Cliven Bundy showed it's time to look at how little we get from business use of public land

[yurbud]

Grazing is probably the least of it.

From mining to fracking, oil drilling, and timber leases, are we getting what our assets our worth?

What do we get compared to what those companies would have to pay to use someone (or a corporation's) private property?

This is also one "tax" we can impose without being threatened with them taking their business elsewhere--Bundy can't exactly move his cattle to graze in Bangladesh and the Koch brothers can't move their coal mines to Africa.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

1. Economic sanctions...

Cut his water, electricity, etc... until he pays his bills. No confrontation.

[yurbud]

15. I don't really give a shit about that Bundy guy apart from the issue he highlighted

[Cleita]

2. No we are not. It's something I've been

complaining about for thirty years mostly to blank stares. Maybe this guy did us a favor by shining a light on an issue that needs the light of day.

[Journeyman]

6. I've had this argument with conservatives for years. Whenever they drag out their old canard. . .

"Government doesn't generate any money; it only takes it in taxes," I shoot back that this is true only because business won't pay a fair share for what they take from the rest of us.

Starting from before the Continental Railroad acts of the 1860s, and working our way to today, business has availed itself of the use and abuse of our land without compensating us a pittance of what it's worth.

When de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s that "democracy in America will last until the people realize they can vote themselves money," I don't believe he fully appreciated that rather than the great mass of people making this realization, it would be the limited interests of the business class that would work to destroy democracy through the purchase of government largesse and favorable legislation.

[Cleita]

11. My big gripes are the lumber industry and extraction industries.

If they had to pay the same use fees that they have to pay private landowners to cut trees or mine ores, we would have extra money for education and jobs to repair infrastructures.

[truebluegreen]

3. I'd love to have this discussion.

All those fiercely independent rugged individualists of the West--welfare ranchers, miners, farmers, water users, lumber companies etc etc etc--have been sponging off the federal government (i.e. all of us) for decades, or a century, or longer. If we want to rein in the destruction of our environment in general and public lands in particular, we should start by making the moochers pay the actual cost of what they glean from their practices.

Cliven Bundy has my thanks for being so totally and publicly clueless that he actually woke at least a few people up to the ongoing obscenity that is land use policy in the West.

[Wounded Bear]

4. IIRC, most of the lands use rights fees...

have not really been updated since the 1800's. Mineral and logging rights fees are particularly low. As it shows up in the Bundy case, ranchers only pay $1 per cow per month. Pretty low for Bundy to be bitching about.

On the one hand, it kind of helps keep prices down by lowering costs to producers, but there is no doubt it has been wildly exploited by Corporate Amerika, Inc.

[yurbud]

12. as we have seen with outsourcing though, if a business figures out how to lower costs, they don't

pass the savings on to consumers, they keep it as greater profits.

If the cost of doing business go UP though, they do pass it on.

One way to get around this is charge them half of whatever they sell our resources for, or half of the profits from it, or something along those lines rather than a flat fee.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Often wondered why no one ask's

who is monitoring the oil and gas thieves. How do we know what and how much the Oil companies are steeling for us. Never met anyone who reads the so called meters on the wells,have you. Bundy is just the tip of the Federal Lands Theft. The big guy's are raping us royally and we have to ask the question as to who does lof the real numbers and checks the accounts.

It's in the Trillions guy's. Keep you eye on the ball. Been bitching for years and no one will touch it with a ten foot pole. Oil,gas,coal,minerals,grazing rights and water,just think of the numbers.

[yurbud]

13. remember the fiasco with the oil regulators a while back?

Being bought off with hookers and coke and going through the revolving door (the latter like every other regulatory agency).

[cilla4progress]

7. I live out west, and I think of it as

PUBLIC land, not government or federal land. Land where I can hike, ride, cycle, you name it.

It belongs to all of US, not the "gubmint," and not some private interest who can use and abuse it for their own purposes.

I say the more, the better!

[Warpy]

8. Grazing fees need to be kept fairly low

so that western ranchers can make a profit while not overloading the land. The fees largely go to pay for forest and land management to make sure too many cows on too little land doesn't turn the west into the Sahara.

The government is the biggest landowner west of the Mississippi and that has rankled westerners forever.

Oil and gas leases are laughably low, set decades ago and not indexed to inflation.

Bundy will eventually be arrested and will probably lose everything to pay his debt to the rest of us.

[alarimer]

10. Except that they are FAR lower than private landowners would charge.

It should be market value or not at all.

[yurbud]

18. I don't care as much about grazing fees as other uses of public land.

Grass grows back pretty quickly.

Trees take longer, and oil, gas, and minerals don't grow back at all and should be priced accordingly.

[Warpy]

21. Grass?

There is damned little of that out in the southwest desert. It's desert scrub which grows very slowly and requires rain that we just haven't got over the last 20 years.

Look at sub Saharan Africa to see what overgrazing semi desert will do: it will turn it into complete desert.

If it were as easy as "grass" the BLM wouldn't be overseeing it so closely.

[alarimer]

9. All of that is done for less than fair market value.

In my mind, charge what private landowners would charge or don't do it at all.

[yurbud]

14. "don't do it all" is too close to what we are already doing.

[yurbud]

16. How would conservatives argue against this since they don't even believe in public property?

[TeamPooka]

17. Teddy Roosevelt taught us we need to conserve these public lands over 100 years ago.

Don't forget the lesson.

[yurbud]

19. I would not advocate increasing the taking from these lands--just getting a fair price for what's

already being done.

[yurbud]

20. I just realized this problem is worse than leasing use of public land--privatization sells it too

for far below market value.

The rich bribe politicians to sell what belongs to all of us for far less than it's worth and often what shouldn't be sold in the first place.

The worst current example is public education, which is being privatized and diverting taxpayer money to for-profit corporations that often deliver an inferior results.

If politicians could figure out a way to make our kidneys public property, they would sell them to the rich too.