The Sovereign Has No Standing

A Mysterious Public Land Policy

Public land policy in the Western United States has been mysterious and intricate to most citizens not living there. For citizens living in the West public land policy is the basis of their fortune and their livlihood or wealth. When the Western States were admitted to the Union a partitioning of land took place at the time of statehood dividing the land into State lands, Indian lands, and lands remaining within the jurisdiction of the United States to be held for the common benefit of all the people of the United States. Most states sold their lands to private citizens for ranching and other forms of natural resource extraction, some state lands were retained. Even though Indians were generally given the poorest lands, their land and resources were coveted by the majority population and Indian lands have been exploited apace ever since settlement began. Not content to exploit private and Indian lands, the western "developers" clamored for access to the public lands for approximately the same reasons they wanted access to Indian lands, resource exploitation. The history of the west is coincident with resource exploitation.

Asset Transfers From the Indians

With the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, requiring individual Indians living on reservations to be as signed 160 acre allotments as their "private land", the United States took 500 million acres of land away from Indians. Indians "owned" land communally, so even the concept of private ownership was strange to them.

When valuable assets were accidently assigned to Indians every effort was made to take the valuable asset away from them, (gold in the Black Hills and oil in Oklahoma).

A Public Grab Bag

• The mining laws were and are shallow, thinly veiled programs for transferring assets, mostly land from the United States to private individuals. The laws allow for any individual to prospect the Federal lands for usable minerals, which if developed by some minimal standard become the basis of a "mining claim" which carries with it title to the land containing the mineral.

• Water developed as a result of Federal water projects is sold to irrigation farmers at $11/acre foot when it costs the government $100 to deliver it to them, to grow crops we have in surplus and for which the Federal Government also pays subsidies.

• The U.S. Forest Service conducts timber sales which produce less revenue than it takes to build the roads to get the timber out.

• A modest 5,000 acre ranch in Montana may have a $5 million price tag on it. Why? Well along with title to the ranch goes Federal grazing permits that take the size of the area that can be grazed up to 60 or 70 thousand acres. The permits are not supposed to have value, they are supposed to be re-assignable by the Federal government but in reality they are treated like private property.

In 1976 the Congress passed the Federal Land Planning and Management Act telling the Bureau of Land Management to halt the senseless exploitation of the Federal domain and begin to plan for its orderly management. This act precipitated the "Sagebrush Rebellion". The so called "Sagebrush Rebellion" (Reagan said he was a 'Sagebrush Rebel'), was a bald, blatant, naked attempt to transfer land in the public domain, to the states for further development and privatization. The Constitutions of the States recognized the State, Indian, Federal partition so the rebellion was legally groundless.

No Way To Run A railroad

The most notable experiment in the privatization of the public lands was conducted in conjunction with the building of the railroads. Vast tracts of land were given to railroad companies to develop the rail system. The rail system was developed at who knows what cost, but since the railroads were 'private' the natural consequences of managing corporations in the private instead of the public interest prevailed. Our railroads today are a shambles. We don't have high speed trains because the roadbeds have been neglected for so long and have been maintained at such a low level that high performance is not possible. I have never heard of research of any kind applied to the rail transportation system. The railroad companies that are thriving seem to be doing so because of their land holdings and other assets not because they are making money in the railroad business.

An NRRB

The railroads should have been developed the way our rivers, highways and airways transportation systems have been developed. The Federal government representing all the interests of the nation should have developed the basic rail system. Roadbeds, routes, yards should have been developed by the Federal Government. Railroad companies, like shipping, airline, or trucking companies should have been organized and privately funded to operate on the public railroads. If a fee were charged for the use of the railroad, it would operate like a toll road, if a fee were not charged it would operate like the Federal Interstate Highway system. In either case we would have a modern up-to-date railroad system for the Federal Government would have not deferred maintenance to enhance profits.

There should have been created in the Federal establishment a National Railroad Advisory Board similar to the National Aeronautics Advisory Board, that would provide the baseline research and set standards for the design and development of rolling stock as well as road bed construction. We should have been planning for "bullet" trains 50 years ago when the Burlington Zephyr was some thing we as children stood by the track side to see pass through our town.

The Commons Sins

Misuse of the public domain has been rampant and it follows from the principle of the commons. For a nation that prides itself upon democratic principles, the rule of law, and lays claim to being the most enlightened nation on earth, the immoral and unethical exploitation of the public domain is a shameful disgrace. And what presents an evil cast to the unremitting transfer of assets is that the unalienable rights of millions of Americans (and Native Americans) have to be alienated to make this exploitation possible. Children in Atlanta, GA; St. Louis, MO; Minneapolis, MN; Boston, MA;, Richmond, VA, and even Winona, MN; and Ambridge, PA as well as their parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers, have to be defrauded of their unalienable right to an equal share of the common wealth for the few to profit from the exploitation of the public domain.

We Are Degraded As A People And As A Nation

The ruthless exploitation of the public commons has degraded us as individuals and as a nation. What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody, so get it while you can, is the immoral credo of the interests Cecil Andrus, as Secretary of the Interior called, the 'rape, ruin and run boys.'

An Equal Share of the Commonwealth Is An Unalienable Right

We have to teach the American public that they own the public domain. We have to get the lesson across to persons in all walks of life and in all age groups that when the public domain is demeaned their lives are demeaned, when the public domain is unwisely exploited, they as individuals are exploited, and when the public domain is trashed their individual beings are trashed. We have to get across to all people that an equal share of the commonwealth is their unalienable right. The public domain is not some vast never, never land inaccessible and remote, it is part of the personal hegemony of every citizen, it is part of our unalienable heritage and it is to be administered as a trust, by the Federal government as trustee, for the common benefit for all the people of the United States for this and future generations.

350,000 Citizens Standing Out In The Cold

In a most incredible decision, John H. Pratt, Judge of a U. S. District Court held that the National Wildlife Federation did not have "standing" to bring a suit against the Bureau of Land Management for failing to comply with their own 1976 Organic Act (FLPMA), in the planning of 180 million acres of wilderness land in western United States. Judge Pratt said that since the National Wildlife Federation could not show that it would be injured "as an organization" by the failure of the BLM to act that it could not be a party to the case. The Washington Post for November 5, 1988, quotes Judge Pratt as saying, "Its claim of. . .injury to it as an organization is therefore without merit and provides no basis to support its claim of standing." The National Wildlife Association has about 350,000 members, most of whom I would presume to be citizens of the United States and whose main purpose is the protection and sane use of the natural resources of the nation. They are hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen primarily, but historically these groups have formed the backbone of the conservation movement in the United States.

Who Has Standing?

If the National Wildlife Federation representing 350,000 citizens of the United States, each of whom has an unalienable right to an equal share of the commonwealth, who would have standing? Some timber operator whose has projected his future income on exploitation of the timber resources of the public domain? Some miners who hope to strike it rich some day on the public lands. Denying standing to the proprietors of the public domain and implying and inferring standing to exploiters, (who are also owners) is a bit far fetched and seems to be legislating non-Constitutional rights to publicly held property from the bench. The National Wildlife Federation should appeal the judge's ruling but this time state that not only are they representing their corporate entity, the National Wildlife Federation, but are also filing a class action on behalf of their 350,000 citizen members and any other citizen or citizen group that wants to join them.

We The Timber Cutters of the United States

What Judge Pratt is saying is that the Constitution does not begin "We the People of the United States in order to form a more Perfect Union etc...", but rather it begins "We the miners, timber cutters, cattle ranchers, and other extraction developers of the United States in order to form a more exploited Union.. .etc"

Structural Dependency on the Public Domain

There is a certain arrogance to the western viewpoint and it runs to the effect that since we live out here we are in a better position to know how these public lands should be used. The simple fact of the matter is that their proximity has simply given them a greater opportunity to take advantage of the public largess and consequently to become its beneficiaries. The west has become structurally dependent upon exploiting the public lands in the same way the poor have become structurally dependent upon welfare and the rich have become structurally dependent upon on the public debt and defense expenditures.

These cycles of structural dependency have to be broken.

. . . Ted Sudia . . .

© Copyright 1988
Institute for domestic Tranquility