Posts Tagged → private property rights
PA Farm Bureau & PA Grange thieving property rights and gun rights
Who would think that two organizations I have always revered would turn out to be the absolute biggest threats to private property rights and our Second Amendment rights?
Sadly, it is true that the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and the Pennsylvania Grange have gone on a crusade against private property rights, hunting, and gun rights that has shocked everyone to the bone, most especially the traditional opponents of these activities like the Humane Society and CeasefirePA, who have now joined with them.
When the PFB and the Grange shack up with the Humane Society, a group dedicated to ending farming and animal husbandry as we know it, and with CeasefirePA, and against the NRA, then you know both organizations have gone off the rails. But the fact is, both PFB and the Grange are in full crusade mode right now, and there is no end in sight.
It all started with their opposition to expanding Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania. Including small game, groundhogs, or big game in Sunday hunting (presently limited to coyotes, foxes, and crows), somehow ignited a firestorm of indignation among the octogenarians running both of these organizations. Canes were rattled, and the political war was on against anyone advocating for more hunting opportunities in Pennsylvania. Every bit of political and legislative capital these two groups can muster has been brought to bear in every avenue of political decision making. The net result is not just that they are on record being against other people hunting on Sunday, but that our existing hunting rights, gun rights, and property rights are now being diminished and in the case of Sunday target shooting, at real risk. Until now, no one outside of the anti-gun CeasefirePA had been opposed to target shooting, especially on private property.
Pennsylvania is one of just THREE states in America that has no big game hunting on Sunday. So it’s not like Pennsylvanians asking for expanded Sunday hunting are on the fringe of some crazy movement. The rest of the country is already doing it.
But PFB and the Grange have acted as if Sunday hunting will end civilization as we know it, and they went to war with a scorched earth approach. Both organizations are now on record trying to eliminate even target shooting on Sunday, even on private land, let alone archery hunting on private land on Sunday. This has been an all-out political assault on private property rights and on our Second Amendment rights. What private property owners do on their own land on any day of the week is of zero consequence to anyone else, but PFB and the Grange have made it their business to control what you do.
Didn’t Pennsylvania pass the right-to-farm laws so that farmers could do what they need to do, seven days a week, without interference? Turns out that the organizations dedicated to farming are not dedicated to the actual farmers and property owners themselves. Not really. Lots of farmers and farmland owners want to hunt and shoot on Sunday.
Take the Grange. Their motto is “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”
Their mission is “Pennsylvania State Grange supports the local Granges to help members grow as individuals, unify their communities and create opportunity through legislation and community service.”
And yet the Grange is taking hard political positions exactly opposite of their motto and mission. There is no unity, liberty, or charity in their opposition to private property rights and to the Second Amendment. There is nothing helping members grow as individuals when the Grange stands in our way of hunting with our families and friends, on our own private land, when our complicated schedules allow for us to be together.
Beware these two organizations. They are prime examples of how a few people can hijack an organization and destroy its credibility in one swift and foolish move, and take our most sacred rights down the toilet with them.
A win for the little guy
Government’s role is to serve the people. America is a people with a government, not a government with a people. The people – their needs, their interests, their rights – come first in all things. Our Constitution prohibits government behavior that is arbitrary, capricious, abusive, or uncompensated taking of private property, among others.
Any American who loses sight of these limitations has fallen into the easy trap of promoting government over the people. People in both main political parties fall into this trap, because both main parties have largely lost touch with the US Constitution (and the Pennsylvania Constitution) and its daily meaning for American citizens.
Last night the Pennsylvania state senate passed HB 1565, which amended through law a procedural environmental rule issued in the last days of the former Governor Ed Rendell administration, in 2010. The rule created 150-foot buffers along streams designated High Quality and Exceptional Value, and removed that buffer land from nearly all uses. No compensation to the landowner was provided. Allowing the landowner to claim a charitable donation for public benefit was not allowed. Higher building density on the balance of the property was not allowed. The buffer land was simply taken by government fiat, by administrative dictate, totally at odds with the way American government is supposed to work.
And the appeal process afforded to landowners under the rule was onerous, extremely expensive, and lengthy. It was not real due process, but rather a series of high hurdles designed to chase away landowners from their property rights. Everything about this rule was designed to make the government’s job as easy as possible, and the private property owner’s rights and abilities as watered down as possible.
The 150-foot buffer rule represented the worst sort of government, because it did not serve the people, it quite simply took from the people. The 150-foot buffer rule was blunt force trauma in the name of environmental quality, which can easily be achieved to the same level myriad other ways. The rule was the easy way out, and it represented a throwback to the old days of the environmental movement and environmental quality management when big government, top-down, command-and-control dictates were standard fare for arresting environmental degradation.
That approach made sense when polluted American rivers were catching fire, nearly fifty years ago. Today, a scalpel and set of screwdrivers can achieve the environmental goal much better, and fairly. Supporters of the rule claimed that voting for HB 1565 was voting against environmental quality, which made no sense. Environmental quality along HQ and EV stream corridors could have easily been achieved with a similar, but innately fairer, 150-foot buffer rule. It saddens me that my fellow Americans could not see that simple fact, and instead sought to stay with a deeply flawed government process until the bitter end.
I know the people who both created and then championed the rule. Some of them are friends and acquaintances of mine. Their motives and intentions were good. I won’t say that they are bad people. Yes, they are mostly Democrats, but there were also plenty of Republicans involved in designing it and defending it, including former high level Republican government appointees.
Rather, this rule was a prime example of how simply out of touch many government decision makers have become with what American government is supposed to be, and it adds fuel to my own quest to help reintroduce the US and Pennsylvania constitutions back into policy discussions and government decision making so that we don’t have more HB 1565 moments in the future.
It’s official: Sunday hunting in VA
Two weeks ago the Virginia state House passed a Sunday hunting bill out of a committee that had bottled up similar bills for decades before. It was a surprising statement that it actually got through committee. Then it passed the full state House, which surprised even its most ardent sponsors.
Well, today the Virginia state Senate passed the companion bill. It allows hunting on private land on Sunday, a private property rights win if there ever was one. If you pay property taxes, say on a remote mountainside property, and you are deprived of 14.2% of your full use of that property for some vague reason, you might get frustrated. It is your property. You can shoot 1,000 bullets at a target on Sunday, but you cannot shoot just one at a squirrel. Laws like this are by their definition arbitrary, the bane of democracy.
Virginia’s governor says he will sign the bill into law.
Welcome to the modern era, Virginia! We are envious of you.
Kudos to Kathy Davis of PA-based Hunters United for Sunday Hunting (www.huntsunday.org), who has devoted the past two years of her life to this issue, and who helped a great deal with getting the Virginia law passed and the lawsuit filed there. The lawsuit compelled the state legislature to act, before a judge ruled against the state and the entire state was opened up. While I would like to see public land open for Sunday hunting, I am satisfied with private land as a start to implementing it state-wide. This really is an issue of the most basic American rights.
Property rights, anyone? Republicans? Hello?
My fellow Republicans have just passed a two-sentence law that single-handedly strips away private property rights from private landowners in Pennsylvania, and Governor Tom Corbett is weighing whether or not to sign it.
To wit: If you signed an oil and gas lease that is still in force, and it is silent on being unitized with some other gas drilling unit miles away, why then, the gas company can put you in that unit, begin paying you some paltry sum, and your lease never ends. The gas company can come back for your gas decades later. You are completely stuck and do not have the opportunity to renegotiate better terms for a new lease.
Never mind that the same “Republicans” who propagated this anti-American Communist plot are also the same ones who were championing forced pooling, too.
Some of these jokers are in the administration, so more on them later, on an as-needed basis. Keep in mind that some of these guys, and one person comes to my mind immediately, have never made a dollar in the private sector. Rather, their entire Republican careers have been spent on the taxpayer dole, in some public role or another. And here they have the cajones to try to strip private landowners of their private property rights.
Many voters know me as an American political activist first, and a Republican last. This recent vote in both the PA House and PA Senate reconfirms for me that my beliefs best lie with the more independent-minded, and not with the partisans. It is a sad fact that Democrats are for forced pooling, too, and also believe that private property rights are best managed by government or its corporate buddies.
But that is not my fight. I am a conservative and a Republican, and by God, when I see something that stinks this bad, I am calling it what it is: Crap.
The Republican Party ought to be made of better people who know better. For shame.