You Must Know These 3 Definitions: Property, Land, Premises 

October 24, 2007

By Julie Kay Smithson, property rights researcher propertyrights@earthlink.net

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org

In order to protect your property rights, you must first know the difference between the definitions of property, land, and premises. If you do not know their meanings, you cannot effectively protect your property rights, i.e., your freedom. Premises, a recently touted definition, is being used to implement the "National Animal Identification System," or "NAIS." Substituting "premises" for "property" effectively renders property rights null and void. This use of a term (and its meaning, which is often not publicized) is no accident. Property is by far the most powerful legal term, but you can lose your property rights -- your ability to admit or deny access, utilize your property, sell or mortgage it, etc., if you do not know the three meanings and the context in which they are employed.

This is why property rights champions, researchers, activists, etc., are so adamantly opposed to "NAIS" and any other restrictions to their property rights.

Government agencies -- from various Department of Interior branches (Bureau of Land Management, or BLM; National Park Service, or NPS; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, or USFWS / FWS / "the Service," etc.) to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (FS), Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and others -- regularly refer to property as mere "land" and property owners as mere "land owners." If left unchallenged and uncorrected, this spells the extinction of property rights. Sleeping on one's rights is no excuse in the legal and judicial worlds.   

Property rights are vital to your freedom and inseparable from it. Without them, you are nothing more than a tenant paying taxes on property over which you have lost some, most, or all of your rights.  

Property - Something that is owned or possessed. Property may be real (land), personal, tangible (touchable), or intangible (such as the interest in a play or other creative work). - U.S. Treasury OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision, in charge of banks, savings and loan associations, etc.) http://www.ots.treas.gov/glossary/gloss-p.html  

Land - Real property or any interest therein. http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_01/25cfr151_01.html  

Premises - A physical location that represents a unique and describable geographic entity where activity affecting the health and/or traceability of animals may occur. In cases involving non-contiguous properties, the producer/owner should consult with his/her State Animal Health Official or Area Veterinarian in Charge to determine whether there is a need for one or multiple premises numbers. - National Animal Identification System (NAIS) A User Guide And Additional Information Resources Draft Version November 2006 - Glossary http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/naislibrary/documents/guidelines/User_Guide.htm

"The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave." - George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921.

(Permission to post from the author.)