It seems as if the
real goal of Ammon Bundy and the other occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge is to take permanent possession of government land as an act of armed
rebellion. That’s the simplest way to understand their actions and their
statements.
They are playing a game of chicken with the federal government. The
current frigidly right-wing winds blowing throughout the country would make an
armed attempt by the police or army to dislodge this rag-tag army a probable public
relations disaster for President Obama. Bill Clinton faced a lot of criticism
for the Waco siege and its violent conclusion in an age much more hostile to
gun rights and secession fantasies than today. Imagine if a police force killed
a few of Bundy’s buddies.
But I don’t think Ammon Bundy is suicidal. He just plays a good game of
poker. He figures that he can stay on the land as long as he likes, as long as
he doesn’t start shooting at people.
Good poker player, yes. Good PR hack, not so much. The problem Bundy
faces is that everyone has lined up against his group—the people he’s trying to
help, the local authorities and even the politicians who pontificated on the
rights of his father not to pay nominal fees to have his cattle feed on public
lands that tax dollars maintain. Plus wacko groups from the Northwest’s
thriving survivalist movement have descended on the Refuge, looking to hook up
with Bundy’s group. The more people out of his control—and maybe his payroll,
for all we know—the greater the possibility that someone does something stupid
that gives the federal government ethical permission to charge in. I’m pretty
sure that Ammon Bundy is of the “discretion is the better part of valor”
school, adhering to the Falstaffian belief that being a martyr is great PR for
the cause, but hazardous to your health. Come to think of it, a fictional Bundy
married to a redhead with two children often expressed the same sentiment.
All irony aside, the broader issue is one of property ownership. The
Bundys and their supporters, don’t believe that the federal government should
own any land. What they don’t realize is that if private hands held all land,
the Bundys would have to pay market-rate fees to the owners of the land that
the government now allows ranchers to use at low rates subsidized by taxes. The
Bundys probably figure that they’ll be the ones who own the land and charge big
bucks for its use.
The concept of public ownership of land is at least as old as the
concept of kingship. Governments hold land for the public good in virtually
every country of the world, from the most right-wing to the most leftist. A majority
of all land in the United States has been public since U.S. armies took it from
the Native American tribes in the 19th century. And those tribes tended to have
a kind of shared concept of ownership in which no one owned the land, but
everyone could enjoy it. If you think it’s a weird custom, consider that those
readers who own houses may not own the drilling rights below the land surface
and those in co-op apartments own only shares in a corporation that gives them
the right to occupy their domicile. Every civilization complicates the issue of
private property.
As the New York Times has reported, there is an active movement
to transfer public lands from federal to state hands, especially out West. As
usual, Koch money is behind some of the efforts to neuter the federal
government. One state legislature, Utah’s, has passed a law demanding control
of the federal lands in the state. The government has ignored the state.
To understand why the ultra rightwing wants to transfer federal lands to
the state level, we need only analyze what states have done on national issues
over the past ten years. Working on the
state level, whose legislatures tend to be controlled by rural conservatives,
has enabled Republicans to pass a large number of laws that make it harder to
vote and harder to get an abortion or food stamps and easier to carry a gun.
Those in favor of having states own public land must figure they can then
whittle away environmental regulations and usage limits, and perhaps eventually
convince states to sell the land at typical government discounts.
There are two major conceptual problems with giving the states federal
lands. Keep in mind that most of the land in question is uninhabited forests, wetlands,
mountains, prairies and desserts. The issues involved in wildlife management,
fire control, species protection, resource use, strategic resource management
as an aspect of defense policy and environmental degradation go beyond the
confines of any state. Addressing these concerns involves an enormous long term
investment that the states can’t afford. Without tax dollars from other states
with fewer square acres of public lands, individual states would be unable to
manage these large holdings.
The privatization of the government has so far
mostly led to a shift in the division of the income generated by providing the
privatized goods and services. Management takes home a bigger share of the pie
and most employees take home a small piece. Privatization is one of several
policy changes the federal government made beginning in the Reagan era that
have led to the rapid increase in wealth and income inequality we have
experienced. Is there any reason to think that privatization of public land
would be any different?
Let’s try to imagine how privatization of public land would play out: If
the government gave away a fair share plot to every citizen, that would
represent a crude form of communism, and we know the Bundys, Kochs and others
toying with concept of massive land privatization don’t want that. No, what
they probably have in mind is an auction or sale of public land. Large
corporate interest will end up buying and then benefitting from most of it.
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