President Donald Trump took to the road to travel to Utah to announce a historic rollback of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
And in so doing, he put a serious damper on the legacies of both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Insert cheer here.
“We’re going to be doing something that the state of Utah and others have wanted to be done for many, many years,” Trump said at the White House, before departing for Utah. “So important for state’s rights and so important for the people of Utah.”
Related Story: Trump’s Downsizing Utah’s Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments Taken To Court
Specifically, Trump’s reeling in the boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument and the Grand-Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The first was declared by Obama, during his dying December 2016 days in office. It spans almost 1.4 million acres. The second — that was an act of Clinton in 1996, a set-aside of 1.9 million acres for federal oversight.
Both were highly contested, but self-congratulatory on the parts of the presidents.
Look at this, from Obama, as noted by the Salt Lake Tribune on Bears Ear declaration day: “Today’s actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes.”
Not really. Sen. Orrin Hatch put it better.
“[This declaration is] an attack on an entire way of life [ and] an astonishing and egregious abuse of executive power,” he said then.
It was a similar scenario for Clinton’s designation.
“Standing against the sweeping backdrop of the Grand Canyon, Clinton declared that in creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument ‘we are keeping faith with the future … On this remarkable site, God’s handiwork is everywhere,'” the Los Angeles Times recorded in September 1996.
And with that — ranchers, miners and recreational land users were set on notice: No more, without the permission of the feds.
Clinton’s designation was actually the largest ever made under the Antiquities Act.
Well, here comes Trump. And there goes part of Obama’s and Clinton’s legacies.
Trump’s reportedly trimming Bears Ears by 85 percent, from 1.35 million acres to 201,397 acres, and Grand Staircase from 1.9 million acres to 997,490 acres.
This is a big win for those in America concerned about private property rights and states’ rights, and the growing trend of a federal government to use an outdated 1906 law to run roughshod over the Constitution and Founding Father intents.
Let’s hope more scale-backs are soon in coming. Environmentalists and leftists will cry — and, more to truth, sue. But let them. The Constitution makes cause for private property, not presidential legacies or environmental group successes. The less land in the hands of the federal government, the better it is for the cause of freedom for the individual American.
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Just what is there to take to court????,,, If one President can Create in Presidential fiat what another would destroy, or destroy what a Previous President has created, why is the judicial branch called in only when one party does the action?,,,,you know why, because one party has taken control and corrupted the judicial Branch of Government which is ALWAYS their last line of defense against the will of THE PEOPLE, and it is no coincidence that the branch of government that they rely upon is the one NOT elected by THE PEOPLE but assigned by those in power. The Democrats should change the name of their party because by their undemocratic actions they no longer fit the Description. Notice how in the media they no longer call themselves the Democrat party but the Democatic party,,,,as if a desperate need to reinforce the media mind manipulation and deception and fool THE PEOPLE and even themselves, lest THE PEOPLE finally discover who they REALLY are! You will know them by their deeds.
As i’ve said repeatedly, leftists always rant about how XYZ is PROPER/RIGHT/JUST etc, when THEY DO IT (or don’t do it), but hell will freeze before they let a conservative do the same and get away with it.
God Bless President Trump, rolling back the over reach of the Communists, Barack and Billy Bob!
Shrinking 0bama’s “legacy” is like shrinking a 300-lb tumour to 100 lb!
Yup. WE NEED to eradicate it ENTIRELY..
Best analogy of the week.
obama’s land-grab, along with the rest of his putrid legacy needs to be shrunken out of sight down to zero.
Please note: these two national monuments are still collectively over a 1.1M acres…and still larger than Guam or US Samoa…about 1/2 the size of the entire state of Rhode Island. This is not to say that the fed gave anything back, the 3M acres are all still public land–it just that the change in designation will permit the local residents & public with limited rights to access and use the land…within the normal federal usage and permit guidelines.
Between national parks, national forests, national monuments, US military test ranges, military bases, BLM land, and land otherwise overseen by the department of interior….the fed still owns pretty close to 75% of the state’s land-mass.
To put this into prospective, Utah is roughly the same size as the isle of Britain. If all of the UK population on the island were told that 3/4 of the land mass was now government property–and their population would be prohibited from owning or living on the island other than in Wales–how might they react?
Farming, logging, hunting, hiking, camping, or mining, or any other use of the land, requires the purchase of a paid permit from a government bureaucrat.
[To put this into prospective, Utah is roughly the same size as the isle of Britain. If all of the UK population on the island were told that 3/4 of the land mass was now government property–and their population would be prohibited from owning or living on the island other than in Wales–how might they react? ]
They should revolt and rightly so.,.
from Obama: “Today’s actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes.”
Unless you have a hissy fit and shut down all natl parks for extra drama during a govt shutdown you caused. Yes I realize he’s gone but there are others like him.
Remember the uproar over ANWR? Any time someone finds a valuable resource anywhere a Dem swoops in and calls it a wildlife refuge. Here’s how enormous ANWR is.
LINK
The oil companies wanted to set up a drill site about the size of a football field for drilling. Nope, you might disturb some elk or polar bears. Don’t you know polar bears are 500% past extinct now because of global warming? I hope you’re happy.