No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.
-- George Washington
The real irony is that we're told that precious lands can only be preserved via federal control, yet the Midwest and Eastern states seem to be doing fine without it.
Energy solutions owns Utah now. And the "Dead Tree" theory described in the blog you link to is a reasoned argument conservatives need to quickly wrap their heads around. The reality is the Republican Party has abandoned substance and turned it's back on principled conservatives. Your thoughts here exemplify that. There is little correlation between federal land ownership and whether or not we should accept federal dollars to bolster our state budgets.
Jesse, I've long wondered about the presumed conflict between private ownership and preservation of land.
Lon, you won't hear much of an argument from me about the Republican party not being very conservative. My point here is not to rationalize the taking of state bailout money, but to point out the arrogance of people advocating federal ownership of over 80% of a state's land, and then complaining that those states don't pay their fair share of federal taxes.
There absolutely is a correlation between land ownership and a state's budget. That's where state tax revenues come from! Private ownership and income generation. In a sense, federal subsidies could be viewed as a state's tax on federal ownership of resources.
The big public land states in the West still have more private land per capita than the more populated states with little public land. And they also collect payments in lieu of taxes from the federal government.
It's a sweet deal, and those of us living in Utah are lucky to have it.
Jesse, the Sagebrush Rebellion is over. During the Reagan administration, everybody realized that almost all the public lands worth having were privatized already.
6 comments:
The real irony is that we're told that precious lands can only be preserved via federal control, yet the Midwest and Eastern states seem to be doing fine without it.
Energy solutions owns Utah now. And the "Dead Tree" theory described in the blog you link to is a reasoned argument conservatives need to quickly wrap their heads around. The reality is the Republican Party has abandoned substance and turned it's back on principled conservatives. Your thoughts here exemplify that. There is little correlation between federal land ownership and whether or not we should accept federal dollars to bolster our state budgets.
Lon,
Laramie, WY
Jesse, I've long wondered about the presumed conflict between private ownership and preservation of land.
Lon, you won't hear much of an argument from me about the Republican party not being very conservative. My point here is not to rationalize the taking of state bailout money, but to point out the arrogance of people advocating federal ownership of over 80% of a state's land, and then complaining that those states don't pay their fair share of federal taxes.
There absolutely is a correlation between land ownership and a state's budget. That's where state tax revenues come from! Private ownership and income generation. In a sense, federal subsidies could be viewed as a state's tax on federal ownership of resources.
The big public land states in the West still have more private land per capita than the more populated states with little public land. And they also collect payments in lieu of taxes from the federal government.
It's a sweet deal, and those of us living in Utah are lucky to have it.
PILT is a pittance compared to what it would generate if privately owned.
Jesse, the Sagebrush Rebellion is over. During the Reagan administration, everybody realized that almost all the public lands worth having were privatized already.
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