

Video - Obama talking about the 'negative liberties of the constitution' and redistribution of wealth.

Hmmmmm.........Sounds like 'Comrade Lenin' has reincarnated?  HT: AstuteBlogger.