Keep state’s public lands in public hands

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture census of agriculture, the number of Nevada farms increased from 3,131 in 2007 to 4,137 in 2012. At the same time, agricultural production acreage expanded from 5.865 million acres to 5.913 million acres. Each farm increased an average of nearly $21,000 in sales.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars from grazing fees on approximately 45 million acres of public rangeland goes directly into the Nevada state treasury to support our agricultural economy. Nevada Revised Statute 568 authorizes the funds to be used “for the construction and maintenance of range improvements or any other purpose beneficial to the stock raising and ranching industries.”

But as we’ve seen in recent headlines, not all ranchers pay their fair share for use of public rangelands. For more than 20 years, Cliven Bundy has given Nevada ranchers a black eye by refusing to pay the same fees other ranchers do. While Bundy proclaims that he doesn’t recognize the existence of the U.S. government, many other Western ranchers are proud to have “USDA Prime Beef” or “USDA Choice” labels, adding value to their meat.

Sadly, Nevada’s county and state officials are also discounting the important role of federal lands in preserving Nevada’s rural way of life.

On April 26, in Washington, D.C., Nevada’s lieutenant governor, Mark Hutchison, spoke before the Federal Land Action Group, a partisan congressional body organizing a legislative framework for removing public lands from public hands. He advocated for the “Honor the Nevada Enabling Act of 1864 Act” — sponsored by Rep. Cresent Hardy and Rep Mark Amodei — and proudly stated his long-time advocacy for transfer of federal land to the states.

He explained,“My specific duties as outlined by state statute are related to tourism, economic development and transportation.”

The Western Sustainable Agriculture Working Group has tracked the public land grab dialogue. The land grab disrespects local tribes who lived on what is now called “public land” and who continue to use the land for traditional agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering food and medicine plants.

With no federal protection, the potential for desecration of sacred sites and burial sites is immense.

Increased private development on public lands will pollute and diminish water supplies, killing vegetation and wildlife and turning the most arid state in the nation into a dust bowl with desertification. How will the land change when state and local governments maximize profits through increased mining, drilling and other resource extraction?

I worry about what Federal Land Action Group is planning and about the intentions and motives of Reps. Hardy, Amodei and Lt. Gov. Hutchison. This should concern every farmer, rancher and agricultural equipment, supply and service provider who benefits from public lands.

Public lands are good for our economy. They should stay in public hands so that all Nevadans can enjoy their use and take comfort that some portions are protected for future generations and to maintain our agricultural heritage and rural lifestyle.

Among the many disturbing signs of our times are conservatives and libertarians of high intelligence and high principles who are advocating government programs that relieve people of the necessity of working to provide their own livelihoods.

Generations ago, both religious people and socialists were agreed on the proposition that “he who does not work, neither shall he eat.” Both would come to the aid of those unable to work. But the idea that people who choose not to work should be supported by money taken from those who are working was rejected across the spectrum.

How we got to the present situation is a long story, but the painful fact is that we are here now. Among the leading minds of our times, including Charles Murray today and the late, great Milton Friedman earlier, there have been proposals for ways of subsidizing the poor without the suffocating distortions of the government’s welfare state bureaucracy.

Friedman’s plan for a negative income tax to help the poor has already been put into practice. But, contrary to his intention to have this replace the welfare state bureaucracy, it has been simply tacked on to all the many other government programs.

It is not inevitable that the same thing will happen to Charles Murray’s plan, but I would bet the rent money that there would be the same end result.

“Poverty” today means whatever government statisticians in Washington say it means — no more and no less. Most Americans living below the official poverty line today have central air-conditioning, cable television for multiple TV sets, own at least one motor vehicle, and have many other amenities that most of the human race never had for most of its existence.

Low-income neighborhoods suffer far more from social degeneration, including high rates of crime and violence, than from material deprivation.

Welfare state guarantees of not having to work, however the particular policies are applied, are not a solution. Relieving people of personal responsibility for their own lives, however it is done, is a major part of the problem.

Before there can be a welfare state in a democratic country, there must first be a welfare state vision that becomes sufficiently pervasive to allow a welfare state to be created. That vision, in which people are “entitled” to what others have produced, is at the heart of the social degeneration that can be traced back to the 1960s.

Teenage pregnancies, venereal diseases, dependency on government and murder rates were all going down during the much disdained 1950s. All reversed and shot up as the welfare state, and the social vision behind the welfare state, took over in the 1960s.

But relieving people from the responsibilities and challenges of life is doing them no favor. Nor is it a favor to society at large.

American society has become more polarized under the welfare state vision. Nor is it hard to see why. If we are all “entitled” to benefits, just by being present, why are some entitled to so little while others have so much?

In an entitlement context, all sorts of “gaps” and “disparities” automatically become “inequities,” and a reason for lashing out at others, instead of improving yourself. Only in a society in which rewards are based on contributions is there any reasonable reply to the question as to why Bill Gates has so much and others so little.

The track record of divorcing personal rewards from personal contributions hardly justifies more of the same, even when it is in a more sophisticated form. Sophisticated social disaster is still disaster — and we already have too much of that.