No Representation Without Taxation

Conservation easements on private property are accumulating all across this
great nation.  There are no summaries of the total acreages under such
easements in spite of the fact that most such easements have either
tax-exemptions of tax-subsidies making them possible.  Large easement
purchasers like The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have come to be worth billions
and employ large staffs as they not only broker tax dollars and easements
purchases but also buy and later sell to government land parcels that are
either key to other agendas like "Wildlands Corridors" or road closures or
planned developments or simply parcels that the government cannot buy at the
moment but can buy at a future date.

All of these "Conservancies" and "Alliances" and "Foundations" have come to
be intimate "partners" with politicians and bureaucracies as they each
"scratch each other's back".  The current Secretary of the Treasury is a
former TNC Executive even though scandals about their propriety and
bookkeeping keep surfacing and diving like a whale fleeing a whaler.  They
meet both openly and informally with Federal bureaucrats and Congressmen to
"plan" and "partner".  They sit on "Boards" and "Commissions" and they work
hand-in-glove with the environmental extremists and animal rights radicals
that are stifling this nation.

The Federal government buys easements: ask any farmer in the Dakotas or
Minnesota .  TNC takes easements everywhere: as in the past 3 years all over
the South as fear-mongering by bureaucrats and academicians about an extinct
woodpecker that may "need" the government to condemn large southern forests
if owners don't sell an easement on their forests.  "Land Alliances" of
every stripe barter and hoodwink rural residents to sell easements with all
the veracity of carnival barkers and Florida real estate brokers working in
New York City   50 years ago.  Urban County "Planners" and "Green" state (no,
not Vermont but states like Massachusetts and New Jersey and California; you
know the ones the rest of us are supposed to "be like" when we "grow up")
bureaucrats all demand and get an "easement" for any permission for anything
they "grant" land-owning "peasants" like you and me.  Easements are
everywhere and they are proliferating like mushrooms on a manure pile after
a rain.

Key easements can strangle rural communities and rural economies just as
surely as government land purchase or government land closures or government
land non-management.  Reducing grazing and logging fits in with driving land
purchase prices down and putting more land up for sale.  Economies suffer
when new land uses are foreclosed and opportunities are foregone.
Easements, when coupled with steady government land purchase over time, just
as surely replace a free Republic with a Socialist state-run society as any
invading army or any communist revolution ever has.

"So what can anyone do about it?"  "It is just as inevitable as the loss of
guns and hunting and trapping, etc."  Don't believe it.

The "new" Congress has lists a mile (soon I should say a kilometer but what
the heck, mile) long of increased environmental tyrannies and animal rights
oppressions to win the upcoming Presidential race.  Prominent among these
are all manner of government land purchases and tons of financial support
for "easements" by every government "partner" "from hell to breakfast"
(whatever that last is supposed to mean).  Over in the Ways and means
Committee they are planning every sort of tax increase and tax-break erasure
imaginable as they too gear up for the upcoming Presidential sweepstakes.
So I suggest we take a leaf from them to try and save rural America from
where it is being forced to go.

First, we have all witnessed the recent "discovery" of the heretofore
unmentioned "power" of City, State, County, and even local (Townships, Water
boards, etc.) officials (that can tax and that have bureaucrats under them)
to declare their fiefdoms a "SANCTUARY".  Evidently all they have to do is
instruct all the police, bureaucrats, or anyone else they "control" to "not
cooperate with any Federal official or organization or group regarding
immigration laws".  If they have this "power" regarding Federal Immigration
Laws, why not "other" Federal laws?   This action should be taken regarding
any future easement sale or purchase or the solicitation of such
transactions in the future in "this City or County or Water District or
State or wherever".  Land records, fees, approvals, requirements, etc.
should be ramped up for such transactions.  Don't tell me about "willing
sellers": there is no such thing when government coercion and government
subsidies hide agendas intended to make the rest of us serfs and private
property an extinct matter not even allowed to be discussed in schools.

Second, every governmental entity that taxes or has taxing authority should
explore TAXING ALL CURRENTLY HELD LAND EASEMENT OWNERS (the easement owner, not the landowner) ON AN ANNUAL BASIS. No value, you say?  I beg to differ.
They were purchased for a price.  Many landowners would buy them back for a
price.  They are "worth" a lot to Congress and to the organizations holding
them (the easements not our beloved "Representatives").  They are worth
millions in annual lost revenue to foregone development.  They are worth a
great deal in foregone employment and tax generation for said entities.  Now
states vary in how they tax but many I have lived in tax your cars and tax
your gun collection and tax your boats and tax your estate, etc., etc.: why
not tax on the easement "holders "value?  A committed lawyer and some harmed
landowners from across the nation (farmer, rancher, retiree, etc.) should be
able to come up with a model phraseology for use by serious politicians and
others who "control" bureaucracies and have the authority to tax to insert
at appropriate spots.  If other state or local laws need to be modified, why
not modify them?  Those using these easements and government coercion to
turn rural America into a playground for the rich have no such hesitations.

Third, we should determine where our City, County, State, and other Local
elected officials stand on this issue.  We should defeat those that will not
support us and work to defeat those opposed to withdrawing official support
from easement proliferation or from TAXING EASEMENT OWNERS ON AN ANNUAL
BASIS.

What about Federal government easements?  State and local officials should
explore declaring the GOVERNMENT EASEMENT VALUE EQUIVALENT TO
GOVERNMENT-OWNED PROPERTY AND APPLY FOR REVENUE SHARING AND
PAYMENT-IN-LIEU-OF-TAXES (PILT) accordingly.  If the Federal government
refuses to recognize this (surprise, surprise) pressure should be applied to
Federal politicians to make it happen.  This is real political work needed
by the nation as opposed to all the power jostling going on for personal
aggrandizement in Washington ; we need real politicians and not the current
crew.

If the Federal government (politicians and bureaucrats) and all their ne'er-do-well
"partners" want to run the rural countryside, they should be forced to pay
the piper like the rest of us for the privilege to do so.  If they "can't
afford" to pay "all that tax" then foreclose their interests and tell them
to go and rent somewhere else, preferably in some city where they have much
more in common with the community.  The Federal government promised years
ago to support local communities when they bought chunks of land.  Those
promises were all lies given today's crop of dangerous bureaucrats and
Federal politicians.  When they aren't bribing our state bureaucrats, they
are sending into rural communities these "surrogate" bureaucrats promising
to "save" that which, like the old Federal tax promises, they know we like
to hear about but will forget eventually.

Fourth, this takes cooperation and cooperation requires tolerance.  Farm
groups in North Dakota and oppressed acreage landowners in Washington state
need to talk and work together with loggers and ranchers.  Hunters, trappers
and fishermen need to take their heads out of the sand and realize that
their revered activities are the result of a free Republic with guaranteed
property rights and NOT a product of Soviet-style or Zimbabwean government
land controls.  Groups such as private property advocates from Missouri need
to talk with like groups from New Mexico and Florida .  Federal sponsors of
things like Invasive Species authority or Native Ecosystems mandates should
be driven from office by constant negative publicity and truth.  Groups
supporting sensible energy development and local planning authority likewise
need to find and work with counterparts in other parts of the country. Rural
America is under siege and easements are one of the most silent and
dangerous weapons being employed.

Only when the entire pastiche of rural communities from gamefowl breeders
and muskrat trappers to rural business communities comes together is there
any likelihood of stemming this easement tsunami.  Coming together and
cooperating requires tolerance and until we tolerate each other we will
remain the vulnerable little villages we have become being picked off one at
a time.

Jim Beers
3 Sep. 2007

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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.
He was stationed in North Dakota , Minnesota , Nebraska , New York City , and
Washington DC .  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western
Pacific and on Adak , Alaska in the Aleutian Islands .  He has worked for the
Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security
Supervisor in Washington , DC .  He testified three times before Congress;
twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60
Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to
expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Centreville ,
Virginia with his wife of many decades.