October 10th, 2025
Because it is a relatively small part of our big military and kept in a dusty back room far from the shiny B-2 bombers, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been off the radar of legislators and commanders-in-chief alike since George Washington ended his presidency.
But in the intervening 250 years since its founding, the USACE has gone from building bridges for troops and cannons, to aggressively stealing private property rights and forcing a Marxist environmentalist agenda on domestic citizens under the guise of “civil works.” Of all the federal agencies I have dealt with professionally and personally, including USEPA where I worked for seven years, the USACE has had the biggest mission creep in the worst directions of all. So, for USACE’s 250th birthday this year, can we please give Americans a gift of freedom, and see this most hidebound, insular, destructive, over-reaching, and unaccountable agency finally get the keelhaul overhaul that Americans deserve?
Not that I am rooting for Navy here, but our sacred Army has no business getting its good hands dirty with the USACE’s lawlessness. Big change must happen there, and with fresh new appointees from the Trump Administration, hope should be on the horizon. I hope these appointees are tough as nails, because they are facing a deeply entrenched bureaucracy as jealous of its ill-gotten power as any other federal agency has been, and they have the arrogant, dismissive staff culture to show for it.
USACE “manages” 12.5 million acres of formerly private land, much of it associated with water projects for hydropower, flood control, and public recreation. Sounds useful and wholesome enough: Waterskiing, fishing, hiking, families picnicking, with downstream communities protected from heavy rains up in the watersheds. Problem is, most of USACE’s flood control lakes are heavily silted in and barely functioning as advertised or designed. And probably 95% of this enormous land collection was obtained at gunpoint, through eminent domain against private American landowners, including the Seneca Nation, who still have a formal land treaty with the US government that was reached with George Washington himself, and which the USACE violated.
Absolutely nothing and no one is sacred to the USACE; not the US Constitution, not us citizens, not our property rights.
Anyone familiar with federal eminent domain knows it is rife with abuse and below-market values forced on private landowners for the most frivolous purposes. And while some federal agencies will attempt to reach willing-seller-willing-buyer agreements before going nuclear, the USACE just used legal sledgehammers against American landowners right from the get-go, because screwdrivers have never been in their toolbox.
But the situation is worse than just USACE’s rampant takings of privately owned lands that could have easily served the USACE’s goals while remaining in private ownership. Back in the 1950s-1970s good ol’ days of “Big Government Knows Best,” when the agency was most active, the USACE also stripped many of its condemned properties of their valuable subsurface oil, gas and or mineral rights, too, without paying for them. Not content with taking the surface rights for managing surface water, the agency simply took what it wanted and dared the beaten-down landowners to try to beat them in government courts. Today, millions of Americans are deprived of substantial and highly valuable subsurface private property rights at nearly every single USACE water resource project. These oil, gas, and mineral rights should be in their families’ private ownership, but are wasting away under USACE theft and neglect.
A group of military engineers and their civilian hangers-on have no business running public recreation facilities on American soil. The USACE’s job started as support of military combat troops in 1775, and it is incredible that we are having this discussion in 2025. The marrying of USACE hydroelectric dams and flood control facilities to public service recreation has not worked, because the agency’s staff developed a culture of untouchable bullies. The US military is not supposed to operate on American soil, for damned good reasons, but the USACE does so, with predictably bad results.
USACE is over-ripe for huge change. At the very least USACE needs the deep cleaning treatment of staff and structure that chief administrator Lee Zeldin is doing over at USEPA. USACE’s “civil works” must be spun off to actual civilian oversight and management in the agencies that have historically done this kind of public service and natural resource management. Nearly all of USACE’s physical assets should be moved to the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the US Forest Service, all of which have much better track records dealing with public service than the USACE. Which is saying a lot, because all of these federal agencies have had real rough patches in their public land management history and public service interface cultures, too.
Josh First wrote his 1991 master’s thesis on the USACE’s nationwide water resource projects, and, ironically, has randomly ended up owning substantial acreages adjoining two USACE water resource projects in Pennsylvania as an entrepreneur. He will write about his own related experiences with USACE in future essays.
This essay originally appeared at American Thinker.
December 28th, 2016
As one might expect of a spoiled, petulant, over-indulged man-child, Barack Hussein Obama is not following traditional presidential transitions.
Instead of spending his time talking about the greatness of America, its promise, its successes, its opportunity, and peacefully transferring power to his successor, Obama has gone on a wild spree of destruction and mayhem across America and in the international community. Aided and abetted by the mainstream media, which share his anti-Western Civilization agenda, Obama has not been held accountable.
“Monkey-wrenching” might be the right term for this bizarre display of poor-loser behavior.
Dozens of useless but expensive new regulations with no basis in reason or science are being rammed through the executive branch. Same for executive orders. Nearly a thousand violent federal prisoners are being released, having obtained clemency from Obama; these scary men will surely bring unlimited suffering and horrors to American citizens over the next couple years. Like the Guantanamo Bay jihadists released by Obama for the AWOL traitor Bo Bergdahl.
Internationally, Obama has abandoned Ukraine to Russia, Iraq to Iran, Syria to Russia and ISIS, and Israel to its insane neighbors plus all of the anti-Jewish bigots around the world. Failing to veto a bizarre attack on the Jewish state at the useless United Nations last week, the Obama administration left the tiny island of democracy to its own devices while empowering the most radical, evil, violent anti-Western foes attacking Israel today, and America tomorrow.
This destructive scorched earth retreat from a failed eight years is the best that Obama can do. It just highlights his hatred for Western Civilization, Christianity, Jews, hard working normal American tax-paying citizens, goodness.
But you know what? Donald Trump is giving us hope every day for all of the great and positive things his administration will begin doing in three weeks.
My favorite two choices by the incoming Trump Administration are the selection of outsiders at EPA and the Department of Interior.
At EPA, Scott Pruitt is the right guy to take the fight over fake “climate change” directly to the religious fanatics promoting it.
I know EPA well.
It is where I started my career after graduate school at Vanderbilt University, and where I spent exactly seven years vainly trying to figure out liberalism and bureaucratic obstructionism. Oh I did some amazing jobs at EPA, and I had a big impact. But I grew tired of the liberal culture there among the staff. I grew tired of policy battles initiated by unaccountable bureaucrats at war with capitalism (yes, this is a straight up true fact from my own amazing experiences at EPA).
For me, changing EPA’s name to Department of Environmental Health would signal the correct staff culture change and professional alignment. “EPA” connotes a certain outsider status and identity, which suits radicals and gives cover to bomb-throwers in the taxpayer-funded ranks.
At Interior, Congressman Ryan Zinke is a perfect fit, and actually pretty inspiring from what I have read about him.
Zinke is a former Navy SEAL. Need anyone say more….a selfless, patriotic hero, basically. Thumbs up.
But Zinke is also a conservative conservationist, a rarity in my experience.
He’s a hunter. Thumbs up.
Way too many Republicans and conservatives actually oppose environmental protection and wildlife conservation, because in a certain simplistic view, these things get in the way of unbridled, maximal development. And if a bunch of Marxist econuts say one thing, then the truth must automatically be the exact opposite (not…why do conservatives always allow the Left to define the green battlefield?).
It is embarrassing, no, make that humiliating, to hear some Republicans slavering over the opportunity to liquidate public lands. This is proof that the Left does not have a total lock on policy insanity.
America’s public lands are a beautiful treasure, a dowry, a gold mine of recreational opportunity and personal exploration, a huge temple in which to worship God from desolate mountain tops to silent, tranquil remote valleys. I am blessed to have been able to really explore many, many national and state parks and forests from Maine to California over my 52 years, and God willing, I have plans for a lot more exploration of new places across America the Beautiful.
Camping, hiking, fishing, trapping, hunting in far-flung wilderness places are all favorite activities for me and for tens of millions of other Americans.
Being from Montana, Zinke innately understands the personal connection healthy-minded Americans have to their scenic public lands.
Yes, it is true that public lands are a big government footprint in some places. But they are also one of the very few things that government seems to be able to do pretty well. Though I would suggest eliminating the Bureau of Land Management, as its original charter has long since expired and its staff culture sucks. And I would also look into creative ways to resolve some of the longstanding conflicts over natural resource management and extractive activities on public lands. And multiple use policies require some fine tuning. Like allowing hunting and trapping in the remote areas of most national parks.
I speak from experience here, too, having directly worked with the National Park Service, US Forest Service, and staff from other federal resource agencies.
Not all of these challenges, or problems (yes, they are problems when they threaten to destroy entire pristine watersheds) require an either-or decision or black-and-white policy view. A lot of nuance can be brought to bear. Zinke seems like the guy to do that, which is incredibly refreshing.
See? The clean fresh breeze is blowing out the stench already. Despite the evil darkness of the Obama years, the penetrating shining light of the incoming leaders lightens and cheers my heart, gives me hope from the change.
Zinke and Pruitt cannot be confirmed soon enough.
Let’s make America great again.